(1) My purpose in this address is to set forth […] the marked merits, and the no less patent defects, of the present system of legal study, and to show what is the field which this system leaves open for professorial and academical teaching. (2) The prevailing method of reading in chambers is […] a method of instruction which would strike a foreigner as strange […]. When a student “reading for the bar” enters the chambers of a barrister […] the [barrister] does not in any way undertake to teach. Our student pays a hundred guineas, and the barrister undertakes that his pupil shall see all the work that goes on in chambers, and have an opportunity of trying his own hand at doing it […]. What teaching (if any) he may obtain is a matter of chance […]. Our young man reading for the bar […] [if] he is to learn law, he must pick it up for himself […]. The oddity of the thing is, that he after all gets in due time, mainly by the process of imitation, to make pretty tolerable bricks […]. [...]

An die Königin Madame, Wenig geübt in der Sprache, in der man zu Königen spricht, werde ich mich nicht der Schmeichelei der Höflinge befleißigen, um Euch dieses einzigartige Werk zu widmen. Mein Ziel, Madame, ist es, offen zu Euch zu sprechen. Um mich dergestalt zu äußern, musste ich nicht das Zeitalter der Freiheit abwarten; ich habe mich mit gleicher Tatkraft zu einer Zeit gezeigt, als die Despoten in ihrer Verblendung einen so kühnen Edelmut noch bestraften. [...]