These lectures, thus classified, are taken down in full by the students, and after being compared with each other, are generally transcribed in a more neat and legible hand. The remainder of the day is occupied in examining the authorities cited in support of the several rules, and in reading the most approved authors upon those branches of the law, which are at the time the subject of the lectures. (1)

These notes, thus written out, when complete, are comprised in five large volumes, which constitute books of reference, the great advantages of which must be apparent to every one of the slightest acquaintance with the comprehensive and abstruse science of the Law.

The examinations, which are held every Saturday, upon the lectures of the preceding week, consist of a thorough investigation of the principles of each rule, and not merely of such questions as can be answered from memory without any exercise of the judgment. These examinations are held by Jabez W. Huntington, Esq., a distinguished gentleman of the bar, whose practice enables him to introduce frequent and familiar illustrations, which create an interest, and serve to impress more strongly upon the mind the knowledge acquired during the week.

There is also connected with this institution, a Moot Court for the argument of law questions, at which Judge Gould presides. The questions that are discussed, are prepared by him in the forms in which they generally arise. These courts are held once at least in each week, two students acting as Counsellors, one on each side, and the arguments that are advanced, together with the opinion of the Judge, are carefully recorded in a book kept for that purpose. For the preparation of these questions, access may at all times be had to an extensive library. (2)

Besides these courts, there are societies established for improvement in forensic exercises, which are entirely under the control of the students.

The whole course is completed in fourteen months, including two vacations of four weeks each, one in the spring, the other in the autumn. No student can enter for a shorter period than three months. The terms of instruction are $100 for the first year, and $50 for the second, payable either in advance or at the end of the year.

(1) Those interested in this early law school method may find a collection of notes of Judge Gould's lectures now in the Harvard Law School Library, complete in three manuscript volumes, presented by W. S. Andrews of Boston. See Harv. Coll. Arch. Reports, Report of Law Librarian, July 12, 1861.

(2) It is said that the Law Library of Judge Gould was then the largest and best in the United States.

CHAPTER IX.

OBSTACLES AND PREJUDICES.

While the American Bar developed great lawyers and great judges in the period from 1789 to 1815, there were three obstacles to its growth and to the study of law as a science. These obstructive factors were: first, the unpopularity of lawyers as a class; second, the bitter feeling against England and English Common Law; third, the lack of any distinct body of American Law, arising from the non-existence of American law reports and law books.

The services rendered by the legal profession in the defence and maintenance of the People's rights and liberties, from the middle of the 18th Century to the adoption of the Constitution, had been well recognized by the People in making a choice of their representatives; for of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 25 were lawyers; and of the 55 members of the Federal Constitutional Convention, 31 were lawyers, of whom four had studied in the Inner Temple, and one at Oxford, under Blackstone. (1)

Of the First Congress, 10 of the 29 Senators, and 17 of the 65 Representatives were lawyers. After the Revolution, however, the old prejudices and dislike of lawyers again arose in the popular mind. Many things contributed to excite this feeling.

In the first place, a large number of the most eminent and older members of the Bar, being Royalists, had either left the country, (2) or retired from practice. Thus, Maryland was deprived of two of her greatest advocates, Daniel Dulany and George Chalmers; Pennsylvania lost John Galloway; New York lost William Smith Jr., Thomas Barclay, and John Tabor Kempe; New Jersey lost Josiah Ogden. In Massachusetts, the (1) The Supreme Court of the United States, by Hampton L. Carson. (2) See Loyalists of the American Revolution, by Lorenzo Sabine, (1864). It is to be remembered that in the American Colonies 25,000 Loyalists, at the least computation, took up arms for the King. Sabine gives sketches of the lives of at least 130 lawyers who left the country as Tories; and there were several hundred other lawyers whose lives were not of sufficient note to describe, but who also became refugees.

losses to the Bar from this cause were especially heavy. The situation was graphically described in 1824 by William Sullivan, from his personal recollections. (1) "Thirteen of the Bar" he says "were Royalists and left the country; and among them Jonathan Sewall, then Attorney General, a man held in high esteem for professional talent; and Sampson Salter Blowers, who enjoyed an honorable reputation as a lawyer and the esteem of many affectionate friends; Samuel Quincy, Timothy Ruggles, and James Putnam. Some who remained were neutral, so far as they could be, consistently with safety. The Royalists who departed, and those who remained, are not to be censured at this day, for conscientious adherence to the mother country. The former had little reason to rejoice in the course which they adopted. Few received such reward for loyalty as they expected. Some exchanged eminence in the Province for appointments, such as they were, in the Colonies; and some ease and comfort here, for insignificance and obscurity at home. Most of them deeply regretted their abandonment of their native land. Such effect had the Revolution on the members of the Bar, that the list of 1779 comprised only ten barristers, and four attorneys, for the whole State, who were such before the Revolution." (2)

Of the lawyers who remained, many were either actively engaged in politics or in the army; while others had accepted positions on the bench.

This left the practice of the law very largely in the hands of lawyers of a lower grade and inferior ability.

Meanwhile, the social and financial conditions of the country after the Revolution tended to produce great unrest. Interruption of business by the war, and high prices, had brought about embarrassment in all classes, and an inability to meet their debts. Great Britain, in closing her ports by navigation laws and prohibitory duties, had deprived the American industries of employment. Public debts were enormous, necessitating ruinous taxation. The Federal Government owed to its soldiers large sums, and payment in the paper money of the time was farcical. The Tories whose estates had been confiscated were returning and

(1) Address to Suffolk County Bar in March, 1824, by William Sullivan (1825).

(2) Emory Washburn said that in 1775, when Levi Lincoln (Harvard 1772) settled in Worcester County, only two lawyers remained in the county, the rest having left the country.

See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Vol. XI, (1869).

making strenuous efforts to have their property restored. English creditors were trying to recover their claims, barred by various statutes of confiscation and sequestration.

The chief law business, therefore, was the collection of debts and the enforcement of contracts; and the jails were filled to overflowing with men imprisoned for debt under the rigorous laws of the times. (1)

Irritated by this excessive litigation, by the increase of suits on debts and mortgage foreclosures, and by the system of fees and court costs established by the Bar Associations, the people at large mistook effects for cause; and attributed all their evils to the existence of lawyers in the community. Thus, in the conservative little town of Braintree, close to Boston, the citizens in town meeting, in 1786, and voted that: "We humbly request that there may be such laws compiled as may crush or at least put a proper check or restraint on that order of Gentlemen denominated Lawyers, the completion of whose modern conduct appears to us to tend rather to the destruction than the preservation of the town." (2)

Other communities who were more radical, and demanded the complete abolition of the legal profession.

Such was the popular discontent arising from all these conditions, that, in Massachusetts, an open rebellion broke out, in 1787 (the well known Shays Rebellion), directed largely against the courts and the lawyers, and requiring to be put down by military force. (3)

As McMaster says (4):

The lawyers were overwhelmed with cases. The courts could

(1) In the little rural county of Worcester, Massachusetts, having a population of less than 5,000, there were at one time more than 2000 actions on the docket of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas

See for an excellent account of the condition of affairs at this time, from a lawyer's standpoint, the Life of James Sullivan, by T. G. Amory.

(2) Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, by Charles Francis Adams. See also Remarks of Charles Francis Adams, in Proceedings of The American Antiquarian Society (October, 1902).

(3) It is curious to note that the sentiment of the Massachusetts Bar was, in turn, so aroused by the popular feeling against it, that two of its distinguished anti-Federalist members, James Sullivan (afterwards Attorney General and Governor of Massachusetts) and Levi Lincoln (afterwards Attorney General of the United States), who undertook the defence of four of the ringleaders of the Shays Rebellion, on their trial for treason, were bitterly attacked for this action by their associates of the Massachusetts Bar, most of whom were Federalists.

(4) History of the United States, by James B. McMaster, Vol. I.

not try half that came to them. For every man who had an old debt, a mortgage, or a claim against a Tory or Refugee, hastened to have it adjusted. While, therefore, everyone else was idle, the lawyers were busy; and as they always exacted a retainer, and were sure to obtain their fees, grew rich fast. Every young man became an attorney, and every attorney did well. Such prosperity soon marked them as fit subjects for the discontented to vent their anger on. They were denounced as banditti, as blood suckers, as pickpockets, as windbags, as smooth tongued rogues. Those who having no cases, had little cause to complain of the lawyers, murmured that it was a gross outrage to tax them to pay for the sittings of courts into which they had never brought and never would bring an action. The mere

sight of a lawyer was enough to call forth an oath or a muttered curse from the louts who hung around the tavern.

McRee, in his Life of James Iredell, thus describes conditions in South Carolina (1):

The return of the Tories, and their strenuous efforts to procure the restoration of their property, the activity of the lawyers, stimulated by the opening of a lucrative career; the commencement of new, the revival of long dormant suits-all conspired to foster exasperation, cupidity, avarice, revenge. A very violent prejudice, at this period, existed in narrow and vulgar minds against the legal profession. This antipathy was fermented by many persons of more talent and less principle as a means of destroying those whom they feared as rivals, and as an instrument by which they might effect their political ends. The lawyers of the State were generally conservatives; hence it was that they excited, in addition to other cause, the animosity of the radicals; and in a signal degree the hatred of those who may be distinctively and exclusively characterized as demagogues charlteans and political tricksters.

The Letters of an American Farmer, written in 1787, by H. St. John Crevecoeur, also express the sentiment of the time:

Lawyers are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others and when once they have taken root they will extinguish every vegetable that grows around them. The fortune they daily acquire in every province from the misfortunes of their fellow citizens, are surprising. The most ignorant, the most bungling member of that profession will, if placed in the most obscure part of the country, promote litigiousness and amass more wealth than the most opulent farmer with all his

(1) Life and Times of James Iredell, by Griffith J. McRee.