Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/470

 456 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1758.

tions, from the chancellor's courts in both our univerfities, and from the high court of chancery be- fore mentioned ; in all of which the proceedings are to this day in a courfe much conformed to the civil law : for which no tole- rable reafon can be afiigned, unlefs that thefe courts were all under the immediate direftion of the popifh ecclefiartics, among whom it was a point of religion to ex- clude the municipal law; Pope Innocent the fourth having for- bidden the very reading of it by the clergy, becaufe its decifions were not founded on the imperial conflitutions, but merely on the cuftoms of the laity. And if it be confidered, that our univer- fities began about that period to receive their prefent form of fcho- laftic difcipline ; that they were then, and continued to be till the time of the reformation, entirely under the influence of the pcpi(h clergy; (Sir John Mafon the firli Proteftant, being alfo the firft lay chancellor of Oxford) this will lead us to perceive the reafon, why the ftudy of the Reman laws was in thofe days of bigotry pur- fued with fuch alacrity in thefe feats of learning; and why tlie common law was entirely defpifed, and efteemed little better than he- retical.

Andjfince the reformation, many caufes have confpired to prevent its becoming a part of acade- mical education. As, firft, long ufage and eftablifhed cuftom ; which, as in every thing elfe, fo efpecially in the forms of fcho- laftic exercife, have juftly great weight and authority. Secondly, the real intrinfic merit of the civil law, confidered upon the footing

of reafon and not of obligation, which was well known to the in- ftrudtors of our youth ; and their total ignorance of the merit of the common law, though equal at leaft, and perhaps an improve- ment on the other. But the princi- pal reafon of all, that had hindered the introdudtion of that branch of learning, is, that the ftudy of the common law, being banifhed from hence in the times of popery, has fallen into a quite different chan- nel, and has hitherto been wholly cultivated in another place. But as this long ufage and eftablifhed cuftom, of ignorance of the laws of the land, begin now to be thought reafonable; and as by this means the merit of thofe laws will probably be more generally known ; we may hope that the method of ftudying them will foon revert to its ancient courfe, and the foundation at lealt of that fcience will be laid in the two univer- fities ; without being exclufively confined to the channel which it fell into at the times I have beea juft defcribing.

For, being then entirely aban- doned by the clergy, a few ftrag- lers excepted, the ftudy and prac- tice of it devolved of courfe into the hands of laymen ; who en- tertained upon their parts a moft hearty averfion to the civil law, and made no fcruple to pro- fefs their contempt, nay even their ignorance of it, in the moft public manner. But ftill as the ballance of learning was greatly on the fide of the clergy, and as the common law was no longer /^a^^/, as formerly, in any part of the kingdom, it muft have been fub- jefted to many inconveniencies, and perhaps would have been gradually