Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/20

4 pirited deign of our wie and munificent benefactor. And this he mut more epecially dread, when he feels by experience how unequal his abilities are (unaited by preceding examples) to complete, in the manner he could wih, o extenive and arduous a tak; ince he freely confees, that his former more private attempts have fallen very hort of his own ideas of perfection. And yet the candour he has already experienced, and this lat trancendent mark of regard, his preent nomination by the free and unanimous uffrage of a great and learned univerity, (an honour to be ever remembered with the deepet and mot affectionate gratitude) thee tetimonies of your public judgment mut entirely uperede his own, and forbid him to believe himelf totally inufficient for the labour at leat of this employment. One thing he will venture to hope for, and it certainly hall be his contant aim, by diligence and attention to atone for his other defects; eteeming, that the bet return, which he can poibly make for your favourable opinion of his capacity, will be his unwearied endeavours in ome little degree to deerve it.

cience thus committed to his charge, to be cultivated, methodized, and explained in a coure of academical lectures, is that of the laws and contitution of our own country: a pecies of knowlege, in which the gentlemen of England have been more remarkably deficient than thoe of all Europe beides. In mot of the nations on the continent, where the civil or imperial law under different modifications is cloely interwoven with the municipal laws of the land, no gentleman, or at leat no cholar, thinks his education is completed, till he has attended a coure or two of lectures, both upon the intitutes of Jutinian and the local contitutions of his native oil, under the very eminent profeors that abound in their everal univerities. And in the northern parts of our own iland, where alo the municipal laws are frequently connected with the civil, it is difficult to meet with a peron of liberal education, who is detitute of a competent knowlege in that cience, which is to be the guardian of his natural rights and the rule of his civil conduct.