INTRODUCTION. SECTION the FIRST. ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW.* MR. VICE CHANCELLOR, AND THE general expectation of so numerous and respectable 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 apprehenfions 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 firft adopted by publick 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 fhare 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 caft a damp upon the farther progrefs of this moft ufeful and moft rational branch of learning; and may defeat for a time the publick spirited defign of our wife and munificent benefactor. And this he must more especially dread, when he feels by experience how unequal his abilities are (unaffifted Read in Qxford at the opening of the Vinerian lectures 25th Oct. 1758. (unaffifted by preceding examples) to complete, in the manner he could wifh, 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 laft tranfcendent mark of regard, his prefent 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) thefe teftimonies of your publick judgment must entirely fuperfede his own, and forbid him to believe himfelf totally infufficient for the labour at least of this employment. One thing he will venture to hope for, and it certainly fhall be his conftant aim, by diligence and attention to atone for his other defects; efteeming, 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 deserve it. The fcience thus committed to his charge, to be cultivated, methodized, and explained in a courfe of academical lectures, is that of the laws and constitution of our own country: A fpecies of knowledge, in which the gentlemen of England have been more remarkably deficient than thofe of all Europe befides. In most 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 fcholar, thinks his education is completed, until he has attended a course 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 univerfities. 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 perfon of liberal education, who is deftitute of a competent knowledge in that fcience, which is to be the guardian of his natural rights, and the rule of his civil conduct. 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 fmall accomplishment of a gentleman; and a fafh ion ion has prevailed, efpecially of late, to tranfport the growing hopes of this ifland to foreign universities, in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; which, though infinitely inferiour 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 fyftem of laws, to be neglected, and even unknown, by all but one practical profession; though built upon the foundeft foundations, and approved by the experience of ages. Far be it from me to derogate from the ftudy of the civil law, confidered (apart froin any binding authority) as a collection of written reafon. No man is more thoroughly perfuaded of the general excellence of its rules, and the ufual equity of its decifions, nor is better convinced of its ufe as well as ornament to the scholar, the divine, the statesman, and even the common lawyer. But we must not carry our veneration fo far as to facrifice our Alfred and Edward to the names of Theodofius and Justinian: We muft not prefer the edict of the Pretor, or the refcript of the Roman Emperour, to our own immemorial customs, or the fanctions of an Englifh Parliament; unless we can alfo prefer the defpotick monarchy of Rome and Byzantium, for whofe meridians the former were calculated, to the free conftitution of Britain, which the latter are adapted to perpet uate. 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 pofition, that a competent knowledge of the laws of that fociety in which we live, is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and fcholar; an highly useful, I had almost said effential, part of liberal and polite education. And in this I am warranted by the example of ancient Rome; where, as Cicero informs us a, the very boys were obliged to learn the twelve a De Leg. 2. 23, twelve tables by heart, as a carmen neceffarium or indifpenfable leffon, to imprint on their tender minds an early knowledge of the laws and conftitution of their country. But, as the long and univerfal neglect of this study, with us in England, feems in fome degree to call in queftion the truth of this evident pofition, it fhall therefore be the bufinefs of this introductory difcourfe, in the first place, to demonftrate the utility of fome general acquaintance with the municipal law of the land, by pointing out its particular ufes in all confiderable fituations of life. Some conjectures will then be offered with regard to the caufes of neglecting this useful study ; to which will be fubjoined a few reflections on the peculiar propriety of reviving it in our own univerlities. And, firft, to demonftrate the utility of fome ac. quaintance 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 fyftem 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 underftood, 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 thofe equitable rules of action, by which the meanest individual is protected from the infults and oppreffion of the greateft. As therefore every fubject is interested in the preservation 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 fociety without knowing the obligations, which it lays him under. And thus much may fuffice for perfons of inferiour condition, who have neither time nor capacity to enlarge their views beyond that contracted fphere, in which they are appointed to move. But thofe, on whom nature and fortune have beftowed more abilities b Montefq. Efp. L. l. 11. c. 5. c Facultas ejus, quod cuique facere libet, nifi quid vi, aut jure probibetur. Inft. I. 3. I. |