BLACKSTONE, Sir WILLIAM (1723-80). A celebrated commentator on English law. He was the son of a silk mercer in London, and was horn there July 10, 1723. At the age of 15. having obtained a scholarship from the Charterhouse School, where he was educated, he was sent to Pembroke Hall, Oxford. There he was fortunate enough to obtain a second scholarship, and re mained till, in 1744, he was admitted a fellow of All Souls' College. During this period he divided his time between Oxford and London, attending the courts of law with the view of qualifying 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. In 1749 he was appointed recorder of 'Wallingford, in Berk shire: but in 1753 he went to Oxford, where he delivered a course of academic lectures upon the law of England. A few years later, a 'Mr. Winer, himself a legal author, having left a sum of money to endow a chair of English law in the University of Oxford, Blackstone was in 1758 appointed first Vinerian professor. The follow ing year Blackstone returned to Westminster; and as the doctrines which he had taught as a lecturer had been such as to commend him 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 hon ors followed fast, and he became successively member of Parliament, bencher of the :Middle Temple, and Solicitor-General to the Queen. in 1765 Blackstone published the first volume of his lectures. and the remaining three volumes be tween that date and 1709. These lectures form his celebrated Commentaries on the Lazes of England. His practice continuing to increase, he resigned, in 1766, his Oxford appointments. Four years later he was offered the solieitor-gcn eralship, and after declining it was knighted and made a justice of the Courl of Common Pleas. The remaining years of his life were spent in the discharge of his duties as a judge. He died February 14. 1780. at the age of 57.
The fame of Blackstone rests entirely upon his commentaries. His other literary works were inconsiderable, and his merits as a pleader or judge were not suell as, of themselves, to have mole his reputation outlive him. As a com mentator he had many excellences. His style was in general clear and gracefully ornate, and his illustrations pleasing and felicitous. So long as he eonlined himself to exposition—to the accurate statement in scholarlike English of what had heretofore lain buried in the cumbrous language of lawyers like Littleton—Blackstone was unsurpassed, and rendered an important service to the country. But he W:11-3 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 knowledge of English history was, as Ilallam tells us. super ficial, and his study of the philosophy of law had been imperfect. With the works, indeed. of 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 Hale's Analysis of the English Law. Possibly the haste with which the Commentaries must have been composed, being originally in the form of lectures, may have led to some of their imperfections. Notwithstanding its defects, the positive merits of the work—its systematic char acter, its comprehensiveness. the accuracy of its exposition. and the dignity and charm of its style—have made it the hest - known, and in many respects the most influential treatise in English law. All subsequent commentaries, in cluding that of Kent, have been modeled upon it, and it continued to be for a hundred years the foundation of all legal education in America. Numberless editions of the Com men to ries have been printed, including those of Chitty. Chris tian, Cooley, Sharswood, and, last and best of them all, the admirable edition of Lewis pub lished in 18'98. As more than a century has elapsed since the Commentaries were composed, so many alterations arc 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 are now valuable chiefly as materials for history. In addition to the Commentarics, Blackstone wrote several essays and treatises on legal topics.
Consult: His Life, by Clitherow, prefixed to Blackstone's Reports of ('uses, etc. (London, 1781) : also his Life, in The Low Magazine, Vol. XV. (London, 1836) ; and his Life in The Dic tionary of National Biography, Vol. V. (Lon don, 1886).