In the year 1754, he was engaged as counsel in the county election, where a question, arising on the right of certain copyholders to vote, was the origin of his tract published a few years afterward, under the title of "Considerations on Copyholders."

In the year 1756, Mr. Viner, the laborious compiler of the most complete abridgment of the English law that has ever appeared, died, and bequeathed to the university of Oxford the whole profits of his voluminous compilation, for the purpose of promoting the study of the common law of England. This munificent benefaction was employed in the first instance in the institution of a professorship of English law, to which a stipend of two hundred pounds per annum was annexed. The duty assigned to the professor was to deliver one solemn public lecture on the laws of England in every academical term, and also by himself or his deputy to read yearly a complete course of lectures on the same subject, consisting of sixty lectures at the least. On the 20th of October, 1758, Mr. Blackstone was unanimously elected the first Vinerian professor; and on the 25th of the same month he read his introductory lecture, the method, elegance, and learning of which attracted the admiration of every one who heard it. This excellent discourse was afterward prefixed to the first volume of the Commentaries.

The reputation which the first course of the Vinerian lectures obtained was such, that the nobleman who superintended the education of the young Prince, requested Mr. Blackstone to read them to his royal highness; an honor which was respectfully declined by the new professor in consequence of the pressure of his engagements at the university. Copies of the lectures were, however, presented to the Prince, a service for which Mr. Blackstone received a munificent acknowledgment.

The distinction which Mr. Blackstone had acquired by his lectures induced him in the year 1759, to return to London, where he resumed his practice, visiting Oxford at stated periods only, for the delivery of his lectures. The coif was pressed upon him by Lord Chief-Justice Willes and Mr. Justice Bathurst; but he thought proper to decline the honor. In the

same year he gave to the world a magnificent edition of Magna Charta and the Charter of the Forest, which issued from the Clarendon press. About this time he also published a small tract on the law of descents in fee simple.

Hitherto, Mr. Blackstone appears to have taken no part whatever in the political discussions of the day; but a dissolution of parliament having taken place, he was returned in 1761 as one of the representatives of Hindon, in Wiltshire. Soon afterward he received a patent of precedence, having declined the office of chief-justice of the common pleas in Ireland.

The rank thus conferred upon him, and the celebrity which he had acquired as a writer, operated very favorably on the professional views of Mr. Blackstone. His practice having considerably increased, he married Sarah, the eldest surviving daughter of James Clitherow, of Boston House, in the county of Middlesex, by whom he had a family of nine children. His fellowship having been vacated by his marriage, he was, in July, 1761, appointed principal of New Inn Hall by the Earl of Westmoreland, at that time chancellor of the university.

In the year 1762, he collected his tracts on legal subjects, and published them in two volumes 8vo.; and in the course of the following year, on the establishment of the Queen's household, he received the appointment of solicitor-general to her majesty, and was elected a bencher of the Middle Temple.

In the year 1765, appeared the first volume of the celebrated Commentaries on the Laws of England. The reception of the Commentaries, in regard to the style in which they were written, is all that could have been desired; but in matter they did not escape criticism from the politicians of the day.

In the year 1766, Mr. Blackstone resigned the Vinerian professorship, and the place of principal of New Inn Hall, in consequence of his London business interfering with his duties at the university.

Having been returned for Westbury in Wiltshire, in the parliament of 1768, he took a part in the debates which arose relative to the election of Mr. Wilkes.

Those professional honors to which the talents and acquirements of Mr. Blackstone gave him so just a claim were now

opened to him; and on the resignation of Mr. Dunning in 1770, the vacant place of solicitor-general was offered to him. The parliamentary duties incident to this office were probably the ground on which it was declined by Mr. Blackstone. Of a sensitive and retiring disposition, he had been disgusted with the contests into which his parliamentary duties had led him, and he looked anxiously for the shelter from political life which the bench afforded. Very shortly after his refusal of the post of solicitor-general, Mr. Justice Clive, one of the judges of the common pleas, resigned his seat, which was immediately tendered to Mr. Blackstone. The patent for his appointment was about to pass, when Mr. Justice Yates expressed an earnest wish to change his court. In consequence, Mr. Blackstone was, in Hilary term, 1770, appointed to the seat vacated by Sir Joseph Yates in the king's bench. In the ensuing Trinity term, however, on the death of Mr. Justice Yates, he accepted the place originally designed for him in the court of common pleas.

In the latter part of his life, Sir Wm. Blackstone devoted much of his time, in conjunction with Mr. Howard and Mr. Eden, to the subject of prison discipline-a subject with which not merely the welfare of the individuals who are the objects of that discipline, but the virtue and happiness of society at large, are intimately connected. In common with many reflecting men of his day, Sir William Blackstone had remarked the inefficacy of the system which restores prisoners to society, on the expiration of their punishment, more complete adepts in their criminal arts than when they entered the walls of their gaol, and resolutely bent to revenge upon the community the cruelty and harshness they have sustained at its hands. If a scheme had been formed for the propagation of vice, for initiating the uninstructed in its mysteries, and for carrying to their full perfection the talents of the more experienced criminals, no schools could have been instituted better adapted to such ends, than our own prisons toward the middle of the last century. Idleness, drunkenness, debauchery of all kinds, filthiness beyond credibility, an unrestrained communication between the oldest and the youngest offenders, were the dis

tinguishing qualities of almost every county gaol in England. By the exertions of Howard (a name never to be pronounced without feelings of the deepest reverence and the most grateful admiration), the public were roused to a sense of this most disgraceful and injurious system. Among others, Sir William Blackstone exerted himself, in conjunction with Mr. Howard, to procure an act of parliament for the establishment of penitentiary houses near the metropolis, for the reformation of those who had been in confinement.

Sir William Blackstone did not for any long time enjoy the honors to which his learning, his literature, and his diligence had raised him. In his earlier life he had devoted himself but too assiduously to the studies on which his advancement necessarily depended, and his health, which appears never to have been robust, suffered from this injudicious application. He had, unfortunately, also contracted an aversion to exercise, the neglect of which contributed to increase a nervous complaint to which he was occasionally subject, and which produced a distressing giddiness or vertigo. About Christmas, 1779, he was attacked with a shortness of breath, which was thought by his physicians to arise from water on the chest, and the usual remedies were applied, from which he appeared to receive benefit. In Hilary term he came up to town, for the purpose of attending his duties in court, but again became alarmingly ill, with symptoms of drowsiness and stupor. The disorder rapidly increased, and, after lying insensible for some days, he died on the 14th of February, 1780, in the 57th year of his age. He was buried at the parish church of St. Peter, in Wallingford.

The fame of Sir William Blackstone as a commentator on the laws of England, has rendered his character as a judge less conspicuous. His judgments, indeed, are never wanting in learning and good sense; but they would not alone have raised his name to the distinguished station which it now occupies. The notes of his judgments, published with his other reports after his death, are not remarkable for their research or accuracy; and it is probable that his legal acquirements rather declined than advanced after the publication of his Commentaries.

In his political sentiments he was moderate, being esteemed what is usually termed "a firm supporter of the true principles of our happy constitution in church and state." In his views of politics, as well as in those of law, he was inclined rather to extenuate and to justify than to doubt and criticise. A remarkable instance of the caution with which he has avoided offending established opinions or prejudices, may be found in that portion of the Commentaries in which he speaks of the Revolution of 1688. Without venturing to deduce the great and obvious principle which is involved in it, he treats it only as a precedent applicable to a state of things in all circumstances similar; thus divesting one of the noblest moral lessons, which governments were ever taught, of all its salutary warnings. Still, when we remember that Sir William Blackstone had been educated amongst persons professing, for the most part, the principles of high Toryism, that his lectures were addressed to an audience chiefly composed of persons of similar opinions, and when we also take into account the peculiar circumstances of his professional and private life, it would be unjust to accuse him of want of liberality.

The acquirements of Sir William Blackstone as a scholar were, doubtless, very considerable. He had always been in the habit of employing much of his time in reading; and, possessing a powerful memory, with a mind very capable of arranging its stores, he was remarkable for the variety and extent of his information. It is to be regretted that he never applied himself to any undertaking of a purely literary nature, in which there can be little doubt that he would have been eminently successful. Almost the only composition of this kind from the pen of Sir W. Blackstone which has been preserved, is an investigation of the quarrel between Pope and Addison, communicated by its author to Dr. Kippis, the editor of the Biographia Britannica, and by him published in the life of Addison as the production of "a gentleman of considerable rank, to whom the public is obliged for works of much higher importance." In noticing this disquisition, M. D'Israeli has remarked the "masterly force and luminous arrangement of investigation" it displays, "and to which," as he observes,