Page:Why the History of English Law is Not Written.djvu/26

17 will often have the patience to study medieval procedure and conveyancing unless he has had to study modern procedure and modern conveyancing and to study them professionally.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. The only persons in this country who possess very fully one of the great requisites for the work are as a rule very unlikely to attempt it. They are lawyers with abundant practice or hopes of abundant practice; if they have the taste they have not the time, the ample leisure, that is necessary for historical research.

What then can the Universities do? Pardon me if I say that I do not answer this question very cheerfully. In the first place, the object of a law school must be to teach law, and this is not quite the same thing as teaching the history of law. We should not wish to see a professor of law breaking and entering the close of the professor of history, though the result of our scheme of Triposes may be that legal history falls to the ground between two schools. Secondly, I believe that any one who aspires to study legal history should begin by studying modern law. Could we dispose of the time and energies of the young man who is destined—surely he is born by this time—to tell the story of English law, we should advise him to pursue some such course of reading as that prescribed for our Tripos, to go into chambers and into court, even to do what in him lies to acquire some small practice; many other things he should do, but these should not be left undone. Thirdly, the time that we have at our command is exceedingly short. We can not reckon that an undergraduate will give so much as