Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/48

32 cious conequence: I mean the cutom, by ome o very warmly recommended, to drop all liberal education, as of no ue to tudents in the law; but to place them, in it’s tead, at the dek of ome kilful attorney; in order to initiate them early in all the depths of practice, and render them more dextrous in the mechanical part of buines. A few intances of particular perons, (men of excellent learning, and unblemihed integrity) who, in pight of this method of education, have hone in the foremot ranks of the bar, have afforded ome kind of anction to this illiberal path to the profeion, and biaed many parents, of hortighted judgment, in it’s favour: not conidering, that there are ome geniues, formed to overcome all diadvantages, and that from uch particular intances no general rules can be formed; nor oberving, that thoe very perons have frequently recommended by the mot forcible of all examples, the dipoal of their own offpring, a very different foundation of legal tudies, a regular academical education. Perhaps too, in return, I could now direct their eyes to our principal eats of jutice, and ugget a few hints, in favour of univerity learning :—but in thee all who hear me, I know, have already prevented me.

therefore due allowance for one or two hining exceptions, experience may teach us to foretell that a lawyer thus educated to the bar, in ubervience to attorneys and olicitors, will find he has begun at the wrong end. If practice be the whole he is taught, practice mut alo be the whole he will ever know: if he be unintructed in the elements and firt principles upon which the rule of practice is founded, the leat variation from etablihed precedents will totally ditract and bewilder him: undefined is the utmot his knowlege will arrive at; he mut never apire to form, and eldom expect to comprehend, any arguments drawn undefined, from the pirit of the laws and the natural foundations of jutice.