are entering its upper branches-that is, the Bar and the magistracy. the latter alone is a complete course of legal study required.

For

The law school, on the other hand, does not confine its teaching to the preparation of the student for a professional career in law. The study of the law is the university training of the well-to-do Frenchman, of the Frenchman who aspires to any of the higher grades of the administration, and of those who intend to offer themselves for the diplomatic or consular service.

Thus official instruction in the law in France is not directly connected with any profession. The law faculty of the university, in which it is given, is like the faculty of arts or science. The aim is to afford the student the means of acquiring knowledge in all departments of the law. These different departments, however, are co-ordinated to enable the student to study law systematically, and, if he wishes, to conclude his studies by taking the degree which qualifies him for the higher branches of the profession, or to certify that he possesses that knowledge of principles and theory apart from practice which the French consider as indispensable to a man who has to apply the law as a public official.

Faculties of Law: The "Licence en Droit."-There are thirteen complete faculties of law in France. Of these, I can only speak from personal experience of one, viz., Paris, where I studied; but I may add that the other faculties only differ from that of Paris in being organised on a smaller scale.

The Paris faculty is composed of twenty-nine professors, three assistant professors, and six supplementary professors in the active exercise of their functions. The teaching of these professors is distributed with a view to enable the student to take the degree of licencié en droit as the termination of an ordinary three years' course of university study. There is an examination at the end of each year, and no student for the degree of licencié can enter for any of the three examinations out of their prescribed order.

The subjects of the first year's study are as follows: Roman Law.— The lectures on this subject embrace the whole of the legal institutions of Rome, with a view to initiating the student into the part which history plays in the development of law. History of French Civil and Constitutional Law. Here the idea is to awaken in the student that interest in tradition, and at the same time that critical understanding of laws by reference to their origin, which will bring him to respect their character without making him a slave to their form. In the same order of ideas there is a course of lectures for the first year's student in Political Economy, treated with regard to the current development of legislation, on the assumption that he will be enabled to understand a law better if he sees the reason of it. Lastly is included about one-third of the contents of the Civil Code, in which the lecturer endeavours again to explain why the law is as it is, and, as far as possible, to connect its provisions with the ethical basis upon which it rests.

The second year's study includes another one-third, approximately, of the matters treated in the Civil Code. The study of Roman Law continues, but in this year it is treated with special reference to what contemporary French law has borrowed from it. In this year, also, the student must attend the lectures on Criminal Law, Administrative Law, and Public International Law.

In the third year he takes the remaining one-third of the contents of the Civil Code, and Commercial Law, Private International Law, and Civil Procedure.

The examinations are oral, except short essays on some points of practical law, which are written on the spot, and are not in the nature of a thesis.

The Doctorate of Law.-Above the licence en droit is a higher examination, called the doctorate of law. For this examination, which follows the licence that is to say, no one who is not a licencié en droit can present himself for the examination in the doctorate-the subjects are practically the same, except that the knowledge required is more far-reaching. In Roman law, the lectures for the doctorate include the digest, and the lecturers on the civil and criminal codes introduce comparisons with other legislations. The only real addition to the matters for the doctorate is a thesis on some subject fixed in accord with one of the professors, who undertakes to preside at a sitting at which the candidate "defends" the conclusions arrived at in his thesis. A jury of the faculty is appointed, with three weeks' notice to the candidate to appear before them, and unless the candidate shows that he thoroughly understands what he has presumed to write upon, he is not admitted to the degree. Some of these theses are valuable documents, and have made the reputation of the candidate before he has left the university.

Agrégation.”—Above the doctorate is the agrégation, or the competition for the post of supplementary professor or agrégé, in which the candidate not only writes a thesis, but also delivers test lectures on the branch of law he has chosen. This higher examination for the professorate can only be passed by doctors in law.

Qualification for Bar.-No Frenchman is entitled to call himself an advocate, or to practise as such before the French Civil and Correctional Courts or the Court of Assize, unless he has passed the licence en droit, and in addition has gone through a three years' stage of actual practice. This stage, however, is really of little or no import, inasmuch as a stagiaire is entitled to plead in Court in order to obtain the practice it is intended this so-called stage shall afford him.1

In the decree of December 14th, 1810, the stage is described as the "assiduous attendance of the hearings in Court" (Art. 15). The stagiaire is also expected to attend the weekly "moots" presided over by the bâtonnier or dean of the "Order of Advocates." Lastly, litigants in formâ pauperis are committed to his care.

Wide Knowledge of the Law in France. The teaching of the law in France in the manner I have described has had the effect of making the knowledge of its elements widespread among all classes of educated French society. In fact, an Englishman in France is amazed to see how general such knowledge is. I cannot say that it is "a dangerous thing." The merchant, the manufacturer, the sea captain, most average men in private life, will draw up-and fairly well-a contract or any ordinary legal undertaking without professional assistance; and if the laity can dispense with our services, we must, of course, be the last to complain! Nevertheless, fortunately for the French legal profession, the prevalence of amateurs does not seem to deprive professional men of work, for in no country are there more practising lawyers than in France.

I have endeavoured to give you as briefly as possible some idea of legal education and its connection with the legal profession in France, and this was all I was invited to do. As practical lawyers, however, you may expect me to add whether, according to my experience of some twenty years, the results of this education suggest any points in which it might serve as a model for Englishmen or for you.

Comparison of Systems.-The ground is treacherous.

In comparing

a French lawyer with an English or an American lawyer, it is easy to mistake as due to his special education a state of things really due to causes much deeper or lying quite outside it. Institutions seem only to produce their full effect on a nation when they become interwoven with its character, habits, and traditions, and on these an artificial institution like programme education may be long in producing a marked influence.

The qualifying degree for the highest branch of the legal profession, as you have seen, is the licence, obtained in the ordinary course after a study of three years. The intentions of those who drew up the successive programmes of study for this degree were excellent. The idea of giving the student a complete survey of law in all its elements and applications of general culture in a whole great department of human intellectual activity, is admirable. I am afraid, however, few students are gifted with a sufficient power of assimilation to derive much benefit from so exhaustive a course. The subjects are far too numerous to allow of the student ever mastering them, or any of them, properly, and the discipline of thoroughness is lost. Moreover, the French mode of education generally is defective in being directed too much to the acquisition of knowledge and too little to the acquisition of the power to think, to judge, and to act. Hence an English lawyer, with his wretched practical education, his almost total ignorance of principles, his incapacity to deal with a thought in law, is on an average a sounder and more sensible lawyer than the Frenchman. Perhaps this, to some extent, is due to the circumstance that in ninety-nine out of every hundred cases which come into the hands of the lawyer, matters of fact are of greater importance than matters of law, and that the training in life

of the young Englishman fits him better than any theoretical training in law can do to deal with matters of fact. Be that as it may, this is no reason why we should not do our best to promote a better and ever better legal education than we have.

Law is the outward manifestation of the national conscience, and, as such, is not only the study for professional practitioners, but is also properly a study for politicians, civil servants, statesmen, diplomatists, and all who have to administer it.

A complete faculty, after the fashion of the system in France, for the study of law as a branch of scientific inquiry, would certainly promote good legislation. To have such a faculty, composed of professors to whose knowledge the Legislature could appeal, and who more especially would serve as critics of existing laws, would be of priceless value to the nation. As regards the examinations and education for the Bar, other things besides a knowledge of the principles of the law are necessary, and it is only, I believe, by severe mental discipline, and an ingenious combination of wide knowledge of things in general, as well as of law and actual practice in the work of the profession, that good, sensible lawyers, as heretofore, will continue to be made.

SOUDAN CRIMINAL LAW.

[Contributed by W. F. CRAIES, Esq.]

ENCLOSED in green covers, to soothe Muslim susceptibilities, given the force of law by the signature of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, and issued from the National Printing Office at Cairo, the new Soudan Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure afford a significant proof of the effect of British control in the Khedive's dominions, and mark a long step towards the evolution of law and order out of the barbaric chaos of the Mahdi's tyranny.

Indian Models Followed.-Both codes are adapted from the Indian codes. This course has no doubt been deliberately chosen, not merely that the Criminal Law of the Soudan might be modelled on that of the ruling race, but because the Indian codes have been carefully framed for use among Muslims, and have stood the test of forty years' experience.

Treason Clauses. When the Soudan was reconquered Lord Salisbury made a significant announcement, which implied a claim by Great Britain to have, at the least, a share in the territory then acquired, and this claim. seems to be maintained in the frame of the clauses of the Penal Code dealing with treason, where a distinction is drawn between the Government of the Soudan and the Khedive of Egypt (see s. 93).

In the case of British conquests it has been a common practice to leave intact the Civil Law prevailing in the conquered territory, but to substitute English Criminal Law for that previously obtaining. This course was adopted in Quebec and in the captured Spanish West Indies; but there is a notable and, in some respects, an unfortunate exception, in the case of possessions acquired from the Dutch, where the Roman-Dutch Criminal Law has been allowed to continue in force.

In the Soudan there was ample justification for introducing a new and well-ordered system of Criminal Law and Procedure, and policy and experience alike made it preferable to frame such system in accordance with Indian rather than with Continental precedents,-though we do not doubt that the Government of the Soudan deliberately and from motives of policy elected to frame and issue their codes in the English form and language, rather than adopt schemes framed by French lawyers or by judges of the mixed tribunals in Egypt.

Some Characteristics of the Code. The statements already made with