authority illustrative of a legal principle, he examines the arguments pro and con, and occasionally appeals to the class to know how they would themselves decide it. Sometimes, to make the appeal more forcible, he asks for a show of hands in favour of the plaintiff and defendant respectively. The system of teaching by "Cases" is a favourite one in America, and Mr. Justice O. W. Holmes, who occasionally acts as Harvard Professor, is one of its warmest supporters.

By far the most important part of professional training, however, the sine qua non for those who wish to succeed in practice, is that which no University, no Faculty of Law, no Inn of Court can supply. All the lectures in the world will not make a man a business lawyer. Just as surgery, obstetrics, and medicine can only be learnt by "walking the hospitals," so business law can only be acquired by handling legal documents of all sorts in the Chambers of a practitioner, and by watching the turns and twists of actual litigation by attending Courts of Justice.

"To put the scientific lawyer, however learned he may be, to conduct a case in Court is," as Sir R. Webster truly said before the Gresham Commission, " very much the same thing as putting a philosopher who has studied navigation to navigate a ship, or a person extremely skilled in the theory of steam and the theory of fluids to drive an engine." The Inns of Court are quite alive to this fact, and yet they call a man to the Bar without taking any security that he is duly qualified to act as a barrister. All they do is to "recommend" to the student in their Consolidated Regulations-which not one in a hundred troubles himself to read -that he should attend "in the Chambers of a Barrister or Pleader for the purpose of studying the practice of the law." They expressly say that such attendance shall not be compulsory. No doubt they were influenced in framing this rule by the awkward circumstance that "reading in

Chambers" is a costly process, but it is not nearly so costly as being articled to a solicitor, and if the Incorporated Law Society insist on the one, why should not the Inns of Court insist on the other?

Here, again, I cannot help thinking we might learn a lesson from the Continent. Germany, which, as we have seen, is so careful in the matter of theoretical law, is no less so in the matter of practical law. A German student may have passed all his University examinations and have obtained his doctor's degree, but he cannot be inscribed in the "Order of Advocates," cannot have full liberty to practice, until he has gone through a further course of probation lasting no less than four years. During this period he learns all the "professional ropes," and is initiated into every "trick of the trade." "trick of the trade." Here is a list of his compulsory experiences :-Nine months' attendance at a departmental tribunal of the lower degree, a year at a tribunal of first instance, four months in a Magistrate's office, six with an advocate or notary, nine at a departmental tribunal of the higher degree, eight at a Court of Appeal. When these four years are over, he has still to undergo one more examination, partly written and partly oral, before he can earn the title of "Assessor" and rank as a full-fledged practitioner.

The obligations imposed in France and Belgium during the period of probation are not so stringent as in Germany, but they are pretty severe. Attendance at the Courts for stated times is required, and careful precautions are taken to ensure such attendance being given. Again, the probationer (stagiaire) must attend the meetings of the bureau de consultation gratuite, which meets once a week and undertakes all pauper, or pro Deo, cases, whether criminal or civil. Nowhere in Germany or France is witnessed the singular spectacle, so common at our own Assizes and Quarter Sessions, of a dozen or more prisoners being tried

for small offences with no one assigned to defend them. when there are more than that number of bewigged young barristers in Court only too anxious to try their 'prentice hand at cross-examining a witness and addressing a jury. It may be that the organisation here of a bureau de consultation gratuite would not be within the province of the Inns of Court, but, if not, it might surely be set on foot by the General Council of the Bar and worked through local or circuit committees.

I have now completed my tour of inspection and must bring this paper to a close. As will have been seen, I have confined myself as much as possible to facts, and have left the argument to take care of itself a form of advocacy not common in our Courts, but, when the facts are eloquent, more convincing than any other.

The conclusions to be drawn are, I venture to think, these:

1. That theoretical or non-professional law should, in accordance with the practice of other nations, be taught in England both as part of a liberal education and as introductory to, and closely connected with, technical or professional law.

2. That theoretical law is not at present adequately taught by the Inns of Court, and by reason of the strictly professional character of those Inns, cannot be so taught.

3. That, to remedy this defect, it is expedient that a Faculty of Law should be established in London as part of a Teaching University, and that such Faculty should teach both non-professional and professional law so far as the latter is capable of being taught by lectures and classes.

4. That with regard to so much of professional law as can only be learnt by actual contact with business, a probationary system, modelled on the lines of the Continental stage, should be set on foot by the Inns of

Court or the General Council of the Bar, or by both conjointly.

5. That, to avoid the multiplication of tests, the Faculty of Law in the Teaching University should recognize and give full effect to examinations in pari materia held and passed in any other University within the British Dominions.

6. That the Inns of Court and the Incorporated Law Society should be properly and adequately represented on the proposed Faculty of Law and the other Councils of the University, and should, in return, contribute to the funds of the University, according to their means.

7. That the privileges and powers both of the Inns and of the Law Society, as licensing and disciplinary authorities, should remain unaffected by the proposed reform, the object being not to curtail, but to enlarge the dignity and usefulness of those important bodies.

MONTAGUE CRACKANTHORPE.

A

II. IS THE PRESS FREE?

FEW weeks ago the Lord Chief Justice on one and the same day dismissed three actions for libel against newspapers. The ground of dismissal in all cases was that the action was frivolous. This fact naturally enough attracted considerable attention and led to many comments on the state of the law affecting newspapers, some of these going the length of alleging that the press of England was in no proper sense of the word free. Under these circumstances it may perhaps be interesting to review shortly the legal position of English newspapers.

Taking liberty of the press in the sense in which it was understood by Lord Hardwicke (10 Parl. Hist. 1330),

by Lord Mansfield (Rex v. Dean of St. Asaph, 3 T.R. 431 (note)), and by Blackstone (4 Bl. Com. 151), there can be no doubt but that the newspapers of England are, and have long been, completely free. "The liberty of the press," says Blackstone, "consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published." Since 1695, when the Licensing Act was allowed to lapse, there have been no previous restraints on the press as to what it shall publish. But it may reasonably be contended that Blackstone's definition describes theoretical rather than practical freedom of publication. Even though there be no censorship of the press the laws applicable to matter published may be so arbitrary and oppressive as to render the right to publish freely a right too dangerous to exercise. And in the view of those who say the press is not free this is precisely the case. Their position is that while the press is theoretically free yet the laws applicable to published matter make that freedom almost a fiction, or at any rate a privilege which can be exercised only very charily, and even then subject to ruinous risks.

That this may be the case history clearly shews. It may be doubted whether for some years after the Licensing Act lapsed, the press was practically much freer than it had been before. In 1680 Chief Justice Scroggs had laid down the law thus:-" If you write on the subject of government whether in terms of praise or censure, it is not material; for no man has a right to say anything of government (Carr's Case, 7 State Trials 929). For the best of a century that dictum was unquestioned by the judges. It was not till 1765 that it was formally repudiated by Lord Camden (Entick v. Carrington, 19 State Trials 1030). But as Mr. Dicey in his luminous work on "The Law of the Constitution" has pointed out (p. 238), the great effect of the lapse of the censorship lay not in the alteration of the