this fact is due, in part, the remarkable extension and influence of the Roman law.

Speaking of this body of law, Chancellor Kent says: "It was created and gradually matured on the banks of the Tiber, by the successive wisdom of Roman statesmen, magistrates and sages; and after governing the greatest people in the ancient world for the space of thirteen or fourteen centuries, and undergoing extraordinary vicissitudes after the fall of the western empire, it was revised, admired and studied in modern Europe, on account of the variety and excellence of its general principles. It is now taught and obeyed, not only in France, Spain, Germany, Holland and Scotland, but in the islands of the Indian ocean, and on the banks of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. So true, it seems, are the words of d'Aguesseau, that the grand destinies of Rome are not yet accomplished; she reigns throughout the world by her reason, after having ceased to reign by her authority.""

At an early day the civil law was taught in England, as a part of a liberal education, in the great universities of Cambridge and Oxford. But the common law was not taught in these institutions until the year 1758, when the Vinerian professorship was founded at Oxford, and Sir William Blackstone called to the chair.

No intelligent person can read the introductory lecture of that distinguished jurist and ripe scholar without being thoroughly convinced that the study of law, as a part of a general education, cannot be neglected with propriety or safety.

If a knowledge of law be useful and important under other governments, it cannot be less so in our own which, more than any other in Christendom, is a government of law. Under the government of the United States law is supreme, and no argument should be required to show that a knowledge of the general principles of the governing body of law is essential to its enlightened and just administration, as well as to its accommodation to the progress of civilization and the changing phases of society. In this free and rapidly developing country, enterprise assumes protean forms and is ever opening new channels; and commerce, the arts, science and literature, are constantly surprising the world with new discoveries and achievements. Law should keep pace with, conform to, and foster this unprecedented national growth.

To this end law should be studied and cultivated as a science, not only by the legal profession but by all our citizens who make any pretension to a liberal education, and who are influential in shaping legislation and molding society.

Law has been defined as "the ordinance of God, the science of truth, the perfection of reason and the method of justice." If this definition of law be correct, or not widely incorrect, it follows, logically and irresistibly, that a knowledge of its principles is invaluable to the citizen in all the relations of society. Law is the atmosphere in which we live and move and have our social being. It surrounds us from the cradle to the grave, dominates every interest of society; guards life, liberty, property and reputation, and protects our firesides and our altars.

On a general and cursory view of the subject, it seems quite clear that the study of law, as a part of a general education, is highly important. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether any branch taught in our schools, beyond the rudiments of a common school education, would be more useful to an American citizen than the study of law. But its advantages will, perhaps, more plainly appear by noting some particulars.

A knowledge of the law as a science and a growth would add much to the significance of the expression "a liberal education." Connected with the law, thus viewed, there is a wealth of law. Our body of municipal law is the concrete product of the wisdom, thought, culture, and experience of all the historic past. It has come down to us in living streams through all the vicissitudes of human affairs, and is fashioned, enriched, and adorned by contributions from the Hebrew civil code, the Roman law, the laws and customs of the Free Cities of the Middle Ages, the early Saxon laws and customs, the Feudal system, the entire body of English jurisprudence, and from other sources. The foreign elements, naturalized, modified when necessary or desirable, and blended with the native product, add strength and beauty to the system. In tracing these tributaries to their sources, the study of general history becomes a necessity. Law and history are so intimately connected that neither, abstractly studied, can be thoroughly understood. The laws of any country, and of any given period of its history, are in the main the outgrowth of, and the true index to, its government and civilization. They are mutually revelations and exponents, each of the other. A particular law, in force at an early period of history, or in the Middle Ages, taken from its surroundings and placed in the setting of modern civilization, might present a grotesque, or even hideous picture; yet in its true time, place and circumstances, it may have been a wise and appropriate law. Quoting from the late Professor Pomeroy: "As civilization is a product of religion, philosophy, letters, art, trade, commerce, government, and above all, the ethnic life of a people, so do these elements enter into

and shape their laws." Much might be added under this head did time permit, but the suggestions already made will, it is hoped, suffice to indicate the value of legal science as a part of a liberal education.

Little argument is needed to show the practical value of a knowledge of the science of government and law in this country, where official positions of trust and confidence, executive and administrative, legislative and sometimes judicial, are open to all sorts of people, educated and uneducated, professional and non-professional.

Take legislation for example. Grave questions of public law and private right, which vitally affect the interests of the State and the people, are often dealt with by men guiltless of any clear or just conception of the elementary principles of government and law. Having very little, if any, knowledge of the existing body of law, written and unwritten, they have no means of judging of the effect of a proposed enactment. Says Mr. Bishop, in his admirable treatise on the Written Laws: "Every statute combines and operates with the entire law whereof it becomes a part; so that without a discernment of the original mass, one can form no correct idea of the action of the new element." Again he says, “A new statutory provision, cast into the body of written and unwritten laws, is not unlike a drop of coloring matter to a pail of water. Not so fully, yet to a considerable extent, it changes the hue of the whole body; and how far and where it works the change can be seen only by him who comprehends the relation of the parts, and discerns how each particle acts upon and governs and is governed by the others."

Sir William Blackstone, in the lecture to which I have alluded, says: "Indeed, it is perfectly amazing that there should be no other state of life, no other occupation, art, or science, in which some method of instruction is not looked upon as requisite, except only the science of legislation, the noblest and most difficult of any. Apprenticeships are held necessary to almost every art, commercial or mechanical; a long course of reading and study must form the divine, the physician and the practical professor of the laws; but every man of superior fortune thinks himself born a legislator."

If this criticism was timely and just when applied to England, it has a more important application to this country at the present day.

Our legislatures, national and State, are deluged with a flood of measures pressed for action at every session; and there is an enormous annual yield of legislation, "good, bad and indifferent," some of which is so crude as to defy all known rules of interpretation.

The character of our institutions, and our population; our wide and varied domain; our large manufacturing interests, and varied indus

tries; our foreign and interstate commerce; our extensive railroad system, and large corporations of various kinds; the formative condition of society, and some of our institutions; the political element that enters so largely into our State and national policy; and the intensity with which our people think and act all combine to stimulate and complicate legislation.

Besides these ordinary difficulties which embarrass legislation in this country, new and very grave questions of organic law, and State policy, frequently arise which severely tax the resources of our wisest and most experienced statesmen.

Complaint is sometimes made of the large number of lawyers in our legislative bodies, who are supposed to exert, in some mysterious way, a mischievous influence upon legislation. Assuming this complaint to be well founded a baseless assumption we think the only remedy not worse than the disease, is to substitute for the lawyers non-professional men who are fitted by education for legislative functions. A search for such men would quickly reveal the wisdom of making the study of law a part of a general education.

Did time permit, other advantages resulting from a general study and knowledge of law might be discussed, such as the prevention of quarrels and litigation concerning private rights; the benefit to business men in the conduct of their affairs; the ability to judge intelligently of proposed legal forms; the mutual advantage to the legal profession and the public by elevating the knowledge and practice of law to a noble science, instead of degrading it to an empirical art, an ignoble fate to which it is sometimes consigned; but I have already trespassed too long upon the time and patience of the Convocation.

V.

School Education.

By Rev. CLARENCE A. WALWORTH.

I would be something more or less than human did I not feel deeply honored in being invited to address a body so dignified and learned as the Regents and scholars that compose this Convocation. I feel that here I am breathing the atmosphere of a true university. According.

to my view, a university cannot be created by a mere charter, by any amount of money, nor in any short period of time. It is not some building with spreading wings, and high towers; it is not a name; it is not a place; it is not a mere college, incorporated by law with power to confer degrees; it is something more even than a union of colleges with different departments devoted each to special studies. It is a certain centre of learning and thought, the healthy growth of many years, the child of many combining graces. It is a traditionary atmosphere, an influence, a breath, a soul, an inspiration that hovers about a locality where learned men have once lived, and thoughtful learners still love to gather. God grant a long life to the University of the State of New York! And long may its yearly Convocations assemble in this city!

What do we mean by education? I need not say to you, gentlemen of the Convocation, that education, in the true sense of the word, embraces a great deal more than mere school education. School education is only a part, and that not the most important part, of education. All those influences which surround our early years and teach our minds how to think, and what to think, which train our hearts to conform their impulses to truth, reason, conscience, and duty, or otherwise—all these influences are our instructors, and combine to make up our education. Our education begins therefore at our birth. Our mothers, our nurses, our fathers, the whole family circle to which we belong, our friends, our playmates - all these are our teachers; and in truth these give us the most authoritative and influential schooling that we are like to have. We learn more on our play-grounds, on the sidewalks, in the back-yards, or the open fields, than we do in the classes of the school. The schools do not add so very much to what we know. Their chief value is to formulate and classify what we have already learned elsewhere. By means of the school our ideas, which