Читать книгу Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier онлайн

35 страница из 44

Wilfrid Laurier's ambitions had long been turned toward law, and when he left L'Assomption at the age of nineteen it was with the purpose of beginning immediately to study for the bar. The leading law school of Canada was then the Faculty of Law at McGill University. It had a strong staff of judges and of barristers in active practice, and the offices of the city gave ample opportunity for training in the routine of law. The law faculty of Laval University, Montreal, it may be noted, was not established until 1878.

To Montreal, then, Wilfrid Laurier journeyed in the fall of 1861, with high hopes but some foreboding as to what life in a large city would mean. He found a place in the office of Rodolphe Laflamme, one of the leaders of the Montreal bar and a very aggressive Rouge or advanced Liberal. The salary paid, though small, was a very welcome supplement to the funds his father had been able to advance.

The three-year course, which led to the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law, covered not only the basic systems of our jurisprudence, the civil law of Rome and the common law of England, but the developments which custom and legislators and code-makers had brought about in English-speaking and French-speaking Canada. The lectures were given in English or French, according to the mother tongue of the speaker. Mr. Laurier, with his New Glasgow training and his later reading, had no great difficulty in following the English lectures. He had more trouble at first in understanding the Latin phrases in the lectures on Roman law delivered by Justice Torrance, for at that time the English pronunciation of Latin was almost the universal rule among English-speaking scholars. Hon. J. J. C. Abbott, dean of the faculty, and destined thirty years later to become in a party emergency Prime Minister of Canada, was a sound and authoritative teacher of commercial law. Rodolphe Laflamme taught customary law and the law of real estate, and Hon. Wm. Badgeley and E. C. Carter criminal law. Throughout, Wilfrid Laurier ranked high in his work, though for the comfort of those students who gather instances of men succeeding in examinations and failing in the sterner tests of life, it may be noted that the one man who ranked higher was never heard of again. In his first and again in his third year, he stood second in general proficiency, and at graduation was first in the thesis required of all candidates for the degree. He was accordingly chosen to give the valedictory. It is not customary to find in student valedictories mature and original contributions to the philosophy of life. The address given on this occasion had its share of the rhetoric of youth, but it was a really notable utterance. The young valedictorian sketched a picture, somewhat idealized perhaps, of the lawyer's place in the nation's life, forecasting in more than one particular the principles which were to guide his own public career. The duty and the opportunity of the lawyer to maintain private right, to uphold constitutional liberty, and to work for the harmony of the two races in Canada, were strongly emphasized in vigorous and glowing phrase.