arguments on points of law.

Among the first settlers were a few who had been educated for the
English bar. One of them, in Massachusetts, Rev. Nathaniel Ward,
drafted the _Magna Charta_ or "Body of Liberties" of that
colony, adopted in 1641. His opinion of the need of lawyers may
be inferred from the fact that it provided expressly that those
who pleaded causes for others should receive no compensation for
it. Virginia adopted the same policy from 1645 to 1662. Later,
lawyers practicing in Massachusetts were excluded from the
General Court. As that had large judicial powers, it was thought
fitting to give no opportunity to any to sit there to-day to
judge and to appear to-morrow before an inferior court to argue
as an advocate.[Footnote: Hutchinson, "History of Massachusetts,"
III, 104.]

As time went on, an American was occasionally sent to London to
read law. He was apt to be a young man of fortune, who entered
the Temple or the Inns of Court more as a means of gaining
pleasant acquaintances than for any serious purpose of education.
Most of them came from Pennsylvania and the Southern colonies.
Two Presidents of the Continental Congress, Randolph and McKean,
four signers of the Declaration of Independence, Heyward, Lynch,
Middleton, Edward Rutledge, and John Rutledge, one of the first
associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,
were of the number.

Not infrequently there were legal proceedings in London which
concerned colonial interests. Their charters were attacked or
colony laws and judgments put in question before the Lords of