was, and is, more simple and less complicated, better arranged generally, less technical and artificial, and less divergent and remote in its phraseology, from the ordinary conversational language of the educated classes of the people. During the period, however, we have just been considering, it must be admitted a great defect in the Law arose from the laxity which existed in the Civil Judicial procedure. This has frequently been attributed to the non-prevalence of Trial by Jury in Civil cases during the 18th century. And certainly that mode of trial, in a manner, forced the English profession to greater accuracy and precision in the statement of the facts of each case. But such precision in the statement of facts, it is manifest, was not necessarily dependent on the adoption of that mode of trial, as we may afterwards see. And we shall here merely farther observe, that the chief defects in the Law of Scotland, to which we allude, as existing at the close of the 18th century, were the following; that parties, their counsel and agents, were not forced at the outset to make explicit statements and counterstatements, admissions and denials, in matters of fact; that argumentation was admitted in the statement or denial of matters of fact; that pleadings, written before the single Judge, and printed before the Court of Review, were admitted to an excessive length; that representations against his judgment were frequently admitted by the Lord Ordinary to an indefinite number; that a variation in the statement of facts was frequently tolerated in these successive representations or petitions, without the judicial record having been closed.

How far such and other defects have been remedied in the course of the present century, we may afterwards inquire.

ART. III. THE STUDY OF JURISPRUDENCE.

A Discourse on the Study of Jurisprudence. By D. CAULFIELD HERON, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy, Queen's College, Galway.1

It has been observed that laws are by the public considered as something utterly distinct from common life, and the common affairs of society; as a sort of intellectual Japan, all access to which is prohibited, and the coasts of which are guarded by the gloom of an inexorable exclusion. Yet to one truly reflecting upon the nature and result of laws, few subjects ought to be more interesting. The whole fabric of society rests chiefly upon the Law: the social and political life in which we live, the freedom which we enjoy, are all the results of the exertions of wise and good men who laboured before us in this department of human intelligence. And this science concerns not individuals, but the community; the pleasures of abstruse knowledge, the glories of the refined arts are known to few, but laws are praised or cursed by every fireside.3

In this ancient cathedral town of Galway, which the old Milesians first colonised, from which De Burgo and his Normans expelled them,-which the Anglo-Norman "tribes fortified and monopolised, and where they flourished in their commercial prosperity, trading with Biscay and Gallicia,— which, having its share in the miseries of the times, Sir Charles Coote besieged in 1651, and Ginckle in 1691,— which a century of penal laws strove to destroy,—and which now is rising from its ruins into a prosperity not as of old based upon feudal conquest and monopoly, but upon com mercial industry and commercial freedom; in this town, destined, I trust, as the transatlantic packet station, to be a

1 Delivered in the Law School of Queen's College, Galway, Feb. 20. 1851. * Phillimore on Evidence. 3 Meredith's Introduction to Emerigon, p. xi.

principal link in the commerce of the Old World with the New, it has pleased her Majesty's Government to found a College, a branch of the Queen's University in Ireland.

There is a distinguishing characteristic between the Queen's University and those ancient Corporations of Learning which have descended to us from the middle ages. In the old universities classical and mathematical studies have been pursued almost to the exclusion of every branch of professional learning, and modern scientific discovery. In the old universities the mental sciences, the mechanical arts, the modern languages have been neglected, and professional education, except perhaps in the department of medicine, almost unknown. With us it is nearly the reverse. From the Queen's University we hope to send forth not merely prodigies of abstruse learning, but also good farmers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and men fit for public offices.

The Rev. Sidney Smith, in his lectures on Moral Philosophy, has severely commented upon the ancient system of education. He says, "In looking to the effects of education upon after life, (which is the only mode of determining whether education is good or bad), I do allow it to be of great consequence that a young man should be a good scholar; but I also beg leave humbly to contend that it is not without its beneficial consequences, that the minds of our young men be carly awakened to such subjects as the philosophy of law, the philosophy of commerce, the philosophy of the human mind, and the philosophy of government. If an equal chance be given to these subjects and to the classics, if they are all equally honoured and rewarded, the original diversities and caprices of nature will determine a sufficient number of minds to each channel; on the contrary, if a young man from his earliest days, hears nothing held in honour and estimation but classical reading, if he have no other idea of ignorance than false quantities, and no other idea of excellence than mellifluous longs and shorts, the bias of his mind is fixed,—his line of distinction is taken; he either despises those sciences because he knows them not, or, if he have the ability to discover his deficiencies, and the candour to own them, he feels the want of that early determination, that instinctive zeal

which no circumstances in after life can ever divert or extinguish."

1

It is curious to observe how very recently academic education has been directed towards the branches of philosophy to which Sydney Smith has here alluded. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have not yet a chair of the Philosophy of Law and Government. The Philosophy of Commerce, though adorned by the names of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Huskisson, in England,-Say, Bastiat, and Rossi, in France, -has been denounced in the grossest terms within our own. memory. The University of Dublin has been indebted for its chair of Political Economy to the liberality of a stranger, Archbishop Whately. And it is only very recently, and since the opening of the Queen's Colleges, that the University of Dublin has founded a chair of Jurisprudence. In fact, at the commencement of the first session in this college, I had the honour of giving the first public lecture on Jurisprudence that was ever delivered in Ireland. It is in accordance with the plan of grafting professional education and the study of the liberal sciences upon the old academic system, that a law school has been established in each of the Queen's Colleges. And to-day I shall briefly explain a few of the principles of science of which I hold the chair.

The word Law, in its widest sense, is used to designate those natural principles which are incident to, and govern all things, animate and inanimate. The entire of physical nature is subject to certain laws, for example, the laws of gravitation, of light, and of heat. In the Institutes of Justinian the term Law is extended to the instincts of animals, and natural law is therein defined to be that which nature has implanted in all living things. "For this law is not proper to men exclusively, but belongs to all animals, whether produced in the earth, in the air, or in the water." All inanimate nature obeys certain rules; and animals are governed by certain instincts. The bee and the beaver have built for thousands of years with the same degree of perfection, and the celestial bodies have from the period of creation rolled in their

1 Smith's Moral Philosophy, p. 101.

orbits subjected to the laws of matter. Now the properties and motions of matter form the subject of natural philosophy, and its several subdivisions. Thus the science of astronomy treats of the laws which govern the heavenly bodies: the science of mechanics treats of the laws of weight and motion: and the laws of light form the subject matter of optics. Similarly mental philosophy treats of the laws which regulate the powers, faculties, and affections of the human mind, and its development. Mental philosophy has been divided into two parts, accordingly as it treats of man in his individual capacity, and man as a member of society. The first branch treats of the individual mind, "its intellectual, as well as its moral or active powers, the faculties of the understanding, and those of the will." The latter branch of mental philosophy treats of the principles which regulate the social development of the human race; this science is now termed sociology or political science; and Jurisprudence is one of its subdivisions.

Though the physical sciences have been the first to be cultivated with success, the study of the social sciences appears the more important with regard to human progress. Most of the processes of nature, the subjects of the physical sciences, are beyond our reach; and though we may be affected by their result, yet we cannot control them. The earth sweeps through space around the sun, careless of the millions which it bears; the sun revolves round some distant and unknown centre of gravitation; the causes of light and heat are mysteries. But most of the subjects of the social sciences are within our dominion, and almost with ourselves it rests whether we will use and combine the materials of civilisation, and produce the happiness of civilised life, or leave those materials unused, and remain in ignorance, poverty, and misery. In society there must be laws enforced by the supreme government-positive laws. Now Jurisprudence treats of the principles which regulate the actions of mankind in relation to positive laws. It is the Science of Positive Law and the province of Jurisprudence is to investigate the actions of mankind in relation to positive laws, and by the observance of the constant co-existence and successions of phenomena amongst them to generalise the governing laws.