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that the common law, in its true extent, includes the law of nations, the civil law, the maritime law, the law-merchant, and the law, too, of each particular country, in all cases in which those laws are peculiarly applicable. All the foregoing subjects of discussion should be contrasted with the practice and institutions of other countries. They should be fortified by reasons, by examples, and by authorities; and they should | be weighed and appreciated by the precepts of natural and revealed law." To this man, James Wilson, jurisprudence was a synthetic science, and not a mere group of isolated subjects to be taught independently and without a comprehen sive presentation of the interdependent and reciprocal relations of its various branches; to him it was also a philosophic ethical science, based on reason and justice, the various subdivisions of which he believed must necessarily be studied as a correlated whole for a proper comprehension of the particular parts. The proposed law course was established to consist of twenty-four lectures per annum, the fees to be paid by each pupil not to exceed ten guineas, and James Wilson on the 17th of August, 1790, was unanimously elected by the trustees by ballot to the chair created, and thus became the first professor of law in America. The initial lecture was delivered on the 1 5th of Decem ber, 1790, in the presence of President Washington and many distinguished guests, including his cabinet, members of Congress, the judges of the national and state courts, and the executives, as well as legislative bodies, of both Pennsylvania and Philadel phia. At the conclusion of the lecture, the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him. Many ladies were present, among them Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Alexander Hamil ton, and Wilson alluding to the ladies, facetiously remarked that he had never before addressed such " a fair audience." Invitations had been issued by Mr. Justice Wilson — for he was then senior Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States —
to the President and his Cabinet, the mem bers of Congress, etc., etc., and the Penn sylvania Colonial Records show that the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsyl vania formally resolved to attend in a body. The lectures are included in Wilson's Works, a second edition of which was published in 1896' by James DeWitt Andrews, LL.D., who so truly says in his introductory note: "Would you trace the history of popular governments, you will find the whole out line traced by the master hand of Wilson in these lectures, prepared especially to instruct the American student as to the difference between the institutions which had before existed and the political system of law and government which exists in the United States. ... In one respect Wilson's Works are remarkable. It is in this: each funda mental principle is in every instance traced to its source, whether it shall be a principle enunciated by Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Gaius, Puffendorf, Locke, Grotius or Hobbes, Descartes or Hume, Vattel or Domat, who may have written upon some proposition or problem of the law or government." There is no clearer or more satisfactory exposition anywhere of the basic principles of our system of jurisprudence and government than Wilson enunciated in these lectures and in the luminous arguments concerning the Constitution, which have fortunately been preserved to posterity, and which as the years go on, and Wilson's real worth becomes fully appreciated, are destined to be held in the highest esteem. Wilson's earliest biographer, Robert Wain, Jr., writing of him in Sanderson's Lives of the Signers, a quarter of a century after his death, described him as "about six feet in height, erect, or rather, if the expression may be allowed, stooping backward. " He also says: "His person was dignified and respec table; and his manner a little constrained, but not ungraceful. His features could not be called handsome, although they were far from disagreeable; and they sometimes bore the appearance of sternness, owing to his extreme nearness of sight." 1 Wilson's Works, Callaghan and Co., Chicago.
