ferred by the Trustees on his students. He had no associates in instruction. There was, consequently, no Law Faculty. He was simply a professor reading a course of lec tures. He held his hearers to attendance by the excellence of his expositions and the corresponding interest aroused in themselves. They paid him the respect due to his talents and the reverence due to his virtues. The writer speaks positively upon these points, from the information supplied to him by one of his students, no longer living, a man of great ability and spotless character. After his retirement, the Trustees of the College filled their law professorship by the appointment of William Betts, Esq., a highly esteemed member of the New York Bar. It is not known that any courses of lectures were delivered by him. It is certain that none were when the existing Law School origi nated. His relations to legal instruction were then purely nominal. He was active and earnest in promoting the organization of the Law School as it now exists. In fact, in 1858, the City of New York was, so far as legal instruction is concerned, unbroken and virgin ground. The memory of Chancellor Kent, as a lecturer, had practically died away. He was without a succes sor anywhere, not merely in the College, but throughout the city. Even thinking men, who believed in schools of theology and in colleges of medicine, had little or no faith in schools of law. The law was deemed for the most part to be a collection of " modern in stances," to be found in the late reports, rather than a science to be mastered by the process of deduction from great and lead ing principles. Some praiseworthy attempts had been made to establish courses of lec tures; but all had failed, as they were founded on erroneous methods. It was not without misgiving, it may be not without trepida tion, that a new effort was made to cultivate ground apparently so unpromising. The beginning of the Law School as it exists at present is now reached. It is un fortunate that most of the members of the
Board of Trustees who were the most active in promoting the foundation of the Law School are not now living. The writer is alone cognizant of many of the leading facts. Some of them are very deeply imprinted upon his memory, as the result of contro versies, now extinct, in which he partici pated. Others are the memorials of the sacrifices and toils of a lifetime, — for it is not allotted to many to devote thirty years of unremitting and at times exhausting labor to a single institution, — labor of the kind which is the lot of pioneers, and yet is not without its recompenses. While he may appear in the course of this article to be open to the charge of egotism, still, by rea son of the special circumstances of the case, he begs the indulgence of his readers. The foundation of the Law School by the Trustees of the College, in 1858, was part of a more general scheme. Columbia College, having, by reason of an increase in value of its real estate, a large accession to its means, resolved to offer to the public a post-graduate course of instruction, with a view, if there ap peared to be a public desire for such a course, permanently to establish it. The whole plan was tentative or experimental. Four distinct courses of lectures of this class were then established : one on Philology, in charge of that distinguished scholar and statesman, the late George P. Marsh; a second by Dr. Francis Liebcr, a standard writer upon topics of Political Science and of Interna tional Law, then a professor in the College; a third course on Ethics, by Professor Nairne, also of the College; and a fourth on Muni cipal Law, by Theodore W. Dwight, then Professor of Law in Hamilton College, New York, in which institution there was at the time a flourishing Law School. These courses were all entered upon at the rooms of the Historical Society, at the corner of Eleventh Street and Second Avenue. The first three of these courses, though thoroughly well-manned, did not seem to meet a public want, and after languishing for some time were discontinued.
