A Discourse on the Study of the Laws

by Roger North

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1824. ... NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Note 1, page 1. "A learned man in the laws of this realm," says one who was himself very learned, "is 'long a-making; the student thereof, having sedentariam vitam, is oot commonly long lived; the study abstruse and 'difficult, the occasion sudden, the practice dangerous;" such is the encouragement extended by Sir Edward Coke, in the Preface to his Entries, to the stur dents of his day, when the law was contained within the compact compass of some thirty or forty folios. What then must be the situation of the student of the nineteenth century, and how in his "shortlived" career can he hope to master the knowledge.which is scattered through four or five hundred weighty volumes? The evil is an increasing one, and the termination of it will probably be that which is predicted by an able writer, " the tacit ignorance of all the professors of the law." In the mean time, and until some expert codifier furnishes us with a less complicated system, the student must struggle, as he best may, across the dry and stony tracts of the old law, over mountains of modern reports, and through streams of statutes, of which (reversing the case of the Niger) the termination is undiscoverable. It is with the intention of lightening in some degree the toils of the student, as he is making his way through the older authorities of the law, that the foregoing treatise is presented to his notice. Although the last century and a half has produced strange alterations in the course and extent of those studies which are required from a student of the law, yet the present publication will not be thought useless or impertinent, when it is considered that the principles and foundation of our jurisprudence are contained in those venerable authors whose writings are ...

24 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 2005