declarations as he thought worthy of preservation, whether drawn by himself, or derived from other sources. He, at the same time, took copious notes of his reading, and formed abstracts and digests of the law under separate heads, thus reducing his knowledge to a regular system.

Daniel Webster's own account of his course of study in the office of Christopher Gore, in 1804, is a typical example of the course followed in the early years of the 19th Century.

Before coming to Boston he had studied about two years in Salisbury, N. H.-the first works which he read being Vattel, Burlamaqui and Montesquieu on the Law of Nations; then Blackstone and Coke; and the histories of Hume and Robertson; and "happening to take up Espinasse's Nisi Prius", he wrote, "I found I could understand it and arguing that the object of reading was to understand what was written, I laid down the venerable Coke et alios similes reverendos and kept company for a time with Mr Espinasse and others, the most plain, easy and intelligent writers."

Mr. Gore had just then returned from England, and renewed the practice of the law. He had rooms in Scollay's Building, and, as yet, had no clerk. A young man, as little known to Gore as myself, undertook to introduce me to him. In logic, this would have been bad. Ignotum per ignotum. Nevertheless, it succeeded here. We ventured into Mr. Gore's rooms, and my name was pronounced. I was shockingly embarrassed, but Mr. Gore's habitual courtesy of manner gave me courage to speak. He talked to me pleasantly for a quarter of an hour; and, when I rose to depart, he said: "My young friend, you look as though you might be trusted. You say you came to study, and not to waste time. I will take you at your word. You may as well hang up your hat at once; go into the other room; take your book, and sit down to reading it, and write at your convenience to New Hampshire for your letters."

It was a situation which offered to me the means of studying books and men and things. It was on the 20th day of July, 1804, that I first made myself known to Mr. Gore; and, although I remained in his office only till March following, and that with considerable intervening absences, I made, as I think, some respectable progress.

In August the Supreme Court sat. I attended it constantly, and reported every one of its decisions. I did the same in the Circuit Court of the United States. I kept a little journal at that time, which still survives. It contains little besides a list of books read.

In addition to books on the common and municipal law, I

find I read Vattel for the third time in my life, as is stated in the journal, Ward's Law of Nations, Lord Bacon's Elements, Puffendorff's Latin History of England, Gifford's Juvenal, Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, Moore's Travels, and many other miscellaneous things.

But my main study was the common law, and especially the parts of it which relate to special pleading. Whatever was in Viner, Bacon, and other books then usually studied on that part of the science, I paid my respects to. Among other things I went through Saunders' Reports, the old folio edition, and abstracted, and put into English, out of Latin and Norman-French, the pleadings in all his Reports. It was an edifying work. From that day to this the forms and language of special pleas have been quite familiar with me. I believe I have my little abstract yet.

When all is said, however, as to the meagreness of a lawyer's education, one fact must be strongly emphasized—that this very meagreness was a source of strength. Multum in parvo was particularly applicable to the training for the Bar of that era.

There was truth in the reply of a great lawyer, when asked how the lawyers who formed the United States Constitution had such a mastery of legal principles,-"Why they had so few books" (1). "Many other students," wrote Webster, "read more than I did, but so much as I read, I made my own."

And Chancellor Kent's remark "that he owed his reputation to the fact that, when studying law during the war, he had but one book, Blackstone's Commentaries, but that one book he mastered," (2) sums up very concisely the cause of the greatness of many an early American jurist.

(1) See How Successful Lawyers were Educated, by G. C. Macdonald (1896).

Sir Edward Sugden in England once said "I resolved, when beginning to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a second thing until I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a week; but at the end of the twelve months, my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollections."

(2) See Magazine of American History, Vol. XIII (1885).

CHAPTER VII.

EARLY AMERICAN BARRISTERS, AND BAR ASSOCIATIONS.

The local law office does not account, however, for all the educated American lawyers of the 18th Century.

A far greater number than is generally known, received their legal education in London in the Inns of Court; and the influence, on the American Bar, of these English-bred lawyers, especially in the more southerly Colonies, was most potent. The training which they received in the Inns, in exclusively English Statutory and Common Law, based as it was on historical precedent and customary law, the habits which they formed there of solving all legal questions by the standards of English liberties and of rights of the English subject, proved of immense value to them when they became later (as so many did become) leaders of the American Revolution.

It has been stated that 115 Americans were admitted to the Inns, from 1760 to the close of the Revolution (1); from South Carolina 47, from Virginia 21, from Maryland 16, from Pennsylvania 11, from New York 5, and from each of the other Colononies I or 2. And probably twenty-five or fifty American-born lawyers had been educated in England prior to 1760.(2)

Among the more distinguished may be named John Rutledge, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Thomas Heyward, Thomas Lynch, John Julian Pringle, and John Laurens, from South Carolina; John Randolph, Richard Henry Lee and Arthur Lee, from Virginia; Charles Carroll, from Maryland; Joseph Read, from New Jersey; and Thomas McKean, Edward Tilghman and William Tilghman, Jared Ingersoll, Benjamin Chew, William Rawle, and John Dickinson, from Pennsylvania.

The breadth of education to be sought in England may be gathered from the following letter written, from Charleston, July 30, 1769, by John Rutledge, to his brother in London:

(1) Life and Times of John Dickinson, by Charles J. Stillé (1891). (2) See Chapters I, III and IV supra.

The very first thing with which you should be thoroughly acquainted is the writing shorthand. Be constant in attending the sittings in Chancery out of terms, and when there are no sittings at Nisi Prius in London or Westminster; for I would prefer attending the King's Bench and Sittings of the Chief Justice of that court at Nisi Prius when they are held. And remember what I hinted to you of attending alternately in the different courts by agreement between you and some of your intimate fellow students, and then of comparing and exchanging notes every evening. But you must exert yourself to the utmost in being able by some means or other to attend the House of Commons constantly I would not have this make you a dabbler in politics. What I intend by it is that you may have opportunities of seeing and hearing the best speakers, and of acquiring a good manner and proper address. I believe Sheridan is the only lecturer in England upon oratory, and I think it would be advisable to attend him and mark well his observations. And now in regard to particular law books-Coke's Institutes seem to be almost the foundation of our law. These you must read over and over with the greatest attention, and not quit him until you understand him thoroughly and have made your own everything in him which is worth taking out. A good deal of his law is now obsolete and altered by acts of Parliament; however, it is necessary to know what the law was before so altered. Blackstone I think useful. (1) The reports are too tedious to be all read through; at least whilst you are in England, I would give the preference to the most modern. I look upon it that if you go through all the cases reported since the Revolution, when the Constitution seems to have been re-established upon its true and proper principles, and since which time by the alteration of the Judges' commission and their increasing independence, to what it is at this day, the law has been in its greatest perfection, and not encroaching either upon the people's liberties or the prerogative; I say, if you do this, you will have a collection of the very best cases. . I would read every case reported from that time to the present. Distinguish between your reading of law and equity, and don't confound the two matters. They are kept very distinct in the courts of England, though here blended together very often and very ridicuously. I would have you also read the Vast numbers of them you will

statute laws throughout.

find of no manner of use, except indeed as matter of history; but this thing I think in the main will be of vast service to you

Stock yourself with a good collection of law maxims both Latin and English-they are of great use Make your

.

(1) It is to be noted that this letter was written before Blackstone had been republished in the Colonies.

Doctor

self thoroughly acquainted with all the terms of the law. The little book called Termes de la Ley, will help you. and Student is a good book, though a little one, and good authority. Bacon you know is my favorite, and where authors seem to differ I think he will best reconcile them. Be well acquainted with Crown Law, Hale's, Hawkin's and Judge Foster's, and what other Crown Law books there are, read carefully.

The facilities for legal study supplied by the Inns of Court were, however, the least of the opportunities open to young American barristers in London at this time. For these years, 1750 to 1775, formed a period of remarkable brilliance in English history. Students of law were not only studying at the Inns side by side with the future Chief Justices, Kenyon and Ellenborough, and the future Chancellors, Thurlow, Eldon and Erskine; but they were also listening to the luminous judgments of Lord Mansfield on King's Bench, to the commanding eloquence of Pitt, (Lord Chatham) and the oratory of Charles Pratt, (Lord Camden); they were elbowing, in the Inns themselves, the burly frame of Samuel Johnson the autocrat of literature; and they were witnessing David Garrick's "powers of acting vast and unconfined." (1)

In forming an idea of the colonial lawyer's education, one further factor must be borne in mind,—the remarkable extent to which 18th Century lawyers, especially those of New England, Virginia, and South Carolina were college-bred men. Practically all the early lawyers in Massachusetts were Harvard graduates; and of the lawyers admitted to practice in Boston at the Suffolk Bar, in later years, from 1780 to 1817, 139 were Harvard graduates; 7 were from Brown, 6 from Dartmouth, I from Williams, 3 non-graduates. (2)

(1) Of Jared Ingersoll who was in the Middle Temple in 1774, his son Charles J. Ingersoll wrote, that "Mansfield, Blackstone, Chatham and Garrick and other luminaries of that period were objects of his constant attention, and of his correspondence, and ever after among the pleasures of his memory."

See Life of Charles Jared Ingersoll, by William M. Meigs (1897).

(2) Of the lawyers, other than the Judges and Attorney Generals, mentioned by Washburn in his Judicial History of Massachusetts, 17 were Harvard graduates, 4 English bred lawyers, 4 non-graduates and I from Yale.

Of the members of the Worcester Bar, in Massachusetts, admitted prior to 1800, 45 graduated from Harvard, 5 from Brown, 3 from Dartmouth, 2 from Yale, I non-graduate. Of those admitted between 1800 and 1817, 28 graduated from Harvard, 11 from Brown, 12 from Dartmouth, 3 each from Yale and Williams, 2 from Union and 6 non-graduates.

See Address before the Worcester Bar, by Joseph Willard, Oct. 2, 1829.