the great defect of the Chancery Bar, is its ignorance of Common Law, and Common Law practice; and, strange as it should seem, yet almost without exception it is, that gentlemen go to a Bar where they are to modify, qualify, and soften the rigour of the Common Law, with very little notion of its doctrines or practice! Whilst you are with Abbott, find time to read Coke on Littleton, again and again. If it be toil and labour to you, and it will be so, think as I do when I am climbing up to Swyer or to Westhill,* that the world will be before you when the toil is over; for so the Law will be if you make yourself complete master of that book. At present lawyers are made good cheap, by learning law from Blackstone, and less elegant compilers; depend upon it, men so bred will never be lawyers (though they may be barristers), whatever they call themselves. I read Coke on Littleton through, when I was the other day out of office; and when I was a student I abridged it. To a Chancery man, the knowledge to be obtained from it is peculiarly useful in the matter of TITLES. If you promise me to read this, and tell me when you have begun upon it, I shall venture to hope that, at my recommendation, you will attack about half a dozen other very crabbed books, which our Westminster Hall lawyers never look at. Westminster Hall has its loungers as well as Bond Street. Before you allow yourself to think that you have learnt Equity pleading with your Chancery pleader, remember to make yourself a good Conveyancer in theory and practice. I venture to assure you, without qualification upon the positiveness with which I assure you, that, if you are such, you will feel yourself in the Court of Chancery vastly above your fellows. This I know, from my own personal experience, that being, by

* High grounds at Encombe [Lord Eldon's seat], commanding extensive views.

the accidents of life, thrown into a Conveyancer's office, I have never known, in a long life in Chancery, how sufficiently to value the advantages that circumstance has given me. When you are learning to draw Equity pleadings, you may be learning this also in your father's office.* But you must labour at it till you can speak and dictate conveyances of every species, and this can be learnt only by going through the drudgery of copying. I wrote some folio books of Conveyances, and I strongly advise you to do the same. The Conveyancing precedents have been formed and modelled so as to make all their provisions square with the rules of law, as modified by decisions in Equity; and, unless I deceive myself, after you have enabled yourself to dictate the different species of Conveyances, and by that time have thought that it was a mere work of dull serious attention, you will find that, from and after that moment, you will read no Chancery case, nor hear any Chancery decision, which will not appear to illustrate and open the meaning of all the phraseology, dull and technical as it may seem, of the Conveyancer's language. This is a point I am very strenuous about. After all, when tolerably well furnished, you have begun your Chancery practice, go, spring and summer, for some years, the circuit. That practice will keep alive your Common Law knowledge, and will enable you to improve in your knowledge of Equity. But it hath besides many mighty advantages, both for the time, and in future life. On the recommendation of great men, now no more, I followed it, till it became injustice to my Equity clients." +

The father of the young gentleman to whom this letter was addressed was Mr. Farrer, an attorney in London, of considerable practice.

Twiss's Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon, vol. ii. pp. 51—2.

CHAPTER X.

DEPARTMENTS OF THE PROFESSION

I. CIVIL DEPARTMENT.

PART II.-COMMON LAW.

DURING our long sojourn in the domains of EQUITY, we have made so many excursions into the conterminous territory of the COMMON LAW, that with its outskirts, at least, we have become already tolerably familiar. We must now, however, proceed into the interior of this venerable country; stimulated by a just anxiety to become acquainted not only with-so to speak-its geographical features, but the characters and occupations of its inhabitants.

"No unbiassed observer," says Mr. Hallam, in opening the eighth chapter of his instructive "View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages," "who derives pleasure from the welfare of his species, can fail to consider the long and uninterruptedly increasing prosperity of England, as the most beautiful phenomenon in the history of mankind. Climates more propitious may impart more largely the mere enjoyments of existence; but in no other region have the benefits which political institutions can confer, been diffused over so extended a population; nor have

* Vol. ii. pp. 374-5 (5th ed.)

any people so well reconciled the discordant elements of wealth, order, and liberty. These advantages are surely not owing to the soil of this island, nor to the latitude in which it is placed; but to the SPIRIT OF ITS LAWS, from which have been derived, through various means, the characteristic independence and industriousness of our nation. The constitution, therefore, of England must be, to inquiring men of all countries, but far more to ourselves, an object of superior interest; distinguished especially as it is from all free governments of powerful nations which history has recorded, by its manifesting, after the lapse of several centuries, not merely no symptom of irretrievable decay, but a more expansive energy. Comparing long periods of time, it may be justly asserted, that the administration of government has progressively become more equitable, and the privileges of the subject more secure; and though it would be both presumptuous and unwise to express an unlimited confidence as to the durability of liberties which owe their greatest security to the constant suspicion of the people; yet, if we calmly reflect on the present aspect of this country," [Mr. Hallam wrote this more than twenty years ago,] "it will probably appear that whatever perils may threaten our constitution, are rather from circumstances altogether unconnected with it, than from any intrinsic defects of its own."

It is to the COMMON LAW, venerable and glorious, notwithstanding its unquestionable imperfections, assisted, as it has been, from time to time, by the Legislature, that Englishmen are indebted for the advantages thus eloquently enumerated. Much mistrusting our powers of doing anything like justice to so interesting and important, but difficult, a subject, we shall endeavour to give such a

plain and popular account of it, as may serve at once to excite some little interest in the student, and afford him practical information; and, as far as the public are concerned, to correct prevalent errors and misconceptions.

The MEANING of the term "Common Law," even among lawyers, is sufficiently ambiguous-the expression being used in various senses, according to the objects with which it is contrasted-it being so contradistinguished, sometimes from the statute law; sometimes from the civil and canon law; occasionally from the law-merchant (lex mercatoria); and frequently from Equity-which, on the other hand, is by some regarded as itself merely a sort of secondary Common Law.* Many use it to designate simply a law 'common' to all the realm. It is also sometimes adopted in opposition to Criminal Law;' but we beg the student to bear in mind throughout this work, that we use the word "Criminal Law" merely for convenience' sake: the Common Law of the land, of course, including all the Criminal Law which is not of positive statutory origin.-Still greater uncertainty exists, and much controversy has arisen, concerning the ORIGIN of this Common Law.-We shall, in this chapter, endeavour to assign a definite meaning to the term "Common Law": to resolve that law into its principal elements: to indicate the true method of its growth, development, and application to the varying exigencies of society and describe the Courts in which, and the persons by whom, it is administered. We shall then explain the general nature and result of that great legislative and judicial operation by which it has been lately reformed and remodelled; and conclude with a brief outline of its existing state.

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* Burton's Elem. Comp. §9; and post, p. 438 (n.)