* [*4] learning; and may defeat for a time the public-spirited design of our wise and munificent benefactor. And this he must more especially dread, when he feels by experience how unequal his abilities are (unassisted by preceding examples) to complete, in the manner he could wish, so extensive and arduous a task; since he freely confesses, that his former more private attempts have fallen very short of his own ideas of perfection. And yet the candour he has already experienced, and this last transcendent mark of regard, his present nomination by the free and unanimous suffrage of a great and learned university, (an honour to be ever remembered with the deepest and most affectionate gratitude), these testimonies of your public judgment must entirely supersede his own, and forbid him to believe himself totally insufficient for the labour at least of this employment. One thing he will venture to hope for, and it certainly shall be his constant aim, by diligence and attention to atone for his other defects; esteeming, that the best return which he can possibly make for your favourable opinion of his capacity, will be his unwearied endeavours in some little degree to deserve it. The science thus committed to his charge, to be cultivated, methodised, and explained in a course of academical lectures, is that of the laws and constitution of our own country: a species of knowledge, in which the gentlemen (3) of England that, in some instances, the author's enough for the student, and incapable of being made useful to the practitioner. It is believed that illustrations of the general principles, and observations respecting the rules of practice laid down by Blackstone, will frequently be found convenient: and it is further thought, that, in notes to a work, which, like the Commentaries, is intended for non-professional as well as for professional readers, a naked reference to other law books will often be far less satisfactory than a condensed statement of the results to be obtained from a consultation of those authorities; and such a statement, accompanied with due acknowledgment, by no means necessarily implies an unprincipled appropriation of the labours of others. (3) This complaint, as to the defi have been more remarkably deficient than those of all Europe besides. In most of the nations on the continent, where the civil or imperial law under different modifications is closely interwoven with the municipal laws of the land (4), no gentle ciency of English gentlemen in knowledge of the laws and constitution of their own country, does not appear applicable to some periods of our history, at all events. Our author informs us (in p. 17) that "great part of the learning in (what are called) the dark ages, consisted in the study of the common law: it was then taught in the universities, and in the families of the principal nobility." Again, we are told (in p. 19) that the English nobility, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, " adhered with pertinacity to the old common law." Mere pertinacity, it must be admitted, is a very equivocal test of knowledge; but the firm resolution of the nobility in those days, "not to change the laws of England" for the Roman code, appears to have been founded on a familiar acquaintance with our own common law. And this seems to have been deemed an essential, if not the primary, part of a liberal education, up to the time of Henry VI., at least. Our author, following high authorities, tells us (in pp. 24, 25) that, in the reign of the monarch just named, "it was thought highly necessary, and was the universal practice, for the young nobility and gentry to be instructed in the originals and elements of the laws." In the "seminaries of common law," he adds, "the knights and barons, with other grandees and noblemen of the realm, did use to place their children; and there were about 2000 students at the several inns, all of whom were filii nobilium, or gentlemen born, learning and studying the elements of the law." Will the sons of the nobility and gentry of England, in the nineteenth century, take no pains to escape the reproach, and the inevitable penalties, of ignorance in that branch of knowledge which is so absolutely requisite for legislators or administrators of the laws, and in which their ancestors, even during what are usually termed the dark ages, laboured for instruction? If the aristocracy are indolent, it requires no gift of prophecy to foretell that the extinction of their order is not distant. The people have been taught their own strength, and are thoroughly masters of the lesson. It is only by the acquisition of superior intelligence, and by unremitted devotion to the furtherance (not of personal objects, but) of the general interest of the state, that the hitherto privileged classes can hope to retain their pre-eminence; taking them as a body, (and individuals, of course, are out of the question), they possess fair advantages, which, if wisely used, may yet give them the start of other competitors in the race for honourable distinction; but if this start is once foregone, it will not be found easily recoverable. (See post, p. 7, n. 10). (4) That, in many things, our own law is not only grounded upon the same reasons as those assigned in the civil law, (which might well have been the case, even if the imperial code had never been heard of in this country), but that we have directly borrowed many rules from the civil law, was the unwilling declaration of Chief Justice Holt. (See Lane v. Cotton, 12 Mod. 482. See also post, p. 35). Barrington (in his Observations on the Statutes, p. 55) says, "though less of the Roman law hath been introduced into that of England than in any other country in Europe, yet certain parts of it have, undoubtedly, been incorporated." The instances adduced by Barrington, to illustrate his observations, are not of a kind to make Englishmen regret that a larger admixture of imperial law has not been admitted into our code: (see post, p. 67, n. 3): the examples cited are-torture, the not [ 5 ] man, or at least no scholar, thinks his education is completed, till he has attended a course or two of lectures, both upon the institutes of Justinian and the local constitutions of his native soil, under the very eminent professors that abound in their several universities. And in the northern parts of our own island, where also the municipal laws are frequently connected with the civil, it is difficult to meet with a person of liberal education, who is destitute of a competent knowledge in that science which is to be the guardian of his natural rights and the rule of his civil conduct. *Nor have the imperial laws been totally neglected even in the English nation (5). A general acquaintance with their decisions has ever been deservedly considered as no small accomplishment of a gentleman; and a fashion has prevailed, especially of late, to transport the growing hopes of this island to foreign universities, in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; which, though infinitely inferior to our own in every other consideration, have been looked upon as better nurseries of the civil, or (which is nearly the same) of their own municipal law. In the mean time it has been the peculiar lot of our admirable system of laws to be neglected, and even unknown, by all but one practical profession; though built upon the soundest foundations, and approved by the experience of ages. Far be it from me to derogate from the study of the civil permitting a felon's witnesses to be exa- As to the use which English law- Since the preceding part of this note was printed, a bill has been brought into the House of Commons by the Attorney-General, the object of which is to allow counsel to be heard in defence of prisoners indicted of any felony. The preponderance of votes, as well as of argument, was so decidedly in favour of the bill on its first reading, that there is little doubt it will pass. (5) Locke, after recommending a young man to "digest Tully's Offices, Puffendorf, and Grotius, wherein he will be instructed in the natural rights of man, and the originals and foundations of society, and the duties resulting from thence," adds, that "this general part of civil law is a study which a gentleman should not barely touch at, but constantly dwell upon, and never have done with." He goes on to say, "it would be strange to suppose an English gentleman should be ignorant of the law of his country. This, whatever station he is in, is so requisite, that, from a justice of peace to a minister of law, considered (apart from any binding authority) as a collection of written reason. No man is more thoroughly persuaded of the general excellence of its rules, and the usual equity of its decisions, nor is better convinced of its use as well as ornament to the scholar, the divine, the statesman, and even the common lawyer. But we must not carry our veneration so far as to sacrifice our Alfred and Edward to the manes of Theodosius and Justinian: we must not prefer the edict of the prætor, or the rescript of the Roman emperor, to our own immemorial customs, or the sanctions of an English parliament; unless we can also prefer the despotic monarchy of Rome and Byzantium, for whose meridians the former were calculated, to the free constitution of Britain, which the latter are adapted to perpetuate (6). Without detracting, therefore, from the real merit which abounds in the imperial law, I hope I may have leave to assert, that if an Englishman must be ignorant of either the one or the other, he had better be a stranger to the Roman than the English institutions. For I think it an undeniable position, that a competent knowledge of the laws of that society in which we live, is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and scholar; an highly useful, I had almost said essential, part of liberal and polite education. And in this I am warranted by the example of ancient Rome; where, as Cicero informs us (a), the very boys were obliged to learn the twelve tables by heart, as a carmen necessarium or indispensable lesson, to imprint on their tender minds an early knowledge of the laws and constitution of their country. But, as the long and universal neglect of this study with us in England seems in some degree to call in question the truth of this evident position, it shall therefore be the business of this introductory discourse, in the first place, to demonstrate the utility of some general acquaintance with the municipal law of the land, by pointing out its particular uses in all considerable situations of life. Some conjectures will then be offered with regard to the causes of neglecting this useful study: to which will be subjoined a few reflections on the culiar propriety of reviving it in our own universities. (a) De Legg. 2. 23. state, I know no place he can well fill without it." (See Treatise on Educa tion, sections 186, 187). pe [ *6 ] And, first, to demonstrate the utility of some acquaintance with the laws of the land, let us only reflect a moment on the singular frame and polity of that land which is governed by this system of laws. A land, perhaps the only one (7) in the universe, in which political or civil liberty is the very end and scope of the constitution (b). This liberty, rightly understood, consists in the power (8) of doing whatever the laws permit (c) (9); which is only to be effected by a general (b) Montesq. Esp. L. 1. 11, c. 5. (c) Facultas ejus, quod cuique facere (7) The reader will of course recollect, that, at the time when the text was penned, the larger part of that immense region which now forms the United States of America, was a province of Great Britain, and was undergoing the almost inevitable fate of all coloniesan imperfect participation in the benefits secured to the mother country by her constitution. Few, if any, Englishmen regret that North America has outgrown her dependent state; and although the more recent republics of South America have, in some instances, shewn themselves to be not ripe for genuine freedom; and have probably to undergo a long course of national misery, before they will have learned so to use liberty as not abusing it; still, no liberal mind can think it would have been better had they continued in subjugation to the bigoted tyranny under which they so long groaned. The tornado of popular violence, however destructive while it lasts, may, eventually, purify a political atmosphere; the dead calm of despotism must, necessarily, increase its corrupt and corrupting qualities. (See post, note to p. 127). Our author seems to have forgotten, or to have underrated, the constitutional advantages of the Swiss confederation. (8) See the editor's reasons for his disapprobation of this definition of liberty in the note to p. 126.-CH. (9) The attentive reader will observe, that, although Blackstone cites, by way of note, the definition of liberty given in libet, nisi quid vi, aut jure prohibetur. Inst. 1. 3. 1. Justinian's Institute, he does not translate the whole of it in his text. A part of the passage quoted, as Mr. Christian has observed, is absurd. Every man, in every country, is at liberty to do whatever is neither prohibited by power nor by any law. Mr. Christian, however, is much less convincing when (in a note of his to p. 125 of this volume) he speaks of liberty as the idol of mankind; thus intimating that she is a false divinity. He makes the insinuation more distinct, by going on to observe that "liberty, in all times, has been the clamour of men of profligate lives and desperate fortunes;" in support of which reproach he cites the often quoted passage of Tacitus,-"falso libertatis vocabulum ostendi ab iis qui, privatim degeneres, in publicum exitiosi, nihil spei nisi per discordias habeant." The bias of Mr. Christian's mind, thus evinced, may account for the anxiety his notes frequently express, to distinguish civil from political liberty; which not only Blackstone, but, as Mr. Christian admits, most other writers, use as convertible terms. Words, no doubt, are arbitrary signs, and if the words "political liberty" had received a more enlarged and general, and the words "civil liberty" had been restrained, by competent authority, to a more limited and specific, acceptation, there might possibly have been no inconvenience in such a distinction; though it is not easy to conceive how any one can securely enjoy civil liberty, otherwise than by |