THE SCOTTISH LAW MAGAZINE AND SHERIFF COURT REPORTER. ON THE INSTANCES IN WHICH THE LAW OF ENGLAND HAS BEEN BORROWED FROM THAT OF SCOTLAND. BY SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, BART., D.C.L. SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart., Honorary President of the Glasgow Juridical Society, delivered the following lecture to the members of the Society, in the Sheriff Court House, on the 22d January, "On the instances in which the Law of England has been borrowed from that of Scotland." Mr President and Gentlemen, before proceeding to the appointed business of this evening, allow me to congratulate this Society, and the legal profession of which it forms a part, and of which it is so great an ornament, upon the rapid progress of your numbers. The Society was instituted fifteen years ago—in the year 1847. It first had only-as all other good things have a very small beginning; six or eight members were all who generally attended in the first session, and now the honorary and ordinary members amount to 150, and the persons who attend regularly amount to about sixty. Twenty-eight new members were admitted last year, and twelve have already been admitted this season. I cannot but regard these facts as very creditable to the legal profession in this city. It is a truly gratifying thing to see that so many gentlemen, whose time is of value, whose time is their fortune and their means of living, have combined together to improve themselves in the noble profession to which they belong, to endeavour to implant, in the practice of its Courts, the principles, the justice, the equity which, from the earliest times, have distinguished the jurisprudence of all civilised nations. It is not surprising that the gentlemen entrusted with the management of cases so numerous and important as are now conducted by the Faculty Procurators in Glasgow should feel a desire to impare themselves in the higher branches of the profession to which they belong, for it is by such improvement alone that they can keep abreast of the ecessities of the age, and of what the public expects them. When we reflect what a great thing the science of law is-that it embraces all the rights of individuals, all the rights of the public; that it considers all the duties and responsibilities of the married state, of parent and child, of tutor and pupil, of guardian and ward, as well as the whole transactions so rapidly multiplying with the progressed wealth and the extension of commerce, and all actions arising from them, in ordinary life, the distribution of property by will, and the whole questions arising from the succession to the dead and the taking the succession by the living-when we consider how great and immense a field of inquiry law in this manner opens up, it is obvious that too much attention can never be paid to the great principles of jurisprudence upon which alone so stupendous and multifarious a system can be properly investigated and brought into everyday practice. If you go back to former ages, we shall find that the science of law is one of such magnitude and difficulty, that its true principles can only be arrived at by a large experience and by repeated efforts, many of them attended with failure, not of one nation alone, but of many nations. It is not surprising, therefore, that the most approved systems of law which have appeared have been borrowed from the laws of other countries. The science of law, and the questions it involves, are not only far beyond the power of any individual to grasp by single efforts, but are far beyond the powers of any one nation to embrace in its longest experience, and by the efforts of its whole inhabitants. It is by a succession of nations that the truths of jurisprudence are at length arrived at, and accordingly we shall find that the nations who have most enriched the science of law, are those who have borrowed most largely from the experience of other States. Of all the nations with whom we are acquainted, the Romans have formed the greatest and most wonderful system of jurispru B |