INTRODUCTION. SECTION THE FIRST. ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW*... MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR, AND GENTLEMEN OF T HE general expectation of so numerous and refpectable an audience, the novelty, and (I may add) the importance of the duty required from this chair, muft unavoidably be productive of great diffidence and apprehensions in him who has the honour to be placed in it. He must be fenfible how much will depend upon his conduct in the infancy of a study which is now first adopted by public academical authority; which has generally been reputed (however unjustly) of a dry and unfruitful nature; and of which the theoretical elementary parts have hitherto received a very moderate share of cultivation. He cannot but reflect that, if either his plan of inftruction be crude and injudicious, or the execution of it lame and fuperficial, it will cast a damp upon the farther progrefs of this moft useful and moft rational branch of learning; and may defeat for a time the * Read in Oxford at the opening of the Vinerian lectures: 25 Oct. 1758. public-fpirited defign of our wife and munificent benefactor. And this he must more especially dread, when he feels by experience how unequal his abilities are (unaffisted by preceding examples) to complete, in the manner he could wish, fo extenfive and arduous a task; fince he freely confeffes, that his former more private attempts have fallen very short of his own ideas of perfection. And yet the candour he has already experienced, and this last transcendent mark of regard, his present nomination by the free and unanimous fuffrage of a great and learned univerfity, (an honour to be ever remembered with the deepest and most affectionate gratitude,) these testimonies of your public judgment must entirely superfede his own, and forbid him to believe himself totally insufficient for the labour at least of this employment. One thing he will venture to hope for, and it certainly shall be his constant aim, by diligence and attention to atone for his other defects; esteeming, that the best return, which he can poffibly make for your favourable opinion of his capacity, will be his unwearied endeavours in fome little degree to deferve it. THE fcience thus committed to his charge, to be cultivated, methodized, and explained in a course of academical lectures, is that of the laws and conftitution of our own country: a species of knowlege, in which the gentlemen of England have been more remarkably deficient than those of all Europe befides. In moft of the nations on the continent, where the civil or imperial law under different modifications is closely interwoven with the municipal laws of the land, no gentleman, or at least no scholar, thinks his education is completed, till he has attended a courfe or two of lectures, both upon the inftitutes of Juftinian and the local conftitutions of his native foil, under the very eminent profeffors that abound in their feveral universities. And in the northern parts of our own ifland, where also the municipal laws are frequently connected with the civil, it is difficult to meet with a person of liberal education, who is deftitute of a competent knowlege in that science, which is to be the guardian of his natural rights and the rule of his civil conduct. NOR NOR have the imperial laws been totally neglected even in the English nation. A general acquaintance with their decifions has ever been deservedly confidered as no small accomplishment of a gentleman; and a fashion has prevailed, especially of late, to transport the growing hopes of this ifland to foreign univerfities, in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; which, though infinitely inferior to our own in every other confideration, have been looked upon as better nurseries of the civil, or (which is nearly the fame) of their own municipal law. In the mean time it has been the peculiar lot of our admirable system of laws, to be neglected, and even unknown, by all but one practical profeffion; though built upon the foundest foundations, and approved by the experience of ages. FAR be it from me to derogate from the study of the civil law, confidered (apart from any binding authority) as a collection of written reafon. No man is more thoroughly perfuaded of the general excellence of it's rules, and the usual equity of it's decisions, nor is better convinced of it's ufe as well as ornament to the fcholar, the divine, the statesman, and even the common lawyer. But we must not carry our veneration so far as to facrifice our Alfred and Edward to the manes of Theodofius and Juftinian: we must not prefer the edict of the praetor, or the refcript of the Roman emperor, to our own immemorial customs, or the fanctions of an English parliament; unless we can also prefer the defpotic monarchy of Rome and Byzantium, for whofe meridians the former were calculated, to the free constitution of Britain, which the latter are adapted to perpetuate. WITHOUT detracting therefore from the real merit which abounds in the imperial law, I hope I may have leave to affert, that if an Englishman must be ignorant of either the one or the other, he had better be a stranger to the Roman than the English institutions. For I think it an undeniable position, that a competent knowlege of the laws of that fociety in which we live, is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and scholar; an highly useful, I had almost said effential, part of liberal and polite education. And in this I am warranted by the example of antient Rome; where, as Cicero informs us 2, the very boys were obliged to learn the twelve tables by heart, as a carmen neceffarium, or indifpenfable leffon, to imprint on their tender minds an early knowlege of the laws and conftitution of their country. BUT as the long and universal neglect of this study, with us in England, feems in fome degree to call in question the truth of this evident pofition, it fhall therefore be the bufinefs of this introductory difcourfe, in the first place to demonstrate the utility of fome general acquaintance with the municipal law of the land, by pointing out it's particular uses in all confiderable fituations of life. Some conjectures will then be offered with regard to the causes of neglecting this useful ftudy to which will be fubjoined a few reflections on the peculiar propriety of reviving it in our own universities. AND, first, to demonftrate the utility of fome acquaintance with the laws of the land, let us only reflect a moment on the fingular frame and polity of that land, which is governed by this fystem of laws. A land, perhaps the only one in the univerfe, in which political or civil liberty is the very end and fcope of the conftitution. This liberty, rightly understood, confifts in the power of doing whatever the laws permit ; which is only to be effected by a general conformity of all orders and degrees to those equitable rules of action, by which the meaneft individual is protected from the infults and oppreffion of the greatest. As therefore every fubject is interested in the prefervation of the laws, it is incumbent upon every man to be acquainted with thofe at leaft with which he is immediately concerned; left he incur the cenfure, as well as inconvenience, of living in society without knowing the obligations which it lays him under. And thus much may fuffice for per a De Legg. 2. 23. b Montefq. Efp. L. l. 11. c. 5. c Facultas ejus, quod cuique facere libet, nifi quid vi, aut jure probibetur. Inft. 1. 3, I. fons fons of inferior condition, who have neither time nor capacity to enlarge their views beyond that contracted sphere in which they are appointed to move. But thofe on whom nature and fortune have beftowed more abilities and greater leifure, cannot be so easily excufed. These advantages are given them, not for the benefit of themselves only, but also of the public: and yet they cannot, in any scene of life, discharge properly their duty either to the public or themselves, without fome degree of knowlege in the laws. To evince this the more clearly, it may not be amiss to defcend to a few particulars. LET us therefore begin with our gentlemen of independent eftates and fortune, the most useful as well as confiderable body of men in the nation; whom even to fuppofe ignorant in this branch of learning is treated by Mr. Locked as a strange abfurdity. It is their landed property, with it's long and voluminoustrain of defcents and conveyances, fettlements, entails, and incumbrances, that forms the most intricate and most extenfive object of legal knowlege. The thorough comprehenfion of thefe, in all their minute diftinctions, is perhaps too laborious a task for any but a lawyer by profeffion yet still the understanding of a few leading principles, relating to eftates and conveyancing, may form fome check and guard upon a gentleman's inferior agents, and preferve him at least from very grofs and notorious impofition. AGAIN, the policy of all laws has made fome forms neceffary in the wording of laft wills and teftaments, and more with regard to their atteftation. An ignorance in these must always be of dangerous confequence, to fuch as by choice or neceffity compile their own teftaments without any technical affiftance. Those who have attended the courts of justice are the best witneffes of the confufion and diftreffes that are hereby occafioned in families; and of the difficulties that arise in difcerning the true meaning of the teftator, or fometimes in discovering any meaning at all: fo that in the end his eftate |