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Some Aspects of Blackstone and His Commentaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

W. S. Holdsworth
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Extract

THE main facts of Blackstone's life are well known, and so are the qualities of his Commentaries. I do not intend to add to the number of Blackstone's biographers, nor to give an exhaustive account of his Commentaries. But I must begin by stating shortly some of the salient facts and dates in Black-stone's life in order that my remarks upon some aspects of his Commentaries may be the better understood. Then I shall say something, first, of Blackstone's intellectual characteristics; secondly, of the manner in which these intellectual characteristics have worked together to make the Commentaries a classical book; and, thirdly, of certain alleged defects in the Commentaries.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Law Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , November 1932 , pp. 261 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 1932

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References

1 All Souls has recently come into the possession of a curious little memento of some of Blackstone's activities as a judge. It is a little book, bound in limp leather covers and interleaved with blank leaves, which contains (1) A Geography of Great Britain consisting of a collection of maps of the counties of England, Scotland and Wales, one hundred and fifty-eight descriptions of the routes and distances between different towns, and the names and distances from London of all cities and market towns; and (2) A Description of all the direct and principal cross-roads in Great Britain. Blackstone has added forty-five other routes in his own handwriting, and a list of towns visited on the Western, Oxford, Midland, and Northern circuits. He has also made a few corrections in both books. As the date of publication of the second of these two books is 1772, it may well be that it was used and annotated by him for the purpose of his duties as judge of assize. There are a few notes in another hand. One of these notes is a list of towns visited in the summer of 1795 and the spring of 1796, so that it was obviously at some time after Blackstone's death that the notes in this hand were written.

2 Fragment on Government, Preface, p. 116 (Montague's ed.).

3 C. W. Everett's ed. of Bentham's Comment on the Commentaries, 147.

4 Worthies of All Souls, 400.

5 Printed in the publications of the Roxburgh Club with a preface by Sir William Anson.

6 At p. 3.

7 At p. 42.

8 Worthies of All Souls, 389.

9 From Blackstone's original letter to the Vice-Chancellor.

10 As to this see L. Q. R. xxxix, 26.

11 Spedding, Letters and Life, vi, 70.

12 Preface to Blackstone's Analysis of the Law.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 National Rev., liv, 663.

17 Preface to his Analysis of the Law.

18 Works, x, 45.

19 Preface to his Analysis of the Law.

20 Ibid.

21 Preface to the 1st ed. of the Commentaries.

22 Vol. 3, Lect. 11.

23 Ibid. Lect. 2.

24 This fourth lecture is said to have been ‘read Oct. 17th, 1761.’

25 L. Q. R. xxxix, 45.

26 See Vols. 16 and 17.

27 (1787) 2 T. R. at p. 73.

28 Harv. Law. Rev. xliii, 1–32.

29 Comm. iii, 429–42.

30 Ibid., ii, 445–6.

31 Comm. iv, 376.

32 Fragment on Government (Montague's ed.) 123.

33 Comm. i, 30.

34 Ibid. iv, 416.

35 Ibid. ii, 256.

36 Ibid. i, 365.

37 Ibid. ii, 233.

38 Ibid. iv, 10, 18, 239.

39 Ibid. iii, 441.

40 Ibid. ii, 342–3.

41 Ibid. i, 26–34.

42 National Rev., liv.

43 Comm. i, 335–7.

44 Present Discordants, Works (Bohn's ed.) i, 313.

45 ‘ If any alteration might be wished or suggested in the present frame of Parliaments, it should be in favour of a more complete representation of the people’: Comm. i, 172; cf. ibid. i, 174, where he says: ‘ The misfortune is that the deserted boroughs continued to be summoned.’

46 Works, i, 249.

47 Note in Bentham's own copy of the work, Works, i, 260, note.

48 Fragment, Pref. to the 2nd ed., Works, i, 240.

49 National Rev. liv, 657.

50 A Comment on the Commentaries, 27–8, 192.

51 Ibid. 125–6.

52 Ibid. 143.

53 Ibid. 160–1, 216.

54 Ibid. 162, 169, 181.

55 ‘ From the first morning on which I took my seat on one of the hired boards, that slid from under the officers’ seats in the area of the King's Bench … at the head of the gods of my idolatry, had sitten the Lord Chief Justice ’: Works, i, 247.

56 A Comment on the Commentaries, 24; probably the passage refers more especially to Mansfield's attempt to bring about a fusion between the rules of law and equity, Harv. Law Rev. xliii, 20.

57 A Comment on the Commentaries, 214.

58 E.g. ibid. 237–the law as to the right to light.

59 Ibid. 80, 129.

60 A Comment on the Commentaries, 108–9, 230–1; we can see the same qualities in his criticisms in the Fragment on Government—e.g. he praises de Lolme for saying substantially the same things about the merits of the English constitution as he had ridiculed when they were said by Blackstone, see L. Q. R. xlv, 447, n. 15.

61 A Comment on the Commentaries, 211.

62 Preface to the 2nd ed. of the Fragment, Works, i, 241.

63 For Shelburne's early interest in Bentham and his books, see Bentham's Works, i, 248–9, 252.

64 Histoire de Droit et des Institutions de L'Angleterre, v, 398–9.

65 As M. Dunoyer says, Blackstone et Pothier, 88: ‘ Blackstone ne suivit aucun de ses auteurs dans la plenitude de leurs systêmes, il leurs empruntâ seulement quelques idées éparses.’

66 Holdsworth, Hist. Eng. Law, v, 481–2.

67 See an article by myself in L. Q. R. xlv, 445–6.

68 De L'Esprit des Lois, Bk. XI, Chap. VI: ‘ Lorsque dans la même personne on dans le même corps de magistrature la puissance législative est réunie à la puissance exécutrice, il n'y a point de liberté, par ce qu'on peut craindre que le même monarque ou le même senat ne fasse de lois tyranniques pour les exécuter tyranniquement. Il n'y a point encore du liberté si la puissance de juger n'est pas separée de la puissance législative et de l'exécutrice.’

69 ‘ Enfin il s'est représenté la brumeuse Angleterre et les Anglais du fond de ses vignes bordelaises sous le clair soleil de sa Gascogne. … Non, l'Angleterre n'est pas la patrie classique de la séparation des pouvoirs. Chaque pouvoir y a reçu sa physionomie particulière sans cesser de conserver les traits des autres ’: Le Systè Juridique de l'Angleterre, i, 376.

70 Comm. i, 154–5.

71 Comm. i, 269–70.

72 Law and Opinion (1st ed.) 123.

73 Bagehot, Essays on Parliamentary Reform, 143.

74 Dunoyer, op. cit. 91; he adds that, ‘c’est parce que Blackstone s'est risqué dans un philosophie du droit, sagement évitée par Pothier, qu'il a manqué perdre en Angleterre une grande partie de son crédit.’

75 At pp. 158–9.

76 Ibid. 155–6.

77 Le Systéme Juridique de l'Angleterre, i, 269.

78 Le Système Juridique de l'Angleterre, i, 272.

79 Holdsworth, The Historians of Anglo-American Law, 65–148.