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was not, as is wont to happen in such cases, a Saul's armor on the back of a stripling, but was wielded as easily and adroitly as the famous "smith of the Wynde" managed his gigantic hammer. He grasped alike the grand outlines and the minutest details, and combined the soundest and strongest sense with the most acute and just discrimination. His subtle and formal logic was never the cause of weakness, or sophistry, but always rested on solid sense, and was the vehicle of cogent argument. We dare not say that such an intellect could have been destitute of all principles of method, and of all power of classification and arrangement. If it were so, his singular intellect would have been more miraculous even than it was. But we do say that he is a deeper and profounder thinker and lawyer, than we dare pretend or even hope to be, who can comprehend by what mysterious relations, the vast acquirements of such a mind can be bound together and classified and generalized. Whether in despair of ever being able to find any means of classifying his law, according to the powers and capacities of other minds, or without ever making the effort, he finally chose the beautiful and scientific treatise of Littleton on Tenures, as a sort of thread on which to string the pearls of his multifarious learning. And certainly never was law learning so profusely poured out before. It is probable that he was not always entirely correct, and it may be, that he did not so carefully distinguish between those points which had been adjudged, and so were clothed with the authority of precedent, and those which were merely his own conclusions, as a modern text writer would have felt bound to do. But on the whole he was so accurate and so copious, that lawyers and judges seemed for a time, as if by general consent and tacit agreement, to take his book as the conclusive evidence of what the law was in his time, and to spare themselves the trouble of looking much behind him. The period in which Coke lived

was, what may be called, one of the transition states of English society. The old feudal institutions and their incidents had been gradually passing away, and the genius of commerce was beginning to bear sway. This change in social institutions brought with it a corresponding change in the laws. The law of real property was, by the most subtle and artificial devices, made to expand and accommodate itself to the growing wants of commerce and enterprize, while the "law merchant," and in fact, much of the law of personal property, was as it were created anew. Equity law too was called in to fill up the chasms in jurisprudence, which were gradually found in the common law, affording sometimes a new remedy, sometimes prevention of a wrong for which the common law gave only a tardy and often inefficient remedy, and sometimes a new means of discovering and interpreting truth, when the resources of the common law courts were found to fail. This vast accumulation of materials called for new efforts, in the way of digest and commentary. Among these productions, by far the most celebrated was the Commentaries of Blackstone, a work which all English lawyers have delighted to honor; though, if we are not mistaken, they have not been much in the habit of reading it. In no scheme of study which we have seen, drawn up by English lawyers, do we remember to have seen Blackstone mentioned as a book to be much studied. They seem to have thought that Coke's first Institute was the only book worthy to be resorted to for elementary knowledge. Doubtless there have been many exceptions. We remember to have seen somewhere a saying of lord Mansfield's, to the effect, that an acquaintance with Coke might be gained through the medium of Blackstone's commentaries. American lawyers have, on the contrary, been inclined to make Blackstone their Alpha and Omega; in doing which, as it seems to us, they have been wiser than their English brethren. It is probable that in

many, perhaps in most instances, the English pupil in the law comes to his work better prepared by previous study and discipline, than his American brother. It is quite likely that even the "uncouth and crabbed " style of the first Institute may seem a pleasant relaxation to a senior wrangler fresh from the honors of Oxford, and filled with the beauties of Oxford logic,-and generally we suppose that the English student commences at a later age, and with riper acquirements and maturer mind. It may be that such men may succeed better with Coke, than with Blackstone. But in this country, the beautiful clearness and scientific precision of Blackstone have made him the delight of the tyro in the law, and his commentaries have been long the almost universal first text-book; while his wonderful fullness make his book a source of new profit and pleasure to the mature lawyer. Doubtless such a writer, embracing in his plan so vast a variety of subjects, and combining so much of detail with wide and general views, must, almost of necessity, have fallen into some small mistakes, the detection and proclaiming of which has been the pride and glory of his learned editors. But it is believed that these mistakes have not been many or large. He well deserves to be called the Laplace of the English law-having performed for it some such a work as Laplace did for astronomy. Let it not be thought that we mean to convey the idea, that their minds were similar. Learning, accuracy, diligence, philosophic method, and exquisite taste, were the qualities which the work of Blackstone required; while to all these was added in Laplace, a prodigious fund of original and inventive genius, which, indeed, may find ample room and verge enough in the law, but which would have been grievously misplaced in the mind of such a legal and political optimist as sir William Blackstone.

'See Holingshed's life of Mansfield, p. 89.

It has always seemed to us that the work of chancellor Kent was in fact, perhaps by design, supplementary to the Commentaries of Blackstone. It will be many a long year before the man will be found with sufficient hardihood to attempt to go over again the ground which Blackstone has so well covered. But about the time of the publication' of the celebrated Commentaries, the American colonies, as they were then called, separated from the mother country and asserted their independence. In all these colonies the English common law had, to a greater or less degree, been the law of the land. On it were founded their social systems, and by it had they been governed in their business and social relations. On the assertion of independence, some of the states formally adopted so much of the common law as had been before in use, and was adapted to their institutions and wants; and in all the others, it is believed, that it silently but surely became established. We have seen that the English common law never remained stationary. One of its chief glories, in our estimation, is its power of expanding and changing, to adapt itself to the ever changing and ever growing wants of society. But under the freedom of American institutions, and the peculiar circumstances of a new country, its changes have been more rapid and striking. Instead of the three superior courts of common law in Westminster hall, and the court of chancery, there sprang into life, we had almost said, countless jurisdictions, scattered over a wide extent of country, and probably at first not imbued with too much veneration for the old oracles of the common law. It is probable, too, that men who, at the close of the war of the revolution, left the field of battle for the forum, and assumed the quill instead of the rifle, and after a short preparation, or may be none at all, plunged into the practice of the law, would be more

The first volume was published, we believe, in 1765.

likely to appeal to their own ready wit and common sense, than to the ponderous tomes of black-letter law. In a country, too, where land was so plenty and to be had for the asking, and where the countless convenient things, called personal chattels, were more often desired than possessed, it is not strange that the distinction between real and personal property was for a time lost sight of, and land lost that preeminence with which it was invested in the English law. For a time, then, different causes operated unseen. Gradually the custom of reporting became general, and one after another of the state courts sent forth its reports, which with the statute book of the state made the system of state law. In 1839, there were five hundred and thirty-six volumes of American reports, and that number has of course since been increased. Happily in the midst of all this diversity, the main body of the common law has not been lost sight of. The English reports have still retained their authority, and the decisions of those courts where Mansfield, Kenyon, Ellenborough, Tenterden, Loughborough, Eyre, and sir James Mansfield have presided, have continued to be cited as all but conclusive determinations of the laws of the land. It has thus happened that the cumbrous and unmeaning, the dead and the useless in forms and practice, have been rejected by the free and eminently practical spirit of American institutions and men-the complicated and useless process of the English courts has long been rejected, especially in the New England states. John Doe and Richard Roe, those immortal pledges of prosecution, have taken their departure. Good-title and Bad-title, at least, in New England, no longer carry on their unending litigation. The writ of entry, with its procedure simplified and shortened, has taken the place of the fanciful fictions of the action of ejectment. The law of conveyancing has been simplified. Fines and common recoveries, with all their tiresome aud expensive fictions, are almost universally disused. And the

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