1113753 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY 1885 Apris 21 By Lexchange. LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET. PREFACE. Ir is more than a century since Blackstone published his Commentaries on the Laws of England, which were originally lectures delivered to students at Oxford. His object was to make the methodical study of those laws part of a university education. He had secured an audience of inquiring minds, full of fresh aspirations, but only dimly conscious of some vague influence by which the business of the world was guided, and more eager than certain how best to share that influence. Most of his audience were destined to be legislators, diplomatists, warriors, priests, heirs of great possessions, and a few were destined to the practice of the legal profession. But beyond that audience he sought to reach a still larger class of citizens, who were already engrossed with other pursuits-whether acting in various capacities as jurors, magistrates, and officials, or as the leading artificers of that wealth, with the pursuit of which human life is so busy. This wider circle must then, as now, have often been haunted with an unsatisfied desire to know more about the laws all were bound to obey, than could be acquired in any ordinary avocations. Though business is itself a legal education, yet it is seldom found to be sufficiently broad and deep to satisfy the wider scrutiny and insight of practical minds, always curious to probe the secrets of this vital essential knowledge. For the whole of these constituents Blackstone endeavoured to clothe a theme, formerly dry and repulsive, with various learning, picturesque incidents, and apposite illustrations-solving doubts and largely gratifying the intelligent curiosity of every member of the community who aspired to influence his fellow-men. How well Blackstone succeeded in his enterprise, his contemporaries and successors confessed and know.1 The generations of Englishmen since his day have been indebted to him for nearly all they have learnt of the 1 C. J. Fox: " Blackstone's style of English is the very best among our modern writers . . . . His purity of style I particularly admire. He was distinguished as much for simplicity and strength as any writer in the English language. He was perfectly free from all Gallicisms and ridiculous affectations, for which so many of our modern authors are so remarkable. Upon this ground, therefore, I esteem Judge Blackstone; but as a constitutional writer he is by no means an object of my esteem."-Trotter's Fox, 512; 6 Parl. Deb. 314, 814. SIR W. JONES: "Blackstone's Commentaries are the most correct and beautiful outline that ever was exhibited of any human science; but they alone will no more form a lawyer than a general map of the world will make a geographer."-Jones, Bailments, p. 4. GIBBON : "Blackstone's Commentaries may be considered as a natural system of the English jurisprudence digested into a natural method and cleared of the pedantry, the obscurity, and superfluities, which rendered it the unknown horror of all men of taste."-5 Gibbon, Misc. W. 545. LORD MANSFIELD, C. J: "In Blackstone's Commentaries you will find analytical reasoning diffused in a pleasing and perspicuous style." -Holliday's Mansfield, 89. LORD AVONMORE, C. J: "He it was, who first gave to the law the air of a science. He found it a skeleton and he clothed it with life, colour, and complexion. He embraced the cold statue, and by his touch it grew into health, vigour, and beauty."-Phillips's Curran, 74. BENTHAM (1776): "Correct, elegant, unembarrassed, ornamented, Blackstone's style is such as could scarce fail to recommend a work still more vicious in point of matter to the multitude of his readers. He it is, in short, who, first of all institutional writers, has taught wisdom of that civil polity and well balanced system of laws which he professed to expound. And even those of his own profession, who commenced their studies under the auspices of his teaching, and afterwards required to pursue their course into further and better particulars, have seldom outgrown the authority and deference which his name has gathered year by year as its natural tribute. He discoursed on doctrines, harsh and crabbed as they were, with the luminous force, spirit, and elegance of Addison, and there was nothing he touched, which he jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentleman; put a polish upon that rugged science; cleansed her from the dust and cobwebs of the office; and if he has not enriched her with that precision which is drawn only from the sterling treasury of the science, has decked her out, however, to advantage from the toilet of classical erudition; enlivened her with metaphors and allusions, and sent her abroad in some measure to instruct and in still greater measure to entertain the most miscellaneous and even the most fastidious societies. The merit, to which as much, perhaps, as to any, the work stands indebted for its reputation is the enchanting harmony of its numbers, a kind of merit that of itself is sufficient to give a certain degree of celebrity to a work devoid of every other. So much is man governed by the ear."--Frag. on Gov. STORY J.: "Blackstone's Commentaries are but a compilation of the laws of England drawn from authentic sources, open to the whole profession, and yet in the highest sense might be deemed an original work, since never before were the same materials so admirably combined and exquisitely wrought out with a judgment, skill, and taste absolutely unrivalled."-Gray v Russell, 1 Story, 17. WATKINS: "The intention of that ingenious writer (Blackstone) was to give a comprehensive outline, and when we consider the multiplicity of doctrine which he embraced, the civil, the criminal, the theoretical and practical branches of the law, we must confess the hand of a master. But in the minutia he is very frequently inaccurate."-Watk. Convey. Introd. 28. MACKINTOSH: "Blackstone was a great master of classical and harmonious composition, but a feeble reasoner and a confused thinker, whose writings are not exempt from the charge of slavishness. Bentham, in his Fragment on Government, wasted extraordinary did not adorn. His fame has in no respect diminished after the lapse of a hundred years; nor is there any apprehension that, notwithstanding one or two resolute detractors, he will ever cease to be an English classic. Some of his political doctrines, indeed, have been described as scarcely acceptable even in his own age. If defects might be suggested, the worst seems to be, that his tone too generally was that of one who forgot the maxim, that men are not made for laws, but laws for men; and hence, power in pointing out flaws and patches in the robe occasionally stolen from the philosophical schools, which hung loosely and not unbecomingly on the elegant commentator."-Mackint. Eth. Phil. sect. 6. LORD ELLENBOROUGH, C. J.: "Judge Blackstone had produced the most elegant and classical work upon the driest subject in the language; by giving interest to the systematic knowledge of the law he had allured the student; and by the spirit and eloquence with which he set forth the code of England he had advanced her beyond calculation in the respect of other countries. He made the law of England studied in other countries, and thus threw a dignity round the wisdom of his own. I must be his grateful eulogist, for to him I was indebted for an easy and pleasant introduction into the thorny science of the law."-H. of Lords, 1812; 23 Parl. Deb. 1083. AUSTIN "Blackstone's method is a slavish and blundering copy of Hale's rude and compendious model. Neither in the general conception nor in the detail of his book is there a single particle of original and discriminating thought.”—Outlines, p. 63. LORD CAMPBELL says, "Blackstone, after Bacon, was the first practising barrister at the English bar, who in writing paid the slightest attention to the selection or collocation of words."-2 Camp. C. J. 566. In other countries "Alciati was the first who taught the lawyers to write with purity and elegance, and though the professors of the old school clamoured against him and drove him from one university to another, he soon stood not alone in scattering the flowers of polite literature over the thorny tracks of jurisprudence."-1 Hallam, Lit. Hist. 418. "Cujacius, like Alciati, substituted a general erudition for scholastic subtleties, and rendered the science more intelligible and attractive. When Cujacius' name was mentioned in the public schools of Germany, every one took off his hat.” -2 Hallam, Lit. Hist. 167, 169. |