I have now shown in what cases artificial rules of construction are needed for the administration of the written law: I have pointed out where the use of those rules is not admissible: and I have explained the general principles respecting the way in which the words of instruments are to be understood. I have also shown the spirit of the law of the interpretation of instruments.

The particular rules by which statutes are construed will afford materials for subsequent Readings. But the general doctrines which I have explained form a separate and distinct portion of the jurisprudence of written law.

FOURTH READING.

ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF STATUTES.

IN In my last Reading I endeavoured to give you the fundamental doctrines on which the science of interpreting laws, and indeed all written instruments, is grounded. I showed the nature of written Municipal Laws: I explained the English Law respecting the commencement of the operation of statutes: I then showed the nature of the causes which render interpretation necessary-the cases in which it is required--and those in which it is not required: and I gave you the principles of law respecting the use and meaning of words, or particular expressions.

In all this process of exposition, the great European writers, whose works are acknowledged to contain the spirit of all laws,—the masters of jurisprudence, have not been neglected. Keeping chiefly in mind the law of our own country, we have derived legal doctrines and analogies from the sages of antiquity; and from the great modern writers who have best understood the science produced by the practical reason of Rome, and the philosophical abstractions and subtile logic of Greece.

The law of interpretation must now be examined somewhat more in detail. But, before doing so, I am desirous of giving some further explanation of my views respecting the duties with which I am unworthily intrusted. I do so now, because I have had the honour of delivering three Readings before this learned Society, and you have seen what my method is. You will therefore now better understand the reasons on which that method is devised.

1. Many persons, whose opinions are entitled to great respect, have said that Lectures are of no use to an English Law Student.

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It would be strange that it should be so. Why should the English Law not be learned partly by oral teaching as well as other sciences? Because it depends on practice, experience, and a knowledge of cases The same reason was given against Blackstone, when he published his Commentaries. But no man will be bold enough to deny that that illustrious judge performed, by giving us his immortal book, a

very great and inestimable service to the jurisprudence of his country. Yet his book was composed of lectures; and it is written on the avowed principle of systematizing, and bringing to principles and reasoning the stubbornly practical Law of England.

We may also appeal to a peculiarly national authority in favour of Law Lectures-the authority of ancient custom. Look round at the varied and quaint heraldry which adorns this Hall. Those escutcheons contain the bearings of the Readers of our Society, whose duty it was in former times to deliver Law Lectures.

You, among whom may be the future successors of those great men,

are now called upon to support our time-honoured usage which is revived among you; and to make the best use of such means as these Readings will give you for the furtherance of the objects for which you became members of our profession.

I say this without fear of being accused of presumption, because I profess and intend to bring before you, not my own notions and opinions, but such knowledge as must be valuable to you, whether I communicate it well or ill.

I have asked why the Law of England should not be learned partly by oral teaching. I say partly, because those who depreciate Readings and Lectures always speak of them as opposed to and contradistinguished from the process of legal education conducted in a pleader's or counsel's chambers, in court, and by solitary reading. This is a great mistake. I admit that it is by these means that the practical lawyer is formed, and that without them no man can become a lawyer. The best-read man, coming as a pupil into a pleader's chambers, will at first find himself quite at a loss for want of that knowledge of the working of law which practice and experience alone can give.

It is by the union of different means of education that legal studies can best be raised to a high pitch of excellence. Each of those means should have its proper use, and each will have its proper value-its peculiar province,—in the formation of a sound and learned lawyer capable of fulfilling the highest duties and the administration of justice, as a judge or as an advocate.

We must admit, that legal education can be successfully conducted without any sort of academical prelections-for some of the greatest lawyers that this country ever produced have been trained without them. And Readings or Lectures never can take the place of that practical training, by which they attained the high rank which they hold in the legal history of their country. I refer particularly to the patient and laborious use of the time spent as a pupil in chambers. It is there that the realities of the Law are learnt, the actual working of its administration, and the practical business which the advocate must

afterwards be engaged in. On this part of a student's life his future success mainly depends. It can alone teach him things which are absolutely necessary; and it brings his reading to his mind in a manner most calculated to make a durable impression on his memory. In this last respect it is like experiment in the study of natural philosophy, which affords the easiest mode of learning and remembering the principles of science.

The use of Readings or Lectures is very different. They give you a royal road to principles; they open to you extensive views of legal science; they afford you classifications which assist the arrangement of knowledge; they present to your minds comparisons and generalizations of science; and they give you in a short space of time results, which have been obtained by many years of study. Thus, by combining the two methods of study to which I have referred, you begin (if I may so express myself) at the beginning of legal science and at the end together. And, at the same time, the reasons of the law, in the practice of which you are engaged, are explained to you.

Such are the objects of my labours, in which if I do not succeed it will be for want, not of zeal but of ability.

In pursuance of these reflections I shall not attempt to impart to you knowledge which you must acquire elsewhere. I shall endeavour to give you as much as possible what has been called the rationale of the law, the reasons and the theories on which it is constructed, the leading cases whereby it has been established; and the opinions of the civilians and jurists as well as the Laws of Justinian which illustrate and explain it.

I have already said that one of my objects is to enlarge the range of legal studies. I also wish to give you grounds to think in a liberal and enlarged manner on legal subjects, and to seek the reasons of things without being satisfied with mere authority. Even where we must submit to authority, it is very important to investigate the reasons of what authority has established. This is the mode of forming a legal mind and a judicial mind. Without it the practice of the law produces a narrowing effect on the intellect, which has rendered learned lawyers, in many instances, so inured to technical principles established by mere authority, as to be almost incapable of reasoning except from such artificial premises.

A remarkable instance of this occurred in the debates in the House of Commons, on the great question as to the right of the mother country to tax the North American Colonies which were not represented in the Imperial Parliament. After the eloquence, the wisdom, and the constitutional learning of Pitt and Fox, and all the great statesmen in the house had exhausted this momentous question, a

learned lawyer rose, and said that the real point on which the whole matter turned had been unaccountably omitted, and that he thought that he could suggest a solution of the difficulty. In the midst of the deep silence and anxious curiosity of the House, who thought that some new light was suddenly to break upon them, and show how the prerogatives of the imperial authority could be reconciled with the claims of the colonists, and the integrity and peace of the empire permanently secured, he showed that the land of the colonies in question had been originally granted and was held ut de honore, as of the manor of Greenwich in the county of Kent; and thence he argued that, as the manor of Greenwich was represented in Parliament, so the lands of the North American Colonies (by tenure, a part of the manor,) were represented by the knights of the shire for Kent.

The argument was highly astute and lawyer-like, but the House laughed. The honourable and learned member did not attend to the distinction which I have explained to you, between natural and positive laws, and the necessity of not extending positive laws beyond the object which they are intended to fulfil. He set up a legal fiction deduced from a positive law, and then mistook it for reason.

There are persons who hold that a lawyer's studies ought to be confined to the particular branch of the English Law in which he practises, and who by an exaggeration of the maxim-multum legendum non multa-seem to think that his reading can scarcely be too confined. But I believe that such narrow ideas can scarcely obtain much countenance in our days. Every man who has studied law must have felt how one branch of law assists the knowledge of the other, and how intimately they are connected together by community of principles, so as to form one great science. And so Cujacius says, Nunquam bene percipimus usu necessarium, nisi et noverimus jus usu non necessarium. Without the knowledge of what is not necessary for practical uses, we cannot thoroughly know that which is necessary. Both time and trouble are saved by conducting legal studies in this liberal way.

By regarding law as a great moral science, it is rendered the means of disciplining, strengthening, and enlarging the mind; making it capable of comprehending and mastering all the varied affairs of life, both public and private, and preparing it for the performance of the highest duties of the judge and the statesman. The narrow and

pedantic cultivation of legal study has an opposite tendency; though peculiarly vigorous minds are able to resist the influence which produces a more or less prejudicial effect on others.

Such are the principles on which, in my humble opinion, the cul