research we shall spend our energy on a study of the ends sought to be
attained and the reasons for desiring them. As a step toward that ideal
it seems to me that every lawyer ought to seek an understanding of
economics. The present divorce between the schools of political economy
and law seems to me an evidence of how much progress in philosophical
study still remains to be made. In the present state of political
economy, indeed, we come again upon history on a larger scale, but there
we are called on to consider and weigh the ends of legislation, the
means of attaining them, and the cost. We learn that for everything we
have we give up something else, and we are taught to set the advantage
we gain against the other advantage we lose, and to know what we are
doing when we elect.

There is another study which sometimes is undervalued by the practical
minded, for which I wish to say a good word, although I think a good
deal of pretty poor stuff goes under that name. I mean the study of what
is called jurisprudence. Jurisprudence, as I look at it, is simply law
in its most generalized part. Every effort to reduce a case to a rule
is an effort of jurisprudence, although the name as used in English is
confined to the broadest rules and most fundamental conceptions. One
mark of a great lawyer is that he sees the application of the broadest
rules. There is a story of a Vermont justice of the peace before whom a
suit was brought by one farmer against another for breaking a churn. The
justice took time to consider, and then said that he has looked through
the statutes and could find nothing about churns, and gave judgment for
the defendant. The same state of mind is shown in all our common digests
and textbooks. Applications of rudimentary rules of contract or tort
are tucked away under the head of Railroads or Telegraphs or go to swell
treatises on historical subdivisions, such as Shipping or Equity, or are
gathered under an arbitrary title which is thought likely to appeal to