AUSTIN, :Eons, a distinguished writer on jurisprudence, was b. on Mar. 3, 1790. At the age of 16, he entered the 'army, and served as a subaltern with his regiment in Sicily. But he left the service after the pence, and in 1818 was called to the bar. In 1820, he married Miss Sarah Taylor, of Norwich (see AUSTIN, SARAH), to whom he had been attached for many years, and went to live in Queen square, Westminster, next door to Jeremy Bentham and Mr. James Mill. In their society. his attention was naturally turned to the subjects he afterwards cultivated with success. lie was compelled by bad health to abandon his practice at the bar, about the time when the university of London was founded, and he then received the appointment of professor of jurisprudence. To lit himself for the chair, in the autumn of 1827 he settled at Bonn, then the residence of Niebuhr, Brandis, Schlegel, Arndt, Weleker, and Mackeldey, and he remained there throughout the winter. He returned to England well acquainted with the writings of some of the most eminent of the continental jurists. His lectures Iv( re well received by a few distinguished men; but the subject was not recognized as a necessary branch of legal study, and evidently did not supply that kind of knowledge best calculated to promote practical success in the legal professions. A. believed the position of a German professor of law to be the most enviable in the world; and with a small but sure income, he would have devoted his great powers to the exclusive cultiva tion of the subjects discussed in his lectures. But, unfortunately, no provision was made for the chair of jurisprudence beyond class fees, and iu the absence of stu dents, A., in 1832, was reluctantly compelled to resign his appointment. In the same year, he published his Province of jurisprudence Determined, a work, at the time, little appreciated by the general public, and the small success it met did not encourage him to undertake other publications on the allied subjects. In the estimation of competent judges. however, it placed its author in the highest rank among writers on jurisprudence. In 1833, he was appointed by lord Brougham a member of the criminal law commission. The post was not much to his taste, as he did not believe that the public received any advantage from such bodies, in the efficacy of which for constructive purposes he put no faith. " If they would give me £200 a year." he said, "for two years, I would shut myself up in a garret, and at the end of that time I would produce a complete map of the whole field of crime and a draft of a criminal code," These, he thought, a commission might with some profit revise and amend. A. was afterwards
appointed a member of a commission to inquire into the grievances of the Maltese. lie returned to England in 1838, not in good health, and was advised to try the springs at Carlsbad. During his stay in Bonn he had been delighted with the respect the Ger mans manifest for knowledge, their freedom of thought, and the simplicity of their habits. With his slender means, decent existence in England was scarcely possible, and he removed with his family to Germany, living at Carlsbad in summer, at Dresden and Berlin in winter. The revolution of 1848 drove him back to England, and he then set tled at Wevbridge, where he d. in Dec., 1859, universally respected for the dignity and magnanimity of his character. His lectures on the principles of jurisprudence had remained in manuscript and imperfect. Since his death they have been prepared for the press by his widow, and published between 1861 and 1863, under the title of Lectures on Jurisprudence, being a Sequel to " The Prorince of Jurisprudence Determined," etc. On this work his fame now rests.
A.'s great merit consists in his having been the first English writer who attached pre cise meaning to the terms which denote the leading conceptions under lying all systems of jurisprudence. With a very perfect knowledge of the methods of Roman and English law, lie displayed genius of the highest order in devising a novel system of classification for the subject-matter of his science. The work lie did is incom plete, but it forms a sure foundation to future laborers in the same field. It is universally recognized as an enduring monument of learning and genius, and it entitles its author to take rank with Hobbes and Bentham. as one of the three Englishmen who have made contributions of importance to the philosophical study of law. A. said of himself that his special vocation was that of " untying knots"—intellectual knots; and it was so. lie set himself to the task of exposing the errors hid under the phrases and metaphors current among writers on law, and this he accomplished with such skill and subtlety as to make his works models of close and sound reasoning. In education, they now per form a most important part—that of disciplining the mind of those who devote them selves to the study of law and of the mental sciences generally in the difficult art of precise thought; and hothis way they exercise an influence it is scarcely possible to over estimate on the rising generation of lawyers, publicists, and statesmen.—See Memoir of A. prefixed to the Lectures on Jurisprudence, and an article on A. in J. S. Mill's Disser tations and Discussions.