PREFACE. THE Commentaries of Mr. Justice Blackstone, as a work designed to give information on the laws of this country, may be considered in two lights. They may be viewed as a methodical and elegant statement of what the law was about sixty years ago, when they received the last corrections of their author, or as an authentic account of the law at the present day. In the former light their use remains unimpaired, and they must be read with profit by all who wish to study the legal history of Great Britain; but it is obvious that, in the latter, they have lost much of their original value. They can no longer be referred to for the existing law, and their practical advantages are thus unavoidably diminished. The lawyer may, indeed, know what part is now obsolete, or what statute has been repealed, but the general reader and the student are only able to guess at the alterations, or may be ignorant of them altogether. This is so obvious, that had not the work, as a whole, surpassing merit, and did it not continue in many parts of great authority it would long since have fallen out of public notice; but it is still a most popular legal text-book, and is constantly referred to as well by professional as unprofessional readers. To render it suitable to the market therefore, the alterations have, to some extent, been added from time to time by editors of lesser or greater repute, by way of note. This mode of conveying the necessary information, it will hardly be disputed, is always an inconvenient and unsatisfactory one, more especially to the student; and it seemed to merit consideration, whether another mode might not be adopted; that of incorporating the alterations in the text, and endeavouring to render the whole work a continuous and uniform statement of the law as it stands at the present day. The volume now presented to the reader, the foundation of which is the first volume of Blackstone's Commentaries, has been compiled on this plan, and the writer has been encouraged to proceed with it, by the favourable reception which the second volume* has met with, compiled in the main on the same plan. In the present volume, as in the last, the desire has been to alter as little as possible, and not to overlay the text with matter unsuited to an elementary work, but simply to add the change made by statute or decision, always referring to the authority for the alteration. Where, however, the change is an important one, a full account of it has been given. But there is this difference in the mode of editing this volume, that no portion of the original work has been omitted; and the text, with its illustrations and authorities, where no alteration has occurred, remains in its former state. The present writer has endeavoured to give the effect of all the important constitutional alterations made in the present century, but he has not ventured to obtrude any political opinions of his own on the reader. In undertaking the task, which he has now imperfectly performed, he was hardly aware of the labour he had imposed on himself. There is scarcely any chapter of the work which has not required most essential alteration, more especially occasioned by the extensive changes made in every department of the law within the last few years. That many of them have escaped him, in spite of some diligence, he cannot doubt, but having already experienced much indulgence at the hands of the profession, he is emboldened to ask for it once more. Lincoln's Inn, See the Introduction to that work. March 1, 1839. INTRODUCTION. SECTION THE FIRST. ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW.* [ 4 ] Deficiency ledge of the lish gentle THE Science of the laws and constitution of our own country is a species of knowledge, in which the gentlemen of England have been more remarkably deficient than those of of knowall Europe besides. In most of the nations on the continent law by Engwhere the civil or imperial law under different modifications men. is closely interwoven with the municipal laws of the land, no gentleman, 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. A general acquaintance with their decisions has ever been deservedly considered as no small accomplishment of a gentleman; and a fashion has at times * Among other alterations made in this section it is proper to observe, that it has been treated as a general essay on the Study of the Law, in stead of a particular one addressed to B [ 5 ] Comparative merits man and English law. prevailed, which, however, has much declined since the time of Blackstone, 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 meantime 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 of the Ro- 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. 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 [6] 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 antient Rome; where, as Cicero informs us, the very boys a De Legg. 2. 23. 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. the section. But as the long and universal neglect of this study, with Division of 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 peculiar propriety of reviving it in our own universities and inns of court. of some ge. quaintance cipal law; And, first, to demonstrate the utility of some acquaintance The utility with the laws of the land, let us only reflect a moment on neral acthe singular frame and polity of that land, which is governed with muniby this system of laws. A land, perhaps the only one in the universe, in which political or civil liberty is the very end and scope of the constitution." This liberty, rightly understood, consists in the power of doing whatever the laws permit; which is only to be effected by a general conformity of all orders and degrees to those equitable rules of action, by which the meanest individual is protected from the insults and oppression of the greatest. As therefore every subject is interested in the preservation of the laws, it is incumbent upon every man to be acquainted with those at least with which he is immediately concerned; lest he incur the censure, as well as inconvenience, of living in society without knowing the obligations which it lays him under. And thus much may suffice for persons of [7] is to have a standing rule to live by |