*

have discharged gratuitously for the Judges, and as their delegates and agents, important work which the Judges could not possibly have performed so well for themselves; but this is the sum and substance of their public functions, and the State has no more right to interfere with their property on such a ground than with the property of the individual Benchers. The paragraph quoted by Lord Selborne from the Report of the Royal Commission respecting the trust attaching to the property of the two Temples, does not establish that the Inns of Court hold their property for public purposes. In the first place, such trust does not affect Lincoln's Inn or Gray's Inn at all; and even with respect to the Temples, the trust for education is one not for the education of the public, but for the education exclusively of members of their own Societies. Another passage quoted from the Commissioners' Report in favour of compulsory examination was beside the question, since compulsory examination was then already established, and its conduct was and is in the hands of men of the highest mark in the profession, who do their work better than it could be done by any other body of persons. Let anyone attempt to formalise the argument by which Lord Selborne contends that the property of the Inns of Court is public property, and it may be shown, by the same style of reasoning, that the estates of the noble Lords who constitute the House of Peers are public property also. The Peers exercise 'public functions;' some of their estates were obtained by grants from the Crown; all the land in the kingdom was originally held upon condition of contributing in certain proportions to the defence of the realm,—a condition imperfectly discharged in time of war by the payment of a paltry Land Tax. Lord Selborne proceeded to say of the Inns of Court, that, being invested with a public character and invested with a public responsibility-as they were in fact corporations—no harm could result from their being legally incorporated.' We do not understand how any institution can be a corporation in fact, which is not a corporation in law. Is the Athenæum Club a corporation in fact? It took its origin from a movement in favour of the encouragement of literature, science and art, which are public objects. The members are lessees of the Crown. Each member during his life, or until expulsion, has a joint ownership in the property of the club, which is very valuable, and increases in value every year by the rich stores added to the

* Independently of the express language of the Trust, such would be the case on general principles, according to the decision of Lord Chancellor Hatherley in The Attorney-General v. Sidney Sussex College.-Law Reports, 4 Chancery Appeals, 722.

library,

6

library, but on a member's death no interest whatever in such property devolves on his executors; the surviving members of the club and the subsequently admitted members take the whole. The same is the case with the Freemasons, and other voluntary associations, which Lord Selborne might, with equal inaccuracy, call corporations in fact.' No Inn of Court is, or ever was, or ever will be, with its own consent, a body politic;' and we assert that, neither in law nor in fact, are the Inns corporations. If the members of an Inn of Chancery, or of an Inn of Court, were unanimously to resolve on selling and converting into money its property, and dividing it among themselves in equal proportions, no Court of Law or Equity in this kingdom could prevent them. One of the Inns of Chancery-Lyon's Inn-has already done so. Another association of lawyers, constituted like the Inns of Court in some respects, but which was actually incorporated by Charter, viz., the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons, insisted, when their order was abolished by Parliament, upon their right to distribute their property and possessions among themselves for their own use and benefit; and this right was recognised and made effectual by a statute.* If the present scheme of gradually extinguishing the ancient Order of Serjeants, instead of utilising it, shall be persisted in, and Sir Richard Paul Amphlett, the Last of the Barons,' shall live to become the last of the Serjeants, he will have reason to felicitate himself on having succeeded by survivorship to a valuable inheritance in Serjeants' Inn, of which nothing but an Act of Parliament can deprive him. It is said that when a Romanist longs too greedily for a beefsteak on a Lenten fast day, he takes one, christens it fish,' and then eats it. When Lord Selborne christens the Inns of Court Corporations in fact,' it is not difficult to understand his ultimate intentions. As to the statement of Lord Selborne respecting the Inns of Court, that no harm can result from their incorporation,' we answer that great and irreparable harm must be the result of every wrong done by arbitrary power overbearing private rights, confiscating or 'appropriating' private property to public uses, and compelling private Societies to become 'bodies politic' against their will. It is but too clear why Lord Selborne wishes to incorporate the Inns of Court. Such a change would place them and their possessions under the control of the State, as is the case with the Universities and Colleges. Then, when they are thus made creatures of the State, their property may, by the State, be taken from them, and

20 & 21 Vict., c. 77, sec. 117.

applied

applied for the education of the solicitors, or any other object which the Government for the time being, if strong in Parliament, shall capriciously choose. The real object sought by the proposed incorporation is clear. We have been taught by Divine wisdom that no man can enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.'* Lord Selborne's Bill, therefore, proposes, as a preliminary step, to bind the strong man; and this will effectually be done if the Inns of Court are forced into the trammels of incorporation. The spoiling of their houses afterwards will be but a natural consequence. Lord Selborne also, in his speech, quoted in complimentary terms Lord Cairns's Resolution at Lincoln's Inn in 1863; but he omitted to state that it was carried by a majority of one only. He then mentioned that his own original Draft Bill had been sent to the Inns of Court, but added, I am bound to say that I did not get all the assistance I could have wished from those Societies;' and he professed not to understand their 'extremely short Resolution' disapproving of his Draft Bill! He subsequently proceeded to explain some of the details of his Bill; but the only point on which we need pause to make a remark is that the 'surplus' income of the Inns of Court, which, according to his original proposal, was to be handed over to his Central School of Law, is now to be left with the Inns, but with a declaration of trust affixed to it, which is obviously intended to pave the way to the same ultimate result; for it proposes to declare that it shall be appropriated, and from time to time applied, to the purposes of legal education.' The legal education spoken of in this appropriation clause' is not the legal education of the barristers and students, who are members of the Society from whose property such surplus shall be derived, but the trust is for Legal Education generally!—in short, for the legal education of the solicitors and others, who are not members of the Societies. Lord Selborne's project is in conflict with the history of five centuries, infringes on the sacredness of private property and private rights, and has already been condemned by the acknowledged leaders of the Bar in an unanimous resolution of disapproval; yet it will never appear in its true and natural colours to the public eye so long as it continues to be decked out and dressed up by the practised hands to which it has been confided.

Our space will not allow us to examine the rest of Lord Selborne's speech, in which he explained the provisions of his second Bill for establishing a General School of Law, nor can

*Mark iii. 27.

we

we stop to criticise the speeches of the two other Law Lords who took part in the debate. The Lord Chancellor, however, pointed out, with his usual penetration, one defect in Lord Selborne's scheme, viz., that it proposed to establish a teaching school,' instead of a mere examining body, and he predicted that any attempt to provide funds for a teaching school would fail, and that such a school would of necessity 'exhaust or destroy the Inns of Court and their capacity for teaching law.' We entertain no doubt that the Inns of Court will continue to teach their own students, and they need feel no apprehension that any 'teaching school,' to be established under the auspices of the State, will ever be able to rival that which now flourishes under the control and care of the Council of Legal Education. If the State thinks fit to appoint its own examiners to ascertain that the students of the Inns of Court possess a competent knowledge of law before they are called to the Bar, the Inns of Court will have no reason to complain, and will perhaps be glad to be relieved from one of the most irksome of the labours now discharged by them; but if the State, or anybody politic' created by the State, is to undertake this work, the State will be expected to pay the examiners, as well as appoint them.* We cannot conclude our observations on the debate of the 10th of July without noticing one passage in the latter part of Lord Hatherley's speech, in which he stated, with that noble frankness for which he is distinguished, that he should also rejoice to see the barrier that existed at present between the two branches of the profession broken down. This phrase about breaking down the barrier' is capable of being understood in two ways: 1st, it may merely mean an abrogation of the system of having one course of legal study for the Bar and another for the solicitors, by establishing

* Since the above was printed, a Joint Committee of the four Inns of Court was held at the Inner Temple on the 18th December last, on the subject of Lord Selborne's two Bills, when the following Resolutions were passed unanimously-It was moved by the Master of the Rolls, and seconded by ViceChancellor Malins: 'That Lord Selborne's Bill to incorporate the Inns of Court, and interfere with their property and internal management having been introduced into Parliament, notwithstanding the unanimous Resolution of the Joint Committee of the four Inns of the 4th March, 1874, disapproving of his original Draft Bill-a Resolution since confirmed by each of the four Inns-this Committee resolve that the four Societies be recommended to take all proper steps for opposing such Bill in Parliament if again brought in.' It was moved by Mr. Calvert, and seconded by Mr. George Loch, Treasurer of the Middle Temple That this Committee disapproves of Lord Selborne's Bill for establishing a General School of Law, and especially of the provisions contained in it whereby Students for the Bar and the Articled Clerks of Solicitors shall be under one joint system, and are of opinion that the Legal Education of Students for the Bar should continue to be under the control of their own branch of the profession.'

a general

a general school common to both classes; or, 2ndly, it may mean abolishing the distinction between barrister and solicitor altogether, by introducing the blended system which prevails in the United States. The first is the only sense in which the term would be approved of by many members of the Legal Education Association. We doubt if Lord Selborne himself would approve of any other. The second, however, is the sense in which it is used by that great body of Lord Selborne's supporters who entertain the revolutionary opinions which have lately been expressed with so much boldness. We will make a few observations on each view.

First. If the two branches of the profession are still to be kept distinct, is it expedient that both should receive one common educational training? Such a plan may have some advantages, though few. It has been tried in Ireland, but with no good results, if we may judge from the Report of the Committee of 1846, and from the loose and inaccurate style too often observable in Irish pleadings and conveyances. We consider that, on the whole, the disadvantages of such a system vastly preponderate. At the commencement of their legal studies there is almost always a great disparity in age between students for the Bar and articled clerks. Five-sixths of the former have been educated at the Universities, and are four or five years older than the articled clerks. The latter, when they begin their career, are in general but an imperfectly educated set, if we are to place confidence in the important evidence given by one of their own branch of the profession, Sir George Stephen, before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1846. Nothing can be more melancholy than his description quoted in the Committee's Report. To subject students for the Bar, when beginners, to a course of instruction suitable for the class described by Sir George Stephen would manifestly be to the disadvantage of the former. If, however, this difficulty can be partly got over by the articled clerks passing their first two or three years in a solicitor's office and then, during only the last two years of their course, residing in London for instruction in the General School of Law, they will begin to study the theory of law just at the time when, from their having acquired some knowledge of its practice, their services were becoming valuable to the solicitors to whom they are articled. To the latter the loss would be important, and for the articled clerks themselves the gain would be small; for it would be better for them, just before becoming solicitors, to be engaged in actual practice in a lawyer's office, and be attending the

*