Constitution and statutes, and of determining whether or no State Constitutions and statutes transgress Federal provisions, would be sufficient to prevent struggle between the National government and the State governments, required great insight and great faith in the soundness and power of a principle."

Although the principle might be sound, the early practice was incontestably difficult. The Court found itself launched upon an absolutely unknown sea, with only the most vague knowledge of what their course was to be, without a compass, without a precedent to guide them. The Court might be intended to fill the most important place in Christendom, it remained for the judges to put the ideal in practice. When they assembled for the first time Chief Justice Jay declared the court ready for business, but not a single litigant appeared. After they had waited a sufficient time to prove that the Republic had no need of them at that hour of her history, the judges adjourned. "Not one of the spectators," an historian of that first session has said, "though gifted with the eagle eyes of prophecy, could have foreseen that out of that modest assemblage of gentlemen, unheard of and unthought of among the tribunals of the earth, a Court without a docket, without a record, without a writ, of unknown and untried powers, and of undetermined jurisdiction, there would be developed, in the space of a single century, a Court of which the ancient world could. present no model, and the modern boast no parallel; a Court whose decrees, woven like. threads of gold into the priceless and imperishable fabric of our Constitutional jurisprudence, would bind in the bonds of love, liberty and law the members of our great Fepublic. Nor could they have foreseen that the tables of Congress would groan beneath the weight of petitions from all parts o the country inviting that body to devise some means for the relief of that overbur

dened tribunal whose litigants are now doomed to stand in line for a space of more than three years before they have a chance to be heard."

No machine, even the most nearly perfect, can run without motive power; the new organ of government seemed likely to die. for lack of nourishment. When the Court assembled in 1790 for the second session in its history, it was again forced to adjourn because no cases had arisen for its august determination. It is little to be wondered that the judges felt grave doubts as to the reality of the need for the Court's existence. Their judicial duties were so light that they did not hesitate to accept other offices at the same time. Chief Justice Jay held the office of Secretary of State during nearly six months of his term upon the bench; and, later, still retaining the Chief Justiceship, he accepted the diplomatic mission to England, which caused his absence from this country for more than a year. When he resigned he had already been elected Governor of New York. Oliver Ellsworth was minister to France and Chief Justice simultaneously, and Marshall acted as Secretary of State and Chief Justice at once during the end of John Adams' term as President. The members of the Court themselves felt very doubtful as to the permanency of its existence; it was a period when, as John M. Shirley wrote: "the politicians or statesmen-of that day bivouaced in the Chief Justiceship on their march from one political position to another." John Jay wrote to President Adams: "I left the Bench perfectly convinced that under a system so defective it would not obtain the energy, weight and dignity which was essential to its affording due support to the National government; nor acquire the public confidence and respect which, as the last resort of the justice of the nation, it should posThe future of such a little-needed organ looked doubtful.

Here came the crisis in the Court's history, a crisis which was met in such a manner that intelligent statesmen thought the judges had once and for all taken leave of their practical senses, and flown to a region so remote as to be unattainable by ordinary mortals. But it was here that the Court, accepting the extraordinary position given it by the framers, took the one stand which was ultimately to give it lasting glory. The framers had done their share, the members of the Court themselves were not behind in doing theirs. In the dark days of inactivity, Washington, disturbed by the threatening appearance of public affairs, sent to the Chief Justice and his associates interrogatories upon certain public questions which were most vitally important to the nation's welfare. He requested the judicial opinion of the Court upon the legal points raised; he asked whether the principles of international law or the treaties of the United States with France gave the latter country or her citizens the right to fit out in the ports of the United States vessels of war, or to refit, re-arm, or increase their armament; whether France had a right to erect courts within the jurisdiction of the United States for the trial and condemnation of prizes taken by armed vessels in her service; whether the principle that free bottoms made free goods, and enemy bottoms enemy goods was a part of the law of nations. The Court declined to give an answer, asserting with great dignity that it would be manifestly improper for them to anticipate any case which might arise, or indicate in any way their opinion in advance of argument. Consider the situation, a Court without litigants, called upon in a dark hour of its country's history by a man universally conceded at the time to be the wisest in the land, to give advice upon international problems of law vitally important to the nation. Had the Court acquiesced in - Washington's request there can be little

doubt that its history would have been far different from what it has been. Instead of its magnificent independence, its aloofness from all questions of policy, its demand that President and Congress shall act before it will determine whether they had the power to act, the Court must have become the national adviser, and shared even that office in large measure with the Attorney-General. Admitting that two of the main characteristics of judicial power are that the Court shall only pronounce judgment on special cases brought before it for determination, and not upon general principles, and that it shall only act when actually called upon to do so by the presentation of a specific case at its bar, it would yet have been easy for the Supreme Court, unknown, untried, apparently unwanted, to accede to what must have seemed the cry of the nation in an hour of need.

If then our highest Federal tribunal is strikingly ideal and even more strikingly untrammeled in a country and age of intensely practical government, it must be due first to the genius of its makers who conceived a need and a place for it totally invisible to the vast majority of their fellowmen, and, second, to the genius of the men who have composed that Court, who have never served at popular demand, and who, taking the ideal the framers gave them, have practically raised it far above material concern. If the American Constitution be a marvel to its students, is not the line of its interpreters no whit less marvellous? "Why did you not tell Judge Marshall that the people of America demanded a conviction?" was the question asked of Attorney-General Wirt after the trial of Burr by the Supreme Court. "Tell him that!" was the reply. "I would as soon have gone to Herschel, and told him that the people of America insisted that the moon had horns, as a reason why he should draw her with them."

NE of the things which strike us most in a survey of medieval London is the little community with its compact corporate life. Whether its raison d'etre is trade as in the City Guild, or religion as in the monastery, or learning as in the college, or law as in the Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery, we find the same characteristics-a small society-complete in its constitution, living together in close intimacy, with its hall or refectory to minister to the needs of the body, its library to minister to the needs of the mind, its chapel to minister to the needs of the soul. The same tendency to associate for a common end shows itself today. Societies to promote politics and education, charity and religion, art and philanthropy, are legion: the difference is that there is not today that social life in common symbolized in the word company or guildthe breaking of bread together-which characterized the early societies. The Inns of Court furnish a good illustration of the change. The life in one of the Inns of Court of the Fifteenth Century as we have it pictured for us in, for example, the "Black Books" of Lincoln's Inn was much more like what life is now, at an Oxford or Cambridge college than in Lincoln's Inn of today. Just as in Oxford or Cambridge you have the undergraduates, the graduates and the Dons, so in the Inns of Court you had the "clerks," the "utter barristers" and the Masters of the Bench. All were socii of the "Felyschippe" and all lived under strict rules, none the less binding that many of them were unwritten and customary like the common law itself.

CHIEF JUSTICE FORTESCUE ON THE INNS OF COURT.

The earliest general account we have of

the Inns of Court and Chancery is that of Sir John Fortescue-the Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Henry VI. in the De Laudicus Anglia Legum-written by him when in exile in France after the crushing defeat of the Lancastrians at Towton in 1461. Fortescue was himself one of the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn at the date when the "Black Books" begin (1431) and there is, therefore a special interest in comparing his account of the Inn with that of the Records themselves.

"There belong," he says, "to it-that is to the system of legal education in Englandten Lesser Inns which are called the Inns of Chancery (Furnival's Inn, Thavies' Inn, Barnard's Inn, Staple's Inn, Clement's Inn, New Inn, Lyon's Inn, Dane's Inn, Clifford's Inn and Strand Inn), in each of which there are a hundred students at the least and in some of them a far greater number, though not constantly residing. The students are, for the most part, young men; there they study the nature of original and judicial writs which are the very first principles of the Law. After they have made some progress here and are more advanced in years they are admitted into the Inns of Court properly so called. Of these there are four in number (Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Inner and the Middle Temple.) In that which is the least frequented there are about 200 students. In these greater Inns a student cannot well be maintained under eight and twenty pounds a year ("about £500 of our money") and, if he has a servant to wait on him-as for the most part they have-the expense is proportionably more. For this reason the students are sons to persons of quality, those of an inferior rank not being able to bear the expenses of maintaining and edu

cating their children in this way, so that there is scarce to be found throughout the Kingdom an eminent lawyer who is not a gentleman by birth and fortune; consequently these have a greater regard for their character and honor than those who are bred in another way." Knights, Barons and the greatest nobility of the Kingdom, sent their sons to the Inns of Court, both to get a tincture of the laws and to form their manners. This is Fortescue's outline. The details we get from the records of the Inns themselves: in the case of Lincoln's Inn from the "Black Books."

LIFE IN AN INN OF COURT IN 1430.

It is altogether a quaint and delightful picture which we get from these records. The society numbered in the middle of the Fifteenth Century, some 160 resident members 13 Masters of the Bench, 47 "utter' barristers and 100 inner barristers or "clerks"-students we should call them now. All these lived within the precincts of the Inn in the Chambers, of which there were 92, each chamber being divided into two. They went to chapel at 6 o'clock every morning, winter and summer-later on it was relaxed to 7 in winter. They had their commons from the buttery, breakfasted together on bread and beer in the Hall,— when breakfast was supplied by the Inn, dined together at 12.30 and supped together on bread and beer again at 6.30. They frequented the Courts at Westminster when the Courts were sitting; attended the Readings and moots; and they amused themselves in the intervals of study in the bowling green of the Inn (spheristerium) and with cards and dice in the Hall in an evening, but not later than 9 o'clock, until the Benchers. came to the decision that these evening amusements were not a very fit preparation for Sunday and forbade play on Saturday nights, for the Benchers were very solici

tous about religion and morals. "All vice," as Fortescue says "is there discouraged and banished."

LEGAL EDUCATION-THE "MOOT" AND THE "BOLT."

The Benchers in those days took legal education also very seriously. The student could not-as in later days-"eat" his way to the Bar. He had to be constant in his attendance at Westminster, at "moots" and "bolts" and "readings" and his education did not end with call, it continued for three years at least after. Neglect was visited with fines and other penalties as appears by this "mem." "No utter barrister to be allowed to have any Boyer pot (i. c., his pint and a half of ale or beer after evensong) unless he give his diligent attendance at all learnings and especially in the learning vacations as well within this house as at Chancery moots." Chancery moots were the moots held in the Inns of Chancery which each Inn of Court had attached to it-in the case of Lincoln's Inn, Furnival's Inn and Thavies' Inn. moot was first "assigned," that is, the subject and the persons to argue it were settled at a preliminary meeting in the evening in the Hall at which the butler was ordered to attend with "the Candle and the Book." The case was cast in the form of pleadings and when it came on was argued first by the Bar and afterwards by the Bench. At the upper end of the Hall sat the Benchers on the Bench, a bar running between them and the rest of the Hall. Opposite the Bench sat on forms the outer and the inner Barristers who were engaged in the moot. The origin of this term outer or "utter" barrister is not clear. Mr. Douglas Walker thinks it arose from the fact of the form extending beyond the bar both ways. Hence those who sat outside were called the outer bar.

The subjects of the moot of those days would have finely puzzled the modern law