dered paramount and obligatory on the State judiciaries. Twenty-four Supreme Courts, and an immense number of inferior ones, in various gradations, are daily issuing their often contradictory decrees, on points arising out of the law which is common to us all. I do not except Louisiana, where, though the common law has not been established by name, its most essential principles have been necessarily introduced, and are constantly acted upon. Each State, moreover, possesses an independent legislature, with almost unlimited powers to alter and new model the system of laws, a power which they have not sparingly exercised; so that the common law in its details has already suffered many considerable changes, and in process of time, unless speedy measures are taken to counteract or at least to direct that spirit of innovation which appears every where to prevail, will branch out into as many different systems as there are States in the union, in which the great features of the parent will at last in vain be sought for. Those who have attended to the subject, have easily observed in how many different ways the law has already been altered in the different States, under various customary and statutory modifications. But still it is the common law; it is still that law which stamps freedom and equality upon all who are subject to it, which protects and punishes with an equal hand the high and the low, the proud and the humble; it is that law, whose magical wand bursts open the prison doors, and delivers in an instant

the victims of arbitrary authority; that law, which boasts of twelve invisible Judges, whom the eye of the corruptor cannot see, and the influence of the powerful cannot reach; for they are no where to be found, until the moment when the balance of justice being placed in their hands, they hear, weigh, determine, pronounce, and immediately disappear, and are lost in the crowd of their fellow citizens. In short, it is that law, whose benefits we all have felt, whose protection we all enjoy, and which no description could so well represent to our minds as these two simple words, the common law."

To preserve, at least, in their purity the essential parts of this admirable system; to exhibit it constantly as a whole, in the eyes of the studious youth of these United States; to instil its principles into the minds of those, who at some future day will be called to be the Judges and legislators of the land, and by that means to create an army of faithful sentinels, who will constantly watch over the sacred deposit in the States which they may inhabit; to prevent rash innovations and inconsistent decisions in our numerous legislatures and Courts of judicature, and secure as much as possible an uniformity of jurisprudence in the land, is the great object which those who have projected this institution had in view, an object, which, it must be acknowledged, is of the highest importance to our country, and which we are satisfied, cannot be obtained by any other means.

In fact, what other method could be proposed

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under the circumstances that I have described to preserve the purity of the law in our extensive country? Are we to wait for every spring and autumn ship from England, for cargoes of decisions of the Courts of Westminster Hall? This would be derogatory to our national independence; and some States, among which is our own, have already shewn their sense of this proceeding, by prohibiting the reading in our Courts of modern English adjudications. Are we to refer exclusively to that mass of decisions which daily issue in the form of Reports from the presses of the different States? But those decisions are often contradictory, and probably will become more so, unless there is a central point where those divergent rays may be collected and whence they may be diffused with additional light over the surface of the union. Or is each State to consider the decisions of its own judiciary as the only pure sources of law, or are the Judges to select at random from the English and American reporters, the doctrines that may best suit their momentary fancy? Any one of these methods will be sure to plunge us into a chaos, whence we shall never emerge, until some Justinian or Napoleon shall, sword in hand, establish uniformity by a code which will bear his name.

The only sure preservative against these threatened evils is the establishment of a national school of jurisprudence at some central point of the United States. It is through the minds of rising generations that the vast body of American citizens can

be most effectually acted upon. With a succession of able professors the genuine spirit of our law may be preserved through a series of ages; legislative innovations, if not prevented, may be directed into a proper channel, and uniformity in judicial decisions may be in a great degree, if not entirely, secured. The common law, by the mere force of circumstances, is becoming more and more, in England as well as here, but more particularly in this country, a science of principles, which appears from the great number of elementary books that have lately been published, in which a more luminous order, a more regular method, and a greater freedom of opinion display themselves than were formerly met with in works of this description. The immense increase of bulky reports which has lately taken place and does not seem likely to diminish, will at last drive the student in despair to compilations and the works of private jurists, and thus will most probably be subverted the ancient basis of the jurisprudence of England, and that system of judiciary legislation which has been preserved there for so many ages.

If things should take this course, it may perhaps be wise in the English nation, at no very remote period, to establish law schools for themselves. But with this we have no concern. It is enough that the necessity of such an establishment in this country has been clearly, and I hope satisfactorily pointed out to you.

While the organisation of our judiciary renders

it impossible to pursue the antischolastic system which England has hitherto followed; on the other hand it is free from the obstacles which would render our plan, in its full extent, absolutely impracticable in that country. There the civil law, which, though subordinate, is still a part of their general system, is exclusively studied, administered, and practised by a different body of men, from the professors of the common law. Hence have arisen jealousies and feuds between the civilians and common lawyers which are not entirely composed to this day. The two professions are strangers and in a manner hostile to each other. The common lawyer looks down upon the civil law with a mixed feeling of contempt and dislike,* while the civilian, proud of the protection of his government and of the superior elegance of Justinian's code, smiles at what he calls the barbarous jargon of Westminster Hall. Yet those two systems, though different in many respects, assimilate more than is generally

* The source of this feeling lies deep in the history of the country. The ef forts which were made in former times to introduce the civil law into England, were with a view to destroy the liberties of that nation. The attachment of the clergy to the Roman code was not so much on account of its admirable theory of contracts, as of the imperial texts in favour of the unlimited authority of church and king, and the administration of justice without a jury, on the mo dels of the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts, which plainly shewed what would have been the judicial organisation of the kingdom, if their doc. trines had prevailed. Nor can we blame the English nation for entertaining the same jealousy even at the present day, when we consider the tendency of monarchical governments to arbitrary power. In this republican country, no such danger is to be dreaded, and our common lawyers may become acquainted with the civil law, and profit by its knowledge, without any fear of the introduction of monarchical principles, or of the torture being preferred to trial by jury.