INTRODUCTION. SECTION THE FIRST. ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW*. MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR, AND GENTLEMEN OF T HE general expectation of fo numerous and refpectable an audience, the novelty, and (I may add) the importance of the duty required from this chair, muft unavoidably be productive of great diffidence and apprehenfions in him who has the honour to be placed in it. He must be fenfible how much will depend upon his conduct in the infancy of a study which is now first adopted by public academical authority; which has generally been reputed (however unjustly) of a dry and unfruitful nature; and of which the theoretical elementary parts have hitherto received a very moderate share of cultivation. He cannot but reflect that, if either his plan of inftruction be crude and inju dicious, or the execution of it lame and fuperficial, it will caft a damp upon the farther progrefs of this most useful and most rational branch of learning; and may defeat for a time the * Read in Oxford at the opening of the Vinerian lectures: 25 OA. 1758. public-fpirited defign of our wife and munificent benefactor. And this he muft more efpecially dread, when he feels by experience how unequal his abilities are (unaffifted by preceding examples) to complete, in the manner he could with, fo extenfive and arduous a tafk; fince he freely confeffes, that his former more private attempts have fallen very short of his own ideas of perfection. And yet the candour he has already experienced, and this laft tranfcendent mark of regard, his prefent nomination by the free and unanimous fuffrage of a great and learned univerfity, (an honour to be ever remembered with the deepest and most affectionate gratitude,) these teftimonies of your public judgment muft entirely superfede his own, and forbid him to believe himself totally infufficient for the labour at least of this employment. One thing he will venture to hope for, and it certainly fhall be his constant aim, by diligence and attention to atone for his other defects; esteeming, that the best return, which he can poffibly make for your favourable opinion of his capacity, will be his unwearied endeavours in fome little degree to deferve it. THE science thus committed to his charge, to be cultivated, methodized, and explained in a course of academical lectures, is that of the laws and conftitution of our own country: a fpecies of knowlege, in which the gentlemen of England have been more remarkably deficient than thofe of all Europe befides. In most of the nations on the continent, where the civil or imperial law under different modifications is closely interwoven with the municipal laws of the land, no gentleman, or at least no fcholar, thinks his education is completed, till he has attended a courfe or two of lectures, both upon the inftitutes of Juftinian and the local conftitutions of his native foil, under the very eminent profeffors that abound in their feveral universities. And in the northern parts of our own ifland, where alfo the municipal laws are frequently connected with the civil, it is difficult to meet with a perfon of liberal education, who is deftitute of a competent knowlege in that fcience, which is to be the guardian of his natural rights and the rule of his civil conduct. NOR NOR have the imperial laws been totally neglected even in the English nation. A general acquaintance with their decifions has ever been deservedly confidered as no small accomplishment of a gentleman; and a fashion has prevailed, efpecially of late, to tranfport the growing hopes of this island to foreign universities, in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; which, though infinitely inferior to our own in every other confideration, have been looked upon as better nurseries of the civil, or (which is nearly the fame) of their own municipal law. In the mean time it has been the peculiar lot of our admirable fyftem of laws, to be neglected, and even unknown, by all but one practical profeffion; though built upon the foundest foundations, and approved by the experience of ages. FAR be it from me to derogate from the study of the civil law, confidered (apart from any binding authority) as a collection of written reafon. No man is more thoroughly perfuaded of the general excellence of it's rules, and the ufual equity of it's decifions, nor is better convinced of it's ufe as well as ornament to the fcholar, the divine, the ftatesman, and even the common lawyer. But we must not carry our veneration fo far as to facrifice our Alfred and Edward to the manes of Theodofius and Juftinian: we must not prefer the edict of the praetor, or the refcript of the Roman emperor, to our own immemorial customs, or the fanctions of an English parliament; unless we can alfo prefer the defpotic monarchy of Rome and Byzantium, for whofe meridians the former were calculated, to the free conflitution of Britain, which the latter are adapted to perpetuate. WITHOUT detracting therefore from the real merit which abounds in the imperial law, I hope I may have leave to affert, that if an Englishman must be ignorant of either the one or the other, he had better be a stranger to the Roman than the English inftitutions. For I think it an undeniable pofition, that a competent knowlege of the laws of that fociety |