In dwelling on the advantages of the Law School as a seat of legal education, the Committee therefore rank side by side with the lectures and exercises of the professors the profitable opportunities afforded by the library and the fellowship of persons engaged in the same pursuits, all echoing to the heart of the pupil, as from the genius of the place, constant words of succor, encouragement, and hope.
From the present prosperity of the School, the Committee are led to look back at its early beginning, to observe its growth, and to commemorate with gratitude its benefactors.
It hardly need be added, that a Law School was not embraced by our forefathers in the original design of the College, and that it is a late graft upon the ancient stock. The College was planted at a time when law was not treated, even in England, as a part of academic instruction. The first settlers could not be expected to establish professorships unknown in the land from which they had parted; nor did there appear in those early days, or for some time later, any occasion for professional instruction. The law, as science, profession, or practical instrument of government, was scarcely recognized. Lawyers were not known as a class, nor was their business respected. Thomas Lechford, of Clement's Inn, who emigrated not long after the foundation of the College, hoping to gain a livelihood as attorney, being cautioned at a quarter court "not to meddle with controversies," went back to England. As the Colony grew, it gradually laid hold of the Common Law, and for some time before the Revolution claimed it as a birthright.
The history of the University Library exposes the poverty of the means for the study of the law in those early days. In its Catalogue, published in 1723, we find but seven volumes of Common Law. These are Spelman's Glossary, Pulton's Collection of Statutes, Keble's Statutes, Coke's First and Second Institutes, and two odd volumes of the Year-Books. Such were the means for the study of our law afforded by the public library, which Cotton Mather, sometime before the publication of this catalogue, described as "the best furnished that could be shown anywhere in all the American regions." Since books are the instruments of learning, it follows, if these were wanting, that the study of the law could make little advance. Happily this is now changed.
The first professorship of law in the University was established in 1815, upon a foundation partly supplied by an ancient devise of Isaac Royall, Esq.,—a munificent gentleman of ample fortune, who, being connected by blood and marriage, as well as by political opinions, with the principal royalists of Massachusetts, forsook the country with them at the commencement of the Revolution, and died at Kensington, in England, in October, 1781. Though an exile, he did not forget the land he had left. Thither before death his "heart untravelled fondly turned." By his will, recorded at the Probate Office in Boston, he devised to Medford, in Massachusetts, where he had resided, certain lands in Granby, for the support of schools. The residue of his estate in that town, and other lands in the County of Worcester, he devised to the Overseers and Corporation of Harvard College, "to be appropriated towards the endowing a Professor of Laws in the said College, or a Professor of Physic and Anatomy, whichever the said Overseers and Corporation shall judge to be best for the benefit of the said College." The capital, with its accumulation, from the property thus devised, is $7,943, yielding an annual income of about four hundred dollars. It is believed that the University and the lovers of the law are indebted to the late Hon. John Lowell, while a member of the Corporation, for calling these funds—yet unappropriated to either object of the devise—from their sleep in the treasury, by procuring the establishment of a professorship of law, which was ordered, for the present, to bear the name of Royall, in honor of him whose will in this regard was now first executed. This was in 1815. The residue of the funds for its support have been supplied by the University, mainly from fees paid by students of law. The Hon. Isaac Parker, late Chief Justice of this Commonwealth, was the first professor.
In 1817 the Hon. Asahel Stearns was placed upon another foundation, established by the University. The statutes of this professorship required him to open and keep a school in Cambridge for the instruction of graduates and of others prosecuting the study of the law. Besides prescribing to his pupils a course of study, it was made his duty to examine and confer with them upon their studies, to read to them a course of lectures, and generally to act the part of tutor, so as to improve their minds and assist their acquisitions. From this time may be dated the establishment of the Law School in the University.
Chief-Justice Parker never resided at Cambridge, but, in the performance of his duties as professor, every summer read lectures to the Law School and the senior class of undergraduates. These were of an elementary nature, adapted to youthful minds,—the audience being for the most part undergraduates,—and were characterized by that free and flowing style which marks the judicial opinions of this eminent Judge. They comprised a view of the Constitutions of the United States and of Massachusetts, with the early juridical history of New England, and the origin of its laws and institutions. Professor Stearns, who resided in Cambridge, was occupied immediately with the duties of instruction. He was accustomed to hear recitations in the more important text-books, to preside in moot-courts, and to read lectures on interesting titles of law. His valuable work on Real Actions, so well known to lawyers, was prepared in the discharge of his duties as professor, and read to his pupils in a course of lectures. The first edition was dedicated by the author "To the Law Students of Harvard University, as a testimony of his earnest desire to aid them in the honorable and laborious study of American jurisprudence."
The number of students at this period was small. From 1817 to 1829 the largest class for any single year was eighteen, and the average annual number was not more than thirteen. The first important step, however, was taken. Law was admitted within the circle of University studies, while, by the learning and reputation of its professors, the cause of legal education was commended, and the idea of a Law School was shown to be practicable.
On the resignation of Chief-Justice Parker and Professor Stearns a new epoch in the history of the School began. The Hon. Nathan Dane, in 1829, emulating the example of Viner in England, applied the profits of his extensive Abridgment and Digest of American Law to the foundation of a new professorship, still called from his name; and at his request, the late Joseph Story, then a resident of Salem, and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, was appointed the first professor. In his communication to the University, making this endowment, the venerable founder marked out the proposed duties as follows: "It shall be the duty of the professor to prepare and deliver, and to revise for publication, a course of lectures on the five following branches of law and equity, equally in force in all parts of our Federal Republic, namely, the Law of Nature, the Law of Nations, Commercial and Maritime Law, Federal Law, and Federal Equity, in such wide extent as the same branches now are, and from time to time shall be, administered in the Courts of the United States, but in such compressed form as the professor shall deem proper, and so to prepare, deliver, and revise lectures thereon as often as the said Corporation shall think proper." The original endowment by Mr. Dane was $10,000, to which on his death was added $5,000, making the sum-total $15,000. Mr. Justice Story removed to Cambridge in 1829, commencing his new career as Dane Professor of Law with an inaugural discourse, where the honorable nature of legal studies, the arduous labors required in their pursuit, and the duties upon which he was entering, were reviewed with singular power and beauty. At the same time, John Hooker Ashmun, Esq., a lawyer of remarkable acuteness and maturity, who, though young, had shown already the capacity of a jurist, was associated with him as Royall Professor of Law.