the licenses or commissions to attorneys and solicitors in
chancery, but for more than a hundred and fifty years only on the
recommendation of the Supreme Court.[Footnote: _In re_
Branch, 70 N. J. Law Reports; 57 Atlantic Reporter, 431.]

The admission of attorneys in the several courts of the United
States is determined by rules which they respectively establish
from time to time. These rules make the only qualification
membership in regular standing for a certain period of time in
the bar of a State and good moral character.

There is no doubt that the United States have been in advance of
England both in providing means of legal education and in
requiring their use. The length of the course of study now
established at our older Law Schools--three years--seems all that
can reasonably be exacted, if a proper foundation of general
discipline and knowledge has been previously laid. The first
provision for one or more years of graduate study for those who
may desire it was made at Yale University in 1876, and a similar
opportunity has since been offered at several others; but it has
been availed of by few, and of these a considerable part had in
view the teaching of law as their ultimate vocation rather than
its practice.

Unquestionably the American bar is now, as a whole, a far better
trained class of men than it was twenty or thirty years ago, and
the efficiency of the courts has been correspondingly increased.

* * * * *