BLACKSTONE, Sir WILLIAM. a comtnentator on English law, was the posthumous son of a silk-mercer in London, andwas horn there on the 10th of July, 1723. At the age of 15, having obtained a se':Aar:Mn from the chartialtottse school, 'whertsbe was educated, he was sent to Pembroke hail, Oxford. There he was fortunate enough to obtain a second scholarship, and remaiued till, in 1744, he was admitted a fellow of All Souls' college, when he removed to London, to attend the courts of law with the view of quali fying himself for his future profession. In 1746, at the age of 23, he was called to the bar, but failed to attract either notice or practice. Upon the death of an uncle in 1749, he was appointed recorder of Wallingford, in Berkshire; but in 1753 lie went to Oxford, where he delivered a course of academic lectures upon the law of England. A few years later, a Mr. Viner having left a sum of money to endow a chair of English law in the university of Oxford, B. was, in 1758, appointed first Vinerian professor. The follow ing year, B. returned to Westminster; and as the doctrines which he had taught as a lecturer had been such as to commend Min to the notice of the tory government of that day, he obtained its patronage, and in 1761 was made a king's counsel. Shortly after. he was appointed principal of New Inn hall, Oxford. Other honors followed fast, and he became successively member of parliament, bencher of the Middle Temple, and solic itor-general to the queen. In 1765, B. published the first volume of his lectures, and the remaining three volumes between that date and 1769. These lectures form his cele brated Commentaries on the Laws of England. His practice continuing to increase, he resigned, in 1766, his Oxford appointments. Four years later, lie was offered the solicitor-generalship, and after declining it, was knighted, and made a justice of the court of common pleas. The remaining years of his life were spent in the discharge of his duties as a judge. IIe died on the 14th of Feb., 1780, at the age of fifty-seven.
The fame of B. rests entirely upon his Commentaries. His other literary works were inconsiderable, and his merits as a pleader or judge were not such as, of themselves, to have made his reputation outlive himself. As a commentator, he had many excellences. His style was in general clear and gracefully ornate, and his illustrations pleasing and felicitous. While he confined himself to exposition—to the accurate statement in sehol arlike English of what had heretofore lain buried in the cumbrous language of lawyers like Littleton—B. was unsurpassed, and rendered an important service to the country. But he was ambitious of combining with this exposition the higher task of explaining the reasons for the law, as well as its merits and defects. For this survey of the law, from the legislator's point of view, he had not the requisite qualifications. His knowl edge of English history was, as Hallam tells us, superficial, and his study of the phi losophy of law had been imperfect. With the works, indeed, of Montesquieu and Beccaria he was acquainted; but the mode in which he quotes them shows that he had imbibed nothing of their spirit. The method followed in the Commentaries was as unscientific as could be imagined, and had not even the merit of originality. It was taken, with little alteration, and no improvement, from Sir Matthew Dale's Analysis of the English Law. Possibly the haste with which the Commentaries must have been com posed, being originally in the form of lectures, may have led to some of their imperfec tions. Since B.'s death, the Commentaries have been very frequently reprinted, perhaps the best editions being those of Christian. As a century has elapsed since they were composed, so many alterations are requisite to adapt them to the existing state of the law, that it may be said that their purpose has been served, and that they arc now valuable chiefly as materials for history.