1 83 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. scholars as such, to the experts in legal and juristic learning, this remark, at the best, is but half a truth. The practical work of carrying through any considerable measure of reform, of getting it enacted, is indeed peculiarly a task for the practical lawyer. His judgment also is important in the wise shaping of such a measure ; as his authority and influence will be quite essential in gaining for it the confidence of legislators and their constituents. But no " wise and well-directed efforts " of this character can dispense with the approval and co-operation of the legal scholar. I am speaking, of course, of competent persons, in both the classes referred to, and not of pedants or ignoramuses ; and am assuming on the part of the systematic student of law, as on the part of the judge or prac- titioner, a suitable outfit of sense, discretion, preliminary profes- sional education, and capacity to understand the eminently practical nature of the considerations which govern the discussion of legal questions. Perhaps I may be permitted to speak on this subject with the more confidence, as having been a busy practitioner at the bar of a large city for eighteen years, before beginning an experience as a professor at the Harvard Law School which has now continued for twenty-one years. Professor Dicey has remarked, I believe, of the jurist's work in England, of the sort of work which he himself has so admirably done, that it "stinks in the nostrils" of the average English prac- titioner ; and Sir Frederick Pollock, in his inaugural lecture, twelve years ago, as Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, in speaking of his associates there, Dicey and Bryce and Anson, says, with dignity, that they are "fellow-workers in a pursuit still followed in this land by few, scorned or depreciated by many, the scientific and systematic study of law. " ^ That state of things is slowly disappearing in England, as well as here, with the gradual improvement in the legal education of the bar. One of the best and most important results of this improvement will be a more cordial respect and a closer co-operation between the different parts of our profession, the scholars and the men of affairs. Noth- ing is more important to the dignity and power of our common calling. Let me now finally come down to this question : If what I have been saying as to the scope of the work of the University teaching of law be true, what does it mean as regards the outfit and the carrying on of these schools . ^ Oxford Lectures, 38
