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,
Nor Milton's mighty self must please;

Instead of these, a formal band

In furs and coifs around me stand,

With sounds uncouth and accent dry,
That grate the soul of harmony.
Each pedant sage unlocks his store
Of mystic, dark, discordant lore;

And points with tottering hand the ways
That lead me to the thorny maze."

The forms of administering justice came to perfection, in England, at an early day; but Common Law, the fountain of that justice, as a pursuit, or a study, was not in general favor with the learned, or lovers of learning.

When it was enacted by Magna Charta: communia placita non sequantur curiam regis," and WESTMINSTER became permanently the "aliquo loco certo" in which they were held, the influx thither of the Common Lawyers, from all parts of the realm, gave rise to the Inns of Court. In this union was strength, that enabled the law itself to withstand the attacks of the canonists and civilians, who labored to extirpate and destroy it. Our law there, perhaps, began first to assume at all the proportions or features of a science.

The lawyers, assembled together at Westminster, naturally fell into a kind of collegiate organization; and, being excluded from Oxford and Cambridge, found it expedient to establish a university of their own. There, exercises were performed, lectures read, and degrees were conferred in the Common Law; those of "barrister," and "sergeant." For a time, this seminary of the law flourished; but afterward fell from its early purpose, and degenerated.

When Blackstone wrote, "Alfred and Edward were nabitually sacrificed to the manes of Theodosius and Justinian; the edict of the prætor, and rescript of the emperor were preferred to the immemorial customs of Common Law, and sanctions of parliament. At that day, in most of the nations on the continent, where the civil or imperial law

under different modifications was, as now, closely interwoven with the municipal law, no gentleman, or at least scholar, thought his education completed, till he had attended a course or two of lectures upon the Institutes of Justinian, and the local constitutions of his native soil, under the very eminent professors that abounded in their several universities.* In England, also; civil law professorships existed in both universities; but the opportunities of gaining legal knowledge, through those channels, would seem to have been quite incomplete, as it was then usual, we are assured, to send the English youth to foreign schools, as better nurseries of the civil law.

But, at that time, it was the peculiar lot of the Common Law, in England, and here, the only guardian of natural rights and rule of civil conduct, to be neglected, and even unknown, by all but one practical profession.

There had been no Chair of Common Law in either University, when Mr. Viner left, by his will, the copyright of his ABRIDGMENT, with other property to a considerable amount, to Oxford, for the purpose of founding a professorship, fellowships, and scholarships of Common Law. In October, 1758, Blackstone was elected Vinerian professor. This appointment, we may here remark, led him, in the preparation of his lectures, to investigate the elements of Common Law, and the grounds of civil polity peculiar to England; and, to it we are, beyond doubt, indebted for his Commentaries on that law and polity. The plan favored by Mr. Viner, and which Blackstone strove to carry out, was not ratified in convocation; and, in consequence, his views of an established society for the study of the Common Law coming to an end, he resigned his professorship in 1766, and while the Commentaries were in course of publica tion.

* Black. Comm., Introd., s. 1, p. 4.

Superadded to this want of suitable schools, was another; perhaps a greater, at least a more immediate, impediment in the way of those who desired to acquire the Common Law. There were no proper text-books. The student was compelled to encounter "sounds uncouth and accents dry;" the "mystic, dark, discordant lore" of the only elementary works to which he had access. Finch's Common Law and Wood's Institutes were ill adapted to reconcile him to the profession he was about to enter.*

These, and the "harsh and forbidding pages" of Coke, were readily laid aside for a Manual, in which accurate learning, systematic arrangement, and comprehensive research were accompanied by an elegance of style to which, theretofore, the compositions of the English jurists had been strangers.

The Commentaries absorbed the ardent labors of several years. Not until sixteen years after Blackstone began to lecture on the law, at Oxford, were his lectures presented to the public under their new title of Commentaries. Their reception was of the most flattering description. The new work achieved at once a most decided success. The author anxiously sought to free it from errors, as far as possible, and with this purpose, we are informed, submitted it, in MS., to the scrutiny, or revision, of such men as Lord Mansfield and Chief Justice Wilmot.

The position of the Commentator upon some, as well as his very conservative ideas on most, topics treated of, subjected his work to the severest criticism. It passed the ordeal, for censure or approval, of the first minds of that day, in jurisprudence, statesmanship and letters-of Priestley, Furneaux, Fox, Sheridan, Bentham and others. Their strictures were a means of adding completeness to the work they induced the Commentator to revise it, in

*Black. Comm., Life, p. 27.