Note 382 — Chapter V

The causes of this exception I shall endeavour to trace in the next volume; but it is interesting to notice, that, as early as 1775, Burke was struck by the partiality of the Americans for works on law. See Burke's Speech, in Parliamentary History, vol. xviii. p. 495; or in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 188. He says: ‘In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read—and most do read—endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England.’ Of this state of society, the great works of Kent and Story were, at a later period, the natural result. On the respect at present felt for the legal profession, see Lyell's Second Visit to the United States, 1849, vol. i. p. 45; and as to the judges, Combe's N. America, vol. ii. p. 329.