PROFESSIONAL STUDIES-LAW.

AMERICAN AUTHORITIES.

JOHN RUTLEDGE.

CHIEF JUSTICE RUTLEDGE TO HIS BROTHER EDWARD RUTLEDGE.

DEAR EDWARD:-The very first thing with which you should be thoroughly acquainted, is the writing short-hand, which you will find of infinite advantage in your profession, and (which will) give you the means of great superiority over others who do not write it. I need not enlarge on the advantage of it, but say, I think you will find it absolutely necessary; therefore be master of it, as soon as you possibly can learn it, and when you can once write it, take notes of every thing at Court. I would even write down in shorthand, cases you hear which are not worth transcribing fair. Your time may as well be employed in writing as hearing them. If they are not worth transcribing, no time is lost, and the writing it upon every occasion, will soon make you perfect, and able to keep up with the speakers, which is the chief end of writing in this manner. I would take down every public discourse, either at the bar or pulpit, which you hear, for this very purpose. And now I mention the latter, by no means fall into the too common practice of not frequenting a place of worship. This you may do, I think, every Sunday. There is generally a good preacher at the Temple Church, and it will be more to your credit to spend a few hours of that day there, then as it is generally spent in London, especially by the Templars. Be constant in attending the Chancery out of terms, and when there are no sittings at Nisi Prius in London or Westminster;--for I would prefer attending the King's Bench and sittings of the Chief Justicef of that Court at Nisi Prius when they are held, and remember what I hinted to you of attending alternately in the different Courts by agreement between you and some of your intimate fellow students, and then of comparing and ex

* John Rutledge, Governor of South Carolina in the Revolutionary period (1776–82), Judge of the State Court of Chancery (1784-87), Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States (1789-91) and Chief Justice of S. Carolina (1791-1800) was born in 1739, a student of the Temple, and commenced practice in Charleston in 1761, was eminent as an orator, and practitioner, and died in 1800. † Lord Mansfield was Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

changing notes every evening: by which means, if you select your proper acquaintance, in whose judgment you can confide, you will have the same advantage as if you attended all the Courts in person. Don't pass too slightly over cases and not note them, because you think they are trifling. Many cases appear so at a cursory overlooking, and indeed, may be not very material, and yet you will find use for them.

But you must not exert yourself to the utmost in being able by some means or other, to attend the House of Commons constantly, or at least whenever any thing of consequence is to come on. There, I believe, you will not be suffered to take notes; however, you will soon know that. You must get introduced to Mr. Garth,* and probably by his means, you may always get in. Don't say that they have come to a resolution not to admit any strangers into the gallery, and by that means you could not get in, as Hugh did. I know it is a common order to clear the galleries, but that people there generally fall back and no notice is taken then of them; for you must at all events get admittance there, and make youself well acquainted with the speakers. Reading lectures upon oratory will never make you an orator. This must be obtained by hearing and observation of those, who are allowed to be good speakers; not of every conceited chap who may pretend to be so. I would also have you attend the House of Lords upon every occasion worth it. You will find you may easily get introduced to some Lord, who will take you in with him, and, by no means, spare a few guineas at Christmas among the door-keepers, &c.; for that, I warrant, will do the business. I would not have this make you a dabbler in politics. What I intend by it is, that you may have opportunities of seeing and hearing the best speakers, and of acquiring a good manner and proper address, and of being able, on occasion, of giving your sentiments, when necessary, upon what you have seen and heard there. I believe Sheridan is the only lecturer in England upon oratory, and I think it would be advisable to attend him, and mark well his observations. He reads with propriety though he is much too stiff, and his voice exceeding bad. I would go a short circuit just before you come out, but it should be to a place where you might have something worth seeing, besides the mode of conducting business there, which is soon understood, i. e., to Oxford or some other place generally visited by travelers. The Circuit Billf

• The gentleman here referred to (Charles Garth, Esq.), was a member of Parliament and Agent for the colony of South Carolina.

↑ Until the year 1769, Circuit Courts were not established in the Province of South Carolina, all judicial business, (except that which was committed to justices of the peace,) having been done

goes with Lord Charles, (Montague, Ed.) If it is confirmed at home, (England, Ed.) you should make yourself acquainted from experience of the method of doing business upon the circuit in England. If you stick close to French and converse generally in that language, you will soon be master of it, and I would not have you attempt it, unless you are resolved to speak it as well and as fluently as you do English ;-for I have no notion of being such a Frenchman as most of our Carolinians are, who have been taught that language, who can seldom do more than translate it after much difficulty. I think you may, only by attending to it occasionally, make yourself perfectly master of it, and so as to be able to read it or speak it off hand, fluently, and not as if you took your words out of a vocabulary. Whatever you attempt, make yourself completely master of, for nothing makes a person so ridiculous, as to pretend to things he does not understand, and it will not be sufficient for a man in such case to rest satisfied, because he may pass as a complete scholar, amongst those with whom he may have to do in general, who perhaps may know little about the matter;-such a one may meet sometimes with his superiors, and in what situation will he then be? I know nothing more entertaining and likely to give you a graceful manner of speaking, than seeing a good play well acted. Garrick is inimitable; the other actors not worth seeing after him in the same characters. Mark him well.

You must not neglect the Classics, but rather go through them from beginning to end. I think you had better get a private tutor, who will point out their beauties to you, and make you in six months, at your age, better acquainted with them than a boy in school generally is in seven or eight years. Read Latin authors and the best frequently, so as to be as well acquainted with Latin as French. I have often thought, was I to begin the world again, I would do what I am sure would be of after use. Make a book, and in it note down the remarkable expressions and sayings of wise and great men whenever I met with them;-not to serve as Joe Miller's jests or a collection of bon-mots, to make one pass for a merry fellow, or rather a maker of fun at table for a pack of fools; but often to embellish your arguments or writings; indeed amongst wits it would be useful, and show, that a man had not con

exclusively in the city of Charleston. The Circuit bill here spoken of, was passed by the Provincial Legislature in 1769, and was taken to England, for confirmation by the King in Council, by Lord Charles Greville Montague, who had been Governor of the Province, and was then returning to England. This Circuit bill did not give original jurisdiction to the Courts created by it; and all writs and other civil process issued from, and were returnable to, the Court of Common Pleas in Charleston. In 1791 the Circuit Courts were invested with complete, original, and final jurisdiction.

You see Lord Bacon did not

fined himself entirely to dry law. think this beneath him;-read his collection of Apothegms. However, I would not confine this to the sayings of the ancient generals, poets, and heathen philosophers, (though amongst them there are many good things) but bring it down to the present times; and in it, I would insert the beautiful passages I met with, such as were striking, nervous, or pathetic in the different authors I read in the different languages. Horace, Juvenal, and Virgil, would add not a little to this collection. Now is your time to begin, and go through a good deal of this business; when you enter upon the practice of the law, it will be too late to begin this. I would have you read occasionally the purest English authors to acquire an elegant style and expression. What different impressions do the same sentiments make when conveyed in different modes of expression; but for a man who speaks in public, whose business it is, not to be content with barely proving a thing by perhaps a dull argument, after having wearied out his hearers with bad language, and a deal of tautology, and if he has said some good things, has buried them in rubbish; but to engage the constant attention of his hearers, to command it, and to carry immediate conviction along with him. The history of England should be read with great care and attention;-all the different writers of that history, read and compared together, and your own observations made upon them all together, showing wherein they agree, disagree, &c, and in which credit is to be placed. It will be necessary for your own use, to make a compendium of this history which no man can carry in his head.

Don't neglect to learn surveying; that is the principal branch of mathematics which you will have occasion for, and I would be thoroughly acquainted with it;—not only to work a problem upon paper, but with the practical part also. Consult Corbet upon every matter with regard to your studies in which you are in any doubt. And now with regard to particular law books;-Coke's Institutes seem to be almost the foundation of our law. These you must read over and over with the greatest attention, and not quit him, till you understand him thoroughly, and have made your own every thing in him which is worth taking out. A good deal of his law is now obsolete and altered by acts of Parliament, however, it is necessary to know what the law was before so altered. Blackstone I think useful. The Reports are too tedious to be all read through, at least whilst you are in England. I would give the preference to the most modern, as there you will find doctrines in the old books often corrected or exploded; and it will be of no use to stock your Common

cases.

Place Book, (which I hope to find very copious and well stored,) with what is not law, and perhaps never was. I look upon it, that if you go through all the cases reported since the Revolution, when the Constitution seems to have been reëstablished upon its true and proper principles; and since which time, by the alteration of the Judges' commissions and their increasing independency to what it is at this day, the law has been in its greatest perfection, and not encroaching either upon the people's liberties or the prerogative ;— I say, if you do this, you will have a collection of the very best The old ones which either agree with the modern or are contradictory to these, you will see confirmed or exploded, and by always turning to examining and marking them when reading your new cases, you will by this occasional reading them, have read them as effectually, and indeed much more so, than if you had set out with them at first. But I would read every case reported from that time to the present. Distinguish between your readings of law and equity, and don't confound the two matters;-they are kept very distinct in the courts in England, though here blended together very often and very ridiculously. And the same method of reading cases should be followed also with regard to the Equity books. I would have you also read the Statute Laws throughout, to know when a thing is allowed to be law, whether it be by common or statute law, which we are often very ignorant of. The recitals in these laws should be particularly noticed, which are the best authority to know, what the law was before making the Act. Vast numbers of them you will find of no manner of use, except indeed, as matter of history, in which light, they will afford you some assistance, but this thing, I think, in the main, will be of vast service to you. When I say you should read such a book, I do not mean just to run cursorily through it, as you would a newspaper, but to read it carefully, and deliberately, and transcribe what you find useful in it. If this method was taken, one would seldom read any book, without reaping some advantage from it. Stock yourself with a good collection of law maxims, both Latin and English, they are of great use. Don't omit any that you come across, and the authorities for them, which may often be of service in the application of them. Make yourself thoroughly acquainted with all the terms of the law, which you easily may, now when they are so polished and modernized as they are at present, and free from the old Frenchified, uncouth words in which they were formerly couched. However, you must understand the terms, to understand the authors that use them. The little book called Termes de le Ley, or terms of the