V
Til 12 HESPERIAN.
:j
because visitors take only a hurried glance for fear of
disturbing things or of annoying some one. Let the
good w6rk go on. There are" many such little things
that though small in themselves will tend to give vis
itors a better impression of our school and of the
work being done here and which in the end will
be of profit to the school yea, a hundred fold.
The Extent
HON. J. I.. WI'.IISTKK
of Law.
'. Ol'KNINC OK Till'. LAW
AT Til
SCHOOL.
The law is n measureless subject, lis extent .incl inagni
tulc are only limited by the boundary, lines of human know
ledge. It teaches from the highest to the lowliest, protect
ing the young, guarding the weak, avenging the humble and
grasping and restraining the universe ol men in one common
embrace.
The social system rests primarily on the directions, hut
the law regulates and enforces its obligations. The business
relations ol the people, from the greatest enterprise to the
minutest details, are controlled by it and carried on in har
mony with it. Governments are but fabrics of law woven, as
it were, into beautiful and enduring designs, to control the
body politic and promote the mutual safety by the combined
strength of the people. The federal constitution is a law
unto the states and unto the citizens, fixing, establishing, and
maintaining their relative obligations as firmly as the unwrit
ten laws that have been forming through many centuries fix
and maintain the relative obligations of individuals.
Congress and the legislature are making new laws every
year, Intended to meet the demands of our growing country
and the courts arc daily handing down opinions, declaring
what the law is, and applying principles to the multitinduous
affairs of life at the rate of more than ioo volumes a year
So extensive is becoming the field oi law, as applied to the
tiansactions of life by the numerous courts that it is being
stored away in so many thousands of volumes of icports and
so many hundreds of volumes ol text books that no man's
lilc is long enough to read them.
The law pcrmcate's everywhere, into all the doings and
transactions of mankind, in secret and in public places.
Even more than that, it inquires into the motive and intent
of every action, tints making the inmost -thoughts of man
subject to its imperial power. As the wind blows through the
trees, rustling every leaf, moving every twig, shaking every
branch and bending the strong trunk, so the law is fell per
meating eveiywhere throughout the social, business, and
political system of the world.
No man can know all law. No man can understand cre
ation, yet there arc certain natural laws so mastered by scicn.
tific men, that they do understand how material things arc
kept in place, how and when changes occur in the grass that
grows under our leet, and in the worlds that move in the
heavens above. So there arc principles that pervade the
whole field of law that man can master, and when these arc
well understood the application can be made to the countless
conditions of life that are effected by them. These principles
have been gathered through ages, from the time of Justinian,
Littleton, Coke, and IHackstone, to the days of our Justice
Story and Chancellor Kent.
Every man that would become a lawyer, alike a credit to
himself and an honor to his profession, must understand
these principles. They should be so photographed upon his
memory as to be constantly present before him, so that he
can see them, as lie would look upon and study the pictures
in an art room, lie should be able to appreciate and admire
them as he would appreciate thought 'and expression devel
oped in th'c tone and coloring of'a beautiful painting. '
' It is such and only such an acquaintance with the funda
mental principles of law that wilt c'rcatc'iuid'mahuaiirh' gen.
due love for its study and practice.
A student of the law should be as charmed with all histor
ical writings that explain and illustrate its principles as with
the most fascinating novel. He should go back through the
ages and study the growth of nations and the character of
their governments to find how the elements of law were
evolved from the crudities of eaiii.r times, and fashioned
and developed by the progress of the people. Centuries have
passed while the law has been developing into its present
beautiful symmetry, just as it has taken the world a long
time to become able to form a "government of liberty and
law, such as the republic of the United States.
The origin and development of law was beautifully pot-i
trayed by the Hon. Joseph Ncilson in the following illustra
tion: "At the seashore you pick up a pebble, fashioned after
the law of nature in the exact form that best resists pressure,
and worn as smooth as glass. It is so perfect that you take
it as a keepsake, lint could you know its history, from the
time it left the fragment of rock and fell from the overhang
ing cliff into the si, to be taken possession by the uudercuf-
rent, and dragged from one ocean lo another, perhaps
around the world for a hundred ycais, until reduced into its
present form, it was cast upon the beach as you find it, you
would have a fit illustration of what many principles now in
familiar use have endured, thus tried, developed, fashioned
during ages. We stand by a river and admire the great body
of water, (lowing so swiftly lfy, yet could we trace it back to
its source vc find a mere rivulet meandering on, joined by
oilier streams, led by secret springs and by the rains and
dews of heaven, but gathering strength and deepening its
channel as it Hows through the provinces, until it attains its
present majesty. Tints it is that wc can trace the systems
of science to small beginnings, through gradual and countless
contributions, until they finally take their places in use, as
each of you, from helpless childhood and feeble boyhood,
have grown to your present strength and majority. No such
system can be horn in a day. It is not as when nature in the
full ptoportion of her strength suddenly lifted land into mount
ain ranges, but rather as by small accretions during countless
ages, she places her islands in the seas."
A system so developed has about it a perfection that
elicits the admiration of every scholar. Now and 'then we
hear of the cruelties , the hardships and the injustice of the
law. Now and then we meet with an inharmonious joining
of its principles that produces painful results. These arc not
the faults of the law but evils arising from a misapplication of
the law or erroneous judgment pronounced by those who
administer it. It is the duty of the lawyer and of the judge
to ascend to that elevation of greatness from which he can
look upon the law as a science and administer it in all its
beautiful symmetry.
Erskinc said, "The wisdom of the law is greater than any
man's wisdom." Oilier writers have gone further and pro
claimed that the wisdom of the law has become a science.
"The law," said Hlackstone, "is a science which is universal ,
in its extent, applicable to each individual, yet comprehend
ing all knowledge."
The late Judge Mcllvaine of the supreme court of yhio
once said to me, "I want to talk to you about the science of
law,"and entered upon a discourse fascinating and charm
ing. Edmund IJurke, the greatest of English scholars, who
gathered all knowledge into his speeches and prose writings,
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