jects who caused their property to be insured in Great Britain. Such indirect marks of respect, proceeding from such sources, however they may be disguised, are truly flattering to us in a national point of view, and ought, for some time at least, to be sufficient to satisfy our reasonable ambition, and encourage us to proceed in the investigation of science, by which we shall not only spread instruction among ourselves, but disseminate light beyond the bounds of our own country.

But to return to our subject

General jurisprudence is a part of the common law, but its rules and principles are not exclusively to be found in common law writers. That science ought to be studied, particularly in this country, where a light is to be held to the judiciaries of twenty-four different States. Whence is this light to proceed, but from the writings and discussions of liberal and learned jurists? The conflict of opinions will produce truth, and truth at last will find its way every where. The law should be treated as every other science; its theories should be scanned, and its defects pointed out; the excellent principles with which it abounds should be confronted with the decisions in which they have been either forgotten or misapplied, and this course should be pursued until the whole system at last shall be founded on the basis of universal justice. For justice, not in form merely, but in substance is a debt which is due by every government to its citizens.

Sir William Jones, in England, endeavoured to

point out this noble path to his countrymen, and with that view published his excellent treatise on the law of bailments. But the age was not prepared for his doctrines, the lights that he shed on our science were too strong for the eyes of his cotemporaries; he was sent to India in honourable exile, there to waste his gigantic powers in curious, indeed, but fruitless disquisitions on oriental languages and antiquities. Romilly did much while he lived. Mackintosh is still alive for the good of his country and of mankind.*

Those who wish to see uniformity of jurisprudence in this widely extended union, ought to remember that nothing is uniform but sound principles, and that false theories and false logic lead inevitably to contradictory decisions. In England, there is in fact but one great judicature, sitting at Westminster. Although divided into different tribunals, the same spirit pervades them all, and in important cases the twelve Judges meet together to decide. Above them is the House of Lords, whose judgments are final and conclusive. Here we have, on the contrary, twenty-four different supreme judicatures, with a countless number of inferior tribunals, dispersed over an immense extent of territory. Beyond them there is no authority whose decisions are binding in all cases. The Supreme Court of the United States is limited in its

*In this country we have to regret that Chancellor KENT, one of the greatest luminaries of our science, by the effect of an impolitic provision in the Constitution of his own State, has been displaced from the office which he so many years filled with honour, because he was-sixty years old.

jurisdiction and powers, and except in certain matters of national concern, State Judges do not conceive themselves bound to conform to their opinions. In short, there is no polar star to direct our uncertain wanderings. We must then either tacitly submit to receive the law from a foreign country, by adopting the opinions of the English Judges, however they may vary from our own, or even from those which they formerly entertained, or we must find some expedient to preserve our national independence, and at the same time to prevent our national law from falling into that state of confusion which will inevitably follow from the discordant judgments of so many co-ordinate judicial authorities. Already the evil is felt in a considerable degree; it will be more so in process of time, and it is to be feared, that in the course of fifty years the chaos will become inextricable, unless a speedy remedy is applied.

The only remedy that I can think of is to encourage the study of general jurisprudence, and of the eternal and immutable principles of right and wrong; of that science by which Cicero enlightened, not only the prætors of his days, but the Judges of succeeding ages, and which, I am sorry to say, has fallen too much into neglect. When the principles of that science are sufficiently disseminated, they will fructify, and statutes and judicial decisions will gradually take their colour from them. System will be introduced where it is wanted. Sound theories will take the place of false ones, and

the rules of genuine logic will direct their application to particular cases. All this will be done gradually and insensibly, and the benefit of it will be felt by our remotest posterity. Otherwise, it is to be feared, that other and worse remedies will be applied; for every one of us must be sensible that the evils which I have mentioned are generally felt, and that the spirit of innovation is abroad; a spirit which manifests itself by rash and undigested experiments, and sometimes by demolishing without re-building, so that at last we shall be reduced to a state of confusion worse confounded.

It is therefore incumbent on the rising generation to apply themselves to the study of those general principles, which, if that spirit should continue to exist, will enable them at least to direct it into its proper channel, and prevent the axe from being applied at last to the root of the tree.

Those who may think that there is an advantage in the science of the law being involved in myste. ries and artificial theories, are egregiously mistaken. The science of medicine was so once, when genius lashed it with the pen of Moliere. Since it has abandoned its senseless nostrums and formulas, and fixed itself firmly on the basis of fact and experiment, it has considerably gained in respect, honour, and emolument. By pursuing a similar course, the legal profession will receive similar rewards.

I do not mean to say that theory should at once

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supersede established rules, or that the student should erect himself into a legislator. I have no such preposterous ideas. Your studies are principally to be directed to the law, as it is, and with a view to its regular practice: hence in our ordinary exercises I have avoided touching upon such subjects as this, and I have explained the laws to you as they are found in our books and in the decisions of our tribunals. But on this occasion, I cannot forget that there are some of you who are destined to be one day the Judges and legislators of our country. To those who are fired with this noble ambition, I have particularly addressed the preceding observations, not to diminish the respect which they owe to the laws by which we are governed, but to shew the utility of the principles of general jurisprudence, and what benefits may be derived from them.

Nor must it be believed that I am a friend to rash and sudden innovation; on the contrary, I am well convinced that amendments in the laws ought to be gradual and almost insensible, and that the delicate chisel, and not the rough axe, is the instrument to be employed; but the delicate chisel can only be skilfully used by the masters of the art. I would compare our system of laws in this respect to one of those ancient statues of Phidias or Praxiteles, which have been in part mutilated or defaced by the hand of time: an able sculptor, and not a a stone mason, should be called upon to repair it.