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tory evidence given orally by witnesses, and if this can be surely found, then we may say that the Babylonians had made a great and very difficult step along the appointed path way of jurisprudence. But what strikes us most is the free use of writing for legal pur poses. We even are told of a case in which the effect of a father's gift to his daughter is made to turn on the use of a particular clause in a written ''deed." Did it or did it not contain the clause "after her wherever is good to her to give"?—a clause apparently which bestows a "general power of appoint ment." There is some delicate work of this kind in the code, not very easy to understand, but still delicate. ONE of the speakers at a recent meeting of the Law Society at Liverpool, in advocat ing the establishment in London of a general school of law with the fund of over £130.000 which, through recent Chancery decrees, has been placed at the disposal of the Attor ney-General for the purpose of legal educa tion, said: It is not perhaps always remembered that those who advocate the foundation in Lon don of a general school of law are not seek ing to establish a new, but rather to restore an ancient institution. Yet it is an undoubt ed fact that London possessed a legal univer sity at a very early period. Fortescue, who wrote in the time of Henry VI., treats of such a university. There were, it seems, at that time ten Inns of Chancery, designed to teach the elements of law, and four Inns of Court for the instruction of the more ad vanced students, and it would appear that not merely law, but also other studies, were pur sued in this school, and so high was its repu tation that it attracted many students not destined for either branch of the Legal Pro fession. Coke writing in the reign of Elizabeth, says that the eight Inns of Chancery, the four Inns of Court, and Serjeants'-inn "altogether do make the most famous univer sities for profession of law orrery, or of any one humane science, that is in the world, and aclvanceth itselfe above all others, quantum

inter I'ibiinia ciiprcsstts. In which houses of Court and Chancery the readings, and other exercises of the lawes therein continually used, are most excellent and behooveful for attaining to the knowledge of those laws." The Inns of Chancery^ were attached to or * associated with the Inns of Court, and were: Furnival's-inn and Thavies'-inn, attached to Lincoln's-inn; Clifford's-inn and Clement'sinn, attached to the Inner Temple; ew-inn and Lyon's-inn attached to the Middle Tem ple; and Barnard's-inn and Staple's-inn, at tached to Gray's-inn. It would be Deyond the scope of this paper to discuss what was the precise course of study followed by the students, but it may be noticed that promin ence was given to moots—a prominence worthy of the attention of the modern re formers of legal education. Generally, how ever, it may be stated on the authority of Coke that the legal education provided was most complete and admirable, and it is ma terial to observe that it was given alike to both branches of the Profession, and that solicitors were anciently compelled to belong to one of the Inns of Court or of Chancery. And the same speaker added: It is deplor able that, while in England there are many institutions (including the universities) where a respectable legal education can be ob tained, there is no law school worthy to be compared with that which America can b^ast in Harvard, and I am told that there are in stances of students destined for the English Bar having been sent to Harvard to study law. A more eloquent testimony to the need of a school of law in England can scarcely be imagined. IT would seem that the question of the le gality of the use of the Irish language and of the effectiveness as a fulfilment of various provisions of the statute law—a question which has been looming on the horizon for a long time— is about to be tested and deter mined at last. In south county Dublin a man signed a claim under the Parliamentary Registration Acts in Irish, and the revising barrister disallowed the claim and refused to