Trade and Plantations. In such proceedings, if counsel were
needed, English barristers were generally employed. An American
lawyer now and then went over to consult with them and perhaps to
join in the argument, but the leading part was theirs.

It was not until the quickening and deepening of American life
which preceded and portended the Revolution that anything like a
colonial bar, led by a man of learning and position, really came
into existence.[Footnote: "Two Centuries' Growth of American
Law," 16.] From the middle of the eighteenth century to its
close there was a steady and rapid progress in this direction.
Legal education was taken seriously. In the case of many it
began with the fundamental notions of justice and right. The
Greek and Latin classics on those heads were read.[Footnote:
"Life of Peter Van Schaick," 9.] The private law of the Romans
was studied to a greater extent relatively than it is now. The
first chair of law in the United States was established at
William and Mary College in 1779, and there, under Chancellor
Wythe, John Marshall was a student. President Stiles of Yale, in
his "Literary Diary," so full of that kind of historical incident
which after a few years have passed it is most difficult to
trace, enumerates the books read by his son, Ezra Stiles, Jr.,
between 1778 and 1781, in preparation for the Connecticut bar,
under the advice and in the offices of Judge Parker of Portsmouth
and Charles Chauncey of New Haven. They comprehended, besides
much in English and Scotch law, Burlamaqui's _Principes de
Droit Naturel_, Montesquieu, _de l'Esprit des Lois_, the
Institutes of Justinian, certain titles of the Pandects, and
Puffendorf _de Officio Hominis et Civis juxta Legem
Naturalem_. James Kent at about the same time was reading