dent Kirkland granted it, but added, "By the way, Mr. persons interested in the relation which exists between states of the atmosphere and health, have noticed a curious fact in regard to the climate of Cambridge, especially within the College limits -the very small number of deaths in proportion to the cases of dangerous illness."

And Dr. Peabody wrote:

Probably no man ever held office in a literary institution with so entirely unanimous respect, admiration and love on the part of his pupils. He knew them all; and with few exceptions he knew all about them and about their parents. . . .He examined the successive classes on their admission, in Virgil's Georgics; but his scrutiny was directed much more to the countenance, the family traits and the indications of character, than to the token of scholarship; and a face thus seen was never forgotten; so that he always addressed students by name.

With all his kindness he had a marvellously quick and sharp eye for trickery and falsity. . . . His personal presence, always dignified and graceful, became on important occasions absolutely august and majestic. No one that witnessed it could ever forget his reception of Lafayette in front of University Hall and his presentation of the students to the illustrious guest.

Such was the President, under whom the Law School was founded.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FIRST DECADE,

So far as is known the Law School started with one student -Charles Moody Dustin; and the number entering during the first year was six.

The principal instruction was of course given by Professor Stearns, although the fifteen lectures of Judge Parker as Royall Professor were considered a branch of the Law Department and were attended by the law students, during May and June in the Third Term, when they were given three or four times a week, at ten o'clock in the morning. (1)

No record is extant showing the exact course of study in the early years of the School; but it probably followed along the same general lines as that described in the report made by Professor Stearns to the Board of Overseers, in 1825:

A course of study has been drawn up with much care, under the advice of the judges of the Supreme Court and other distinguished jurists, and with reference to a term of 3 years within which period it can be established.

In the first place a reading of Blackstone, more or less particular, of the whole work. This practise has been found by experience to be highly useful. It aids the student in fixing his attention, enables him more readily to acquaintance with the technical terms and language of the law, and at the same time to obtain a more distinct view of that admirable outline of the science. . . For those gentlemen who do not pursue the study of the law as a Profession, the plan of instruction is varied by substituting for what relates to the practice, a more extended course of reading on the Civil Law, the Law of Nations, Constitutional Law and Political Economy.

(1) See letter of Judge Parker to President Kirkland of May 9, 1818, stating that he had heretofore occupied 5 days in the week for lectures, and "calculating upon the same course I have entered into official engagements which required my attendance as early as the 27th June; of course if I should be restricted to 3 days in the week after the 6th of June, I shall not have time to finish. It so happens that the doctor (Bigelow) wishes a dispensation for a week or two in the early part of June and thinks it will be convenient that I should have his days during that time. If this arrangement cannot be made I must beg to be allowed to begin on Monday the 22nd of this month."

See Harvard College Archives, Harvard College Papers, Vol. VIII.

The first description of the method of instruction is contained in Professor Stearns' report to the Overseers, Jan. 9, 1826:

The experience of eight years since the Law School was established has led to several considerable improvements upon its original plan; and the utility of the present system of instruction seems to be fully evinced by the industry, limitation, and rapid improvement of the student.

The regular exercises of the School are the following, viz.: I. Recitations and Examinations in several of the most important text books, such as Blackstone's Commentaries Cruise on Real Property, Saunders on Uses, Fearne on Remainders, etc.

In these exercises the points of difference between the law of England and of our own country are carefully distinguished and the grounds and occasions of the difference are fully explained to the students.

Written lectures embracing a general course of legal instruction, in which those parts of our system of jurisprudence in which we do not adopt the law of England are particularly noticed, and the grounds of our departure from it are explained and illustrated by the decisions and practice of our own courts.

3. A Moot Court in which questions are regularly argued (often at considerable length) before the Professor, who pronounces an opinion. In these fictitious actions the pleadings, bills of exceptions, demurrers to evidence, special verdicts and motions in arrest of judgment or for a new trial are drawn up in form by the students.-During the argument those students who are not of counsel are employed in taking minutes, with a view to the acquisition of facility and accuracy preparatory to practice. The cases to be argued are, of course, adapted to the progress of the respective students in their professional studies. But they are strongly urged to engage in them very soon after their commencement; it having been found by experience that no other exercise is so powerful an excitement to industry and emulation or so strongly interests the students in their professional pursuits.

4. Debating Clubs including all the members of the Law School in which some question (generally in moral philosophy, political economy, or civil polity) which admits an extended and free discussion, is debated once a week with a view to improvement in extempore elocution.

5. Written dissertations by the student upon some title or branch of the law or the history of some department of legal or political science.

Most of the students at this time, as appears from the First Record Book of the Law School (1817-1840), had had nearly two years study in a law office prior to entering the School, and

were thus supposed to be grounded on the technical details of practice.

In the academic year 1818-19, eight students entered the School, the most prominent of whom was Caleb Cushing of Newburyport, Mass., (later judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and Attorney General of the United States under President Peirce).

THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE.

These first two years of the Law School were years of great anxiety to all educational institutions; for during them, the great case of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward was argued in New Hampshire, and on appeal in the United States Supreme Court. The immediate question involved was the right of the State Legislature to amend the charter of Dartmouth College without the assent of its governing officials. The broad question involved was whether a legislative charter was a contract, which, under the Constitution of the United States, a State was forbidden to impair.

Harvard College had a very lively and serious interest in the outcome of this case; for the Legislature of Massachusetts, only five years before the founding of the Law School, had done. exactly what the Legislature of New Hampshire had attempted in the Dartmouth College case. The facts had been as follows: In 1806, the workings of the old Board of Overseers of Harvard College having become inconvenient, Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons (then a Fellow of the Corporation) framed an act which passed the Legislature, March 6, 1810, changing the constitution of the Board; but Parsons had inserted a clause that the act should be subject to acceptance by the Corporation and the Board of Overseers. This acceptance was given. In 1812, however, the Republicans being in office in Massachusetts, a new act was passed Feb. 29, 1812, without any such clause, taking effect without the requirement of any such acceptance, repealing the act of 1810 and re-establishing the old Board. The validity of this act was at once denied, and two Boards of Overseers organized. The old Board for various reasons however had thought best to submit after protest, and the question had been solved without litigation by another change in the State administration in 1814, when the Legislature repealed the Act

of 1812, and restored the provisions of the Act of 1810, calling for 30 elective Overseers, (15 laymen and 15 clergymen) and adding the members of the State Senate.

Thus the legal status of Harvard College had never been settled by judicial decision at the time when this Dartmouth College case was instituted. The case was argued in the fall of 1817, before the Superior Court of New Hampshire, at that time consisting of Chief Justice William Marchant Richardson, (a Harvard graduate of 1797, classmate of Professor Asahel Stearns, and Horace Binney) and of Associate Judges Samuel Bell and Levi Woodbury (both Dartmouth graduates). The counsel were Jeremiah Mason, Jeremiah Smith, Daniel Webster, and Timothy Farrar for the Trustees; and Ichabod Bartlett and George Sullivan for the defendant.

On Nov. 6, 1817, the Court, after brilliantly able arguments, decided the case against the contention of the old Trustees.

Arrangements were at once made for an appeal to Washington; and Daniel Webster took up a heavy collection among Boston merchants and others interested in the cause of education. President Francis Brown of Dartmouth wrote to President Kirkland of Harvard, Nov. 15, 1817(1):

The suit instituted by the charter Trustees of this College against Judge Woodward, their late Secretary and Treasurer, and which was designed to try the validity of certain acts of the Legislature of N. H. virtually revoking the charter issued in a decision by our Sup. Court unfavorable to the Trustees. In this case a writ of error lies to the Sup. Court of the United States, and to that court they have already taken measures to transfer the action.

The prosecution of it to a final decision at Washington will of course require a considerable expense. This expense from our limited means we are unable to meet without calling on the benevolent and wealthy for pecuniary aid.

Our friends in N. H. have already taxed themselves somewhat severely for paying the salaries of officers and for other purposes during the continuance of the struggle.

In this state of things we have thought it right to make an appeal by private communication to the friends of literature and religion abroad. Our cause, we think, has now become substantially the cause of every literary establishment in the country; for it is to be decided by the highest of our judicial tribunals whether charter rights are to be held sacred or whether they may

(1) See letter, (hitherto unpublished) in Harv. Coll. Papers, Vol. VIII.