The North American Review (Volume 74) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Abt. IV. ? Commentaries on American Law. By James Kent. Seventh edition. New York. 1851. 4vols. 8vo. The law of tbe land is, in the last resort, the controller of all civil and social action, the protector of all interests, the preserver of all property, the guardian of all rights, the redresser of all wrong; this, at least, it assumes to be, and if it be not all this, nothing else is. We cannot, therefore, think it altogether wise for society to leave to one class all knowledge of a thing so important; to leave it as the exclusive possession of a profession, all of whose members are tempted, and some yield to the temptation, to treat their profession as a trade, and use their knowledge only as the tools of a trade. And yet, in most countries and in most ages, this has been the case. While the law has been, always and everywhere, that which more than any other thing concerned all, the knowledge of it has been left to a very few. One reason for this is, and has been, undoubtedly, the supposed difficulty of learning the law. And certainly no amount of time or labor is more than enough for the acquisition of that knosvledge which is to be used professionally. "No man," said a lawyer who knew as much as most of his brethren, " can learn all the law; the most that he can do is to learn where and how to find the law." But to become acquainted with its general principles and provisions, is not now impossible nor yet very difficult. Once it may have been; once, the professional student knew not how to begin, or in what direction to go; and the oldest veteran hardly knew how to advise or aid the student in his attack upon the rude and undigested mass. But it is not so now. Blackstone began the work of systematizing the study of the law. Others have followed, until the only embarrass...