THE MOST MATERIAL PARTS OF BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES, REDUCED TO QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, BY JOHN C. DEVEREUX, COUNSELLOR AT LAW. UPON THE PLAN AND IN THE PLACE OF KINNE'S BLACKSTONE. NEW EDITION. REVISED AND CORRECTED BY A MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK: BAKER, VOORHIS & CO., PUBLISHERS, 66 NASSAU STREET. 1880. KB390 Entered, according to Act of Congress. In the year 1858, by LEWIS & BLOOD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by BAKER, VOORHIS & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 10 PREFACE. Nor only the student of our Common Law, wherever he enters upon the task of acquiring its elementary parts, but its practitioners as well, and indeed all, of every pursuit in life, here, and in the mother land, who have occasion to know the obligations under which society places them, are largely indebted to Sir William Blackstone; whose proudest distinction it is, that, although a great lawyer and an eminent judge, he was the author of the "Commentaries on the Laws of England." They were written and published between the years 1753 and 1770; when, we are assured, the way of the Common Law, to the student, was rough indeed, and obstructed with thorns and brambles, which, as yet, no other skillful and friendly hand had even attempted to remove. The commentator was a belles-lettres scholar, of acquirement and taste-even a poet. About 1741, when, in his eighteenth year, he had just concluded upon the law as his profession, his own muse presents the contrast, not an inviting one, between pursuits he was to abandon and those which were, thenceforth, to form for him the serious business of life: "Shakspeare no more, thy sylvan son, Nor all the art of Addison, Pope's heaven-strung lyre, nor Waller's ease, Instead of these, a formal band In furs and coifs around me stand, 2302-4 |