Well, here we are, a lot of lawyers, together by ourselves; rather a rare occasion for an assembly composed exclusively of lawyers. You know what they used to say of the Roman Augurs, that whenever they met each other on the street they used to smile, and if half of what is said of lawyers is true, the same should be said of them now (Laughter).

The wits and satirists of all ages have sat down upon us pretty heavily. We have been accused of being the promoters of strife, grinding the faces of the poor, mere sophists, disregarding truth, dwelling upon quips and quirks and trifles. There is no form of misdoing which has not at some time or other been imputed to us. Well, now, I suppose that pretty much all of the wit, and pretty much all of the point of that, lies in its incongruity and its falsity. (Applause). Occasional exceptions occur, unworthy members of the profession do appear from time to time, and the incongruity between those and what the profession is generally found to be, and what it ought to be, is so great as to become ridiculous. But when we look for the real estimate in which lawyers and the legal profession are held by the community at large, we have better evidence to which to resort.

I suppose that three-fourths at least of all the members of the Congress of the United States, from the organization of the nation until the present time, have been lawyers. The statutes of the United States to-day, are they not a model monument of their learning, their devotion, their wisdom, their skill. A great majority of all the legislative bodies of all the States of the Union are, and ever have been, composed of lawyers. The great executive officers and the magistrates of the different states are for the most part lawyers. Can we estimate what the community would do if the profession of the law were stricken from the pursuits of human life? In whom or to whom are great pecuniary trusts and other of their prominent interests so entrusted as to lawyers? And how rarely is the trust betrayed. Why, I remember not very long ago a reverend gentleman whose name, were I at liberty to mention it, you would at once recognize as that of the most eminent and most distinguished of all divines, said to me that upon a certain occasion he was called upon by another to give advice upon matters relating to conduct. He gave to it his best reflections and came to a conclusion, but such was his sense of the importance of the business, and such he thought to be its difficulty that he could not feel sufficiently assured of the correctness of his conclusions. It had nothing to do with property; it had nothing to do with any legal right. It was a purely moral question, but deeply affecting character, deeply affecting reputation, both present and subsequent. He did not go the members of his own profession; he went neither to to theologians nor to moralists. He went to a lawyer whose name, were I at liberty to mention it, you would recognize as that of one of the most distinguished among you, and certainly not one of those who would be considered of the spiritually-minded sort. (Laughter.) A purely hard-headed business man. He submitted the problem to him and received an answer confirming his own conclusions, but accompanied with reasons so luminous and satisfactory that all doubt vanished from his mind.

We have some right, therefore, to say that the teachings of the law as they are pronounced by its highest ministers and by its judges, are not lacking in their moral force. Now, why is this theory? It is not because lawyers are any better than any other class of men, that they are started better, or that they become better after starting. It is because their labors have to do with the direct and immediate interests of mankind. It is because holding that property must pass from one hand to another, and deciding whether men shall go to the penitentiary and be deprived of their freedom; it is because in deciding these interests they have submitted to no other determinations except those founded upon the everlasting basis of truth and right. (Applause.) To so much of that everlasting basis as can be arranged and applied by the wisest and best of our race.

Now I have already made my speech over in yonder building, and I am not going to inflict upon you another. I find myself upon this elevated position that looks as if it were the bench of Judges and I the Chief Justice, and you the members of the bar. I shall treat these gentlemen here as Associate Justices, and shall not consult them upon the order of proceedings here. They will, of course, speak when they are spoken to, and give their opinions only when called for. [Laughter.] We have in the city in which my labors are spent, what they call a short calendar, and it is called on Friday too. It deals in causes that are short, and which take up very little time indeed, and they have another element,-that for the most part they have no merits. [Laughter and applause]. I propose to take up that short calendar, and from time to time to call those cases that are set down for them, a calendar not made by me or by the clerk of the court, and I think you must all agree with me that upon this occasion, the first ones who had to do with that great law school to which all of us, or most of us owe so much, should be the first person to address you. I therefore introduce to you Professor Langdell.

Professor Langdell was greeted with tremendous applause, and spoke as follows:-

GENTLEMEN OF THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL ASSOCIATION, I am very grateful for this reception. You will be surprised to learn that this is the second time that your president has called upon me to speak to the Harvard law school. The first time was nearly seventeen years ago, when I was about assuming the duties of the Dane Professorship, and I do not know that I can do better than to begin where I left off then. [Laughter]. On that occasion I called attention to the anomalous condition of legal education in English speaking countries. That anomaly consisted in the fact, that in those countries as a rule, the knowledge of law had been acquired only through, or in connection with its principle and administration, while in the rest of the world law had always been taught and learned in universities, and I ventured to express the opinion that the true interests of legal education in this country required that in this respect we should no longer follow in the footsteps of England, our mother country, but should bring ourselves into harmony with the rest of Christendom. Since that time I have not concerned myself with legal education beyond or outside of the Harvard Law School, but I tried to do my part toward making the teaching and the study of law in that school worthy of a university; toward making the venerable institution, the 250th anniversary of which we are now celebrating, a true university, and the Law School not its least creditable department; in short, toward placing the Law School so far as the different circumstances would permit, in the position occupied by the law faculties of the universities of continental Europe. And what I say for myself in this respect, I am sure I could say with equal truth for all my associates. In order to accomplish this result, so far as it depended upon the Law School, it was necessary to establish two things; first that law is a science, and secondly that all the valuable materials of that science are contained in printed books. If law be not a science, the University best consults its dignity in having nothing to do with its teaching. If it be not a science, it can best be learned by serving an apprenticeship to one engaged in the practice of it. If it be a science it will not be disputed that it is one of the greatest and most difficult. Again the University can only teach law from printed books.

If therefore there are other and better means of teaching or learning law, or if printed books can only be used to the best advantage in connection with other means, for example working in a lawyer's office, or attendance upon courts of justice, it must be confessed that Universities cannot furnish such means. But if printed books are the source or sources of all legal learning, if every student who would in any degree master law as a science must resort to those ultimate sources, if the only aid which it is possible for him to receive is such as may be given by teachers who have travelled the same road with him, then it fairly follows that a University and a University alone has all the means and all the facilities for teaching and learning the law. [Applause.]

My associates and myself, therefore, have constantly acted upon the principle that law is a science and that it must be learned from printed books, accordingly the library has been the most constant object of our regard. We have not done so much for it as we should be glad to do, but, we have done much. Indeed the library of the present day, one would find difficulty in identifying as the library of seventeen years ago. Everything that laboratories are to the chemist, what the museum of Natural History is to the Zoologist, what the Botanical Garden is to the Botanist, the library is to our institution. If such is the nature of law and the mode of studying it, it easily follows: first that a good academic education is necessary for its skillful pursuit, secondly, that the study of law should be regular, systematic and earnest, not intermittent, desultory or perfunctory, thirdly, that its study should be prosecuted for a length of time bearing some reasonable proportion to its extent and difficulty.

To secure the first of these results we have established an examination for admission to those who are not graduates. To secure the third we have made three years study necessary in all cases for a degree. To secure the second we have done several things. First, we have established a course of study which is required to be pursued in the prescribed order. Secondly, we have established annual examinations to be held at the end of each year in the study of that year. Third, we require the students to pass their examination in the studies of the first year at the end of that year as their condition of passing into the second year, and in the studies of the second year at the end of that year as a condition of passing into the third year. And we do not permit the students to pass the examination of the studies of any year unless he has been regularly admitted to that year at the beginning of the year. Nor do we permit a candidate for a degree to pass an examination any year except the year to which he properly belongs. Fourthly, we have increased the amount of instruction in the school, in the last seventeen years, from 20 hours a week to something like 35 hours a week, and this enables us to give the entire course of three years every year, thus giving to every class its appropriate instruction.

Mr. Langdell then summed up the results of these measures and gave an eloquent tribute to President Eliot. He continued as follows:

One other observation I will make, gentlemen, connected with what I have said already. I spoke of the teacher of law having travelled the same road which his pupils are now travelling. I wish to emphasize the fact that it is the office of the teacher of law to accompany his pupils on the road that is new to them, but with which he is well acquainted from having often travelled it before. What qualifies a person, therefore, to become a teacher of law is not experience in the work of a lawyer's office; is not experience in dealing with men; is not experience in the trial nor argument of causes; nor experience, in short, in the highest legal knowledge of any form, but experience in the acquisition of legal knowledge. Not the experience of a Roman advocate nor of a Roman praetor, still less the experience of a Roman procurator, but the experience of a Roman jurist consult. I repeat my thanks to you, gentlemen. (Applause.)

Mr. Carter-We are fortunate in having among us a gentleman who I think entered the school at its very origin, and who having passed through a long career in his profession, remains in his green old age to give endorsement to our present enterprise, and I beg to present the Honorable Samuel Sewall.

Mr. President: - It gives me the highest pleasure to meet so large an assembly of lawyers, and especially when they are engaged in so noble a work as the improvement of legal education and assisting the Harvard Law School. When I look back upon my early entrance upon the profession, (for I shall not stop to praise the Law School, it has already been well done.) I feel now that I was in the dark ages. The state of law at that time, especially the remedial part of law, was so wretched that I can look at it in no other way than as a part of the dark ages. The first thing was the principle established that no man except in certain instances, could be a witness in his own case. That was the strong principle on which the law was based, that no person who had the slightest interest in the case could be a witness. The first principle then of our remedial law as it was to exclude one of the best modes of getting evidence and getting at the truth. They seemed to think in those days that to exclude every sort of a witness was a system in getting of the truth, because all men were liars. [Laughter and applause.] That you know is all changed.

Then the next miserable thing in our law was the state of pleading. This artificial logical system by which it was supposed that justice was promoted proved in practice miserable failure, and every person who practised at that time will admit, I think, that it was a miserable failure; for a man might be driven out of court in a good case upon a point of pleading which had nothing to do with the real merits of the case, and the defendant in the same way, by faults of pleading, might have judgment and execution against him. Now I say that was a wretched state of things. Then, also, we may look at little further. We find that the Supreme Court had not full equity jurisdiction. Then equity jurisdiction was exceedingly meagre, and it frequently happened that a man had a 'good case in law, that is, he had a right which was recognized by all the courts-recognized everywhere-but the remedies of the common law were entirely insufficient to vindicate those rights; he could not get an injunction in any case; could not bring men to the specific performance of contracts, and in many other ways in which the direct remedy of equity would be sure, the common law refused to execute. This was acknowledged by our court and was all remedied since by the court having full jurisdiction. Then there was one other thing which in those times was very bad. We had no court of insolvency when a man failed, and frequently nothing was done when he failed to enable creditors to attach his property, and if he made an assignment the assignment was not always just; that is, they did not put all the creditors on an equal footing. There has been no remedy known for this except the insolvency system. A national insolvency system would be more perfect if we could get one, but as far as as the State goes the insolvency system is a very good one, and all that we see has been, as you all know, perfectly remedied, and you have a better system to practise under than you ever had. I might go further to specify other branches of the law, but I do not think it would be just to you to trespass on your time in that way. I think, taking it altogether, that the present state of the law of Massachusetts is as great an improvement on the old system as that magnificent Austin building is compared with the miserable place in which I studied law. (Applause.) There is one branch of the law, however, which has been studied with great success since I began my practice in the law, and that is the abstruse doctrine of fees and retainers, whidh has been studied with great success, not only in this state, but I believe still more in our sister state, New York. (Laughter).