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The Green Bag.

gins with Lect. XII. p. 353 (Vol. I.), and ex tends to p. 524, Lect. XXVII.; while much of the matter in Vol. II. might with equal or more propriety have been classed with it. Indeed, the one great service that Austin rendered to English law was that in all his lectures, whatever their declared purpose, he set the example of this analysis, and was careful and discriminating himself in the use of legal terms. He cleared up a great many fallacies and confusions by his own efforts, and he did still more good by showing the way in which they and others like them were to be got rid of. If his example had only been followed in this respect, we might now have had a legal language which would di minish the time and labor spent in argument by at least one half. He also gave back to English law some indispensable notions and distinctions that had originally belonged to it, but of which it had almost been deprived by neglect or the mistakes of his predecessors; for example, person and thing, jus in rem, jus in per sonam, etc., though even these he failed to bring into clear and intelligent connection with the " practical " rules of his contem poraries, so that they could reason from them. And so plans of the greatest promise came to an untimely end, in disappointment, and what seemed to be hopeless failure. One more was added to the countless number of lives, capable of much utility to their fellows, that have been literally thrown away in Eng land and America for the want of some pro vision enabling them to pursue their favorite science or art in the interests of humanity at large, and without reference to the imme diate profit or glory of any school or sect. Mrs. Austin tells us that "it was from no unsteadiness of purpose, no shrinking from labor, no distaste to a life of comparative poverty and obscurity, that he abandoned the pursuit to which he had hoped to devote his life. If there had been found for him some quiet and humble nook in the wide and rich domains of learning, it is my firm conviction

that he would have gone on, slowly, indeed, as the nature of his study and his own nature rendered inevitable, and with occasional in terruptions from illness, but with unbroken tenacity and zeal to the end of his life." Yet this was in a land where there are more endowments for educational purposes, more wealth given for the support of teachers and students, than in all Protestantism be side! It is melancholy to reflect that while Austin was starved out of his career there were half a dozen professorships and like places in the older universities, intended for exactly that purpose, held as acknowledged and shameless sinecures by men who could very well live without them. (The proof of this may be found in the Reports on Legal Education, already referred to.) But we of America must be very cautious how we re buke the faults of our English cousins in this regard. While millions are lavished yearly, by public and private liberality, upon schools and colleges of every kind, how many places are there among them all where a man like Austin could find even " the quiet and hum ble nook " that would enable him to pur sue his work free from anxiety as to tuition fees? Is there one such nook in the country, except it may be in the one department of Theology? and there would the most ear nest pursuit of truth recommend him so well as a correct utterance of the particular shib boleth of his sect? Although Mr. Austin lived twenty-five years after the failure of the Temple lectures, he never resumed his task, and never completed the course in ac cordance with his original plan. He seems to have thrown aside the entire mass of manuscripts in disgust, and to have shrunk from even the effort of arranging its frag ments. In 1832 he had published the first six lectures, under the title, " The Province of Jurisprudence Determined; " but when the small edition was exhausted after some years, he would neither permit it to be reprinted without change nor give the labor necessary to revise it to his own satisfaction. It might seem that he had dismissed the subject finally