mind that the law is lifeless without a sanction and a magyou istracy to enforce it. When the magistracy is established capable of judging, and independent in its judgment, the office of advocate begins and rises at once to dignity and power, as the means of communication between the magistrate and the suitor, and as assessor or aid to the magistrate.

I might also remind you that the law throws its own importance over the professor who teaches it and the advocate who practices it. Upon the learning, character, and fidelity of its practicers, its administration mainly depends, as we know from their history, and as we might have inferred from their office. In all countries and at all times the character of the lawyer and the public consideration accorded to him have been faithful witnesses of the freedom and civilization of the country and time. Where there is arbitrary power, there is no occasion to study the law; when the law begins to reign, its teachers and practicers come forth; the law and the lawyer go together all the world over.

I might add that, if there be any science and any culture tending to invigorate and sharpen the intellect, they are legal science and discipline. Every science rewards those who study it, by enlarging their minds to a comprehension of its learning; and the greater the science, the greater the reward. But there is something in the conduct of litigation which makes the judgment severe and keen, beyond any other discipline to which it is subjected. While, therefore, the study of the law has the effect of enlarging the vision of its practicers, it has also the effect of sharpening the intellect, leading to precision of thought and language, and acuteness in discovering the truth of facts. Who can unravel intrigues, lift the veil from hypocrisy, dissect evidence, and lay falsehood bare, like the practiced lawyer? Better men have never existed, more exalted in intellect, or purer in motive, or more useful in action, than our profession can show. I should delight in placing some of them before you, and in asking my professional brethren to join with me in saying: let us magnify our office; let us cherish it as full of great traditions, of illustrious examples, of beneficent results; let us fulfill it, as the best agent of political and social good; let us recommend it as requiring

the highest talent, the purest intention, the most patient industry.

But I must return from this digression to the science which is the subject of this discourse. Am I not justified in saying of it that, while of the moral sciences it is the most exact, it is of all sciences the most comprehensive in its compass, the most varied and minute in its details, the most severe in its discipline, and the most important to the order, peace, and civilization of mankind?

How shall this science best be learned? There are three methods: the private study of books; the advice and aid of practitioners, amid the bustle and interruptions of practice; and the teaching of public schools. The inadequacy of the first is obvious; the disadvantages of the second are too painfully known to all of us who studied in that way; the third is beyond question the most efficient and complete. There is as much need of public schools for the law as for any other science. There is more, for, the greater the science, the greater the need. Above all others, this science, so vast, so comprehensive, so complicated and various in its details, needs to be studied with all the aids which universities, professors, and libraries can furnish.

Where else so readily as here will the student obtain a view of the law as a whole, and of all its parts in their several relations and dependencies-here, where are collected the records of the science, where there are professors devoted to its teaching, where there are scholars emulous of distinction, and stimulating each other? If medical schools have an advantage over the former method of study and practice by the side of a practicing physician, or if theological schools give better training than the private study of an ordained clergyman, busy with parochial duties, for similar reasons, a school of law, with its large library, its professors set apart to the duty, its lectures, its company of students, its discussions, oral and written, are helps above all that the private office of a busy advocate can offer to a complete legal education. Not that I would altogether dispense with or undervalue the observation of actual practice obtained by attendance in a lawyer's office, during the smaller portion of his legal course, preliminary to the stu

dent coming himself to the bar. After the general survey of the law, the comprehension of its parts, and the examination and study of all those parts in their different relations, which a thorough training in a law-school can best give, it would undoubtedly tend to the advantage of the youthful practitioner to pass a few months in the office of an elder brother, observe its methods, and participate in its active duties.

Forasmuch, therefore, Mr. President and gentlemen, as the science of the law is of proportions so vast, and of importance so urgent, the University of Chicago has established this Faculty of Law. It has appeared to you that the institution which your munificence has founded would be incomplete without a department where should be taught the knowledge of American government and law. This department is now inaugurated. It has been studiously framed; it is anxiously watched. It is commended to the legal profession, to the magistracy, to the whole body of citizens.

So long as this university stands-and why should that not be centuries?-so long may its faculty teach sound law and its inseparable concomitants, pure morality and good citizenship. There are universities in Europe which were founded a thousand years ago, and which seem likely to last for a thousand years to come. Why may it not be said of the University of Chicago a thousand years hereafter, as of a still living and flourishing institution, that it was founded in the year 1859, and that this day its Faculty of Law was solemnly inaugurated, in the presence of judges, lawyers, and citizens? May it also in that day, as in all times hereafter, be said of it, that it has always been an instrument of good, that every generation has profited by its teachings, and that teachers and pupils, without exception, have been true to the State and loyal to the law!

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND PEACE.

At a banquet to the Chinese embassy, given in the month of June, 1868, in response to the toast, "International law, preserving peace in both hemispheres," the following address was made by Mr. Field:

INTERNATIONAL law is rather a grave subject for an afterdinner speech. But I suppose the committee of arrangements thought that the new international relations which this banquet celebrates required some recognition of the value of the rules which define and govern these relations, and the extension and amelioration which they are likely to receive from the entrance of this new member into the family of nations. Certain it is that there never has been presented a better opportunity for the reform of the International Code than that which this Oriental mission now presents.

International law is the fruit of international intercourse. It is the slow growth of ages, first springing forth on the shores of the Mediterranean, then cultivated anew on the Baltic, and thence extended into the open ocean, till it encircles the globe. The more nation meets nation, the more varied are their relations, and the more expanded become the rules respecting them. International law has grown into a system, so vast in its proportions and so diversified in its details, that it affects, to a great degree, the prosperity and happiness of the human race. Unconscious of it as we may be, it nevertheless guides and supports us in ways innumerable. It marches at the head of armies, it commands in every fleet, it guards the deck of the merchantman, it protects the trader and the traveler in foreign lands. Each new member of the brotherhood of states brings a contribution to its precepts. Its tendency is ever toward amelioration. That great empire which we now welcome into the community of nations will help us, we trust, to still further ameliorations.

Our policy is peace. The beneficent aim of the law of nations is peace. And, although the day may be distant when wars will cease, we believe that it is possible to introduce such reformation of international law as greatly to lessen the occa

If the

sions of war, and to mitigate its evils when it occurs. negotiators of any two states of Christendom were to set themselves industriously at work to remove every cause of difference, and interpose the greatest obstacles to the occurrence of hostilities, can there be a doubt that war between them would be improbable, not to say impossible?

But, however it may be between us and the nations of Europe, let us make war impossible, or all but impossible, between us and the nations of Asia. Here we stand, between the East and the West, stretching out our hands over either ocean; and, while we turn a face sometimes of defiance and anger toward the former, let us begin our international relations with the latter in the spirit of amity never to be broken. May the Pacific Sea ever be peaceful in another sense than that in which it was named! May the treaty about to be made between America and China form a new and better chapter of the law of nations-the opening chapter of a new book, more beneficent than any book of treaties that has ever yet been written! I envy the negotiators of that treaty, both of them Americans, representing, one the youngest, and the other the oldest, of the nations. The wise and the good of all lands will say to them: Write that which will stand for all time, as the model of a just and equal compact between sovereign nations, neither of which desires an advantage over the other, but both of them seeking the freest intercourse of persons, the most liberal exchange of products, constant reciprocation of good offices, and perpetual peace; thus will they help to build up that International Code of the future, in describing which I will venture to use the language, slightly altered, of Sir William Jones:

"And sovereign law, the world's collected will,

O'er thrones and globes elate,

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill."