Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/21

§. 1. have the imperial laws been totally neglected even in the Englih nation. A general acquaintance with their deciions has ever been deervedly conidered as no mall accomplihment of a gentleman; and a fahion has prevailed, epecially of late, to tranport the growing hopes of this iland to foreign univerities, in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; which, though infinitely inferior to our own in every other conideration, have been looked upon as better nureries of the civil, or (which is nearly the ame) of their own municipal law. In the mean time it has been the peculiar lot of our admirable ytem of laws, to be neglected, and even unknown, by all but one practical profeion; though built upon the oundet foundations, and approved by the experience of ages.

be it from me to derogate from the tudy of the civil law, conidered (apart from any binding authority) as a collection of written reaon. No man is more thoroughly peruaded of the general excellence of it’s rules, and the uual equity of it’s deciions, nor is better convinced of it’s ue as well as ornament to the cholar, the divine, the tateman, and even the common lawyer. But we mut not carry our veneration o far as to acrifice our Alfred and Edward to the manes of Theodoius and Jutinian: we mut not prefer the edict of the praetor, or the recript of the Roman emperor, to our own immemorial cutoms, or the anctions of an Englih parliament; unles we can alo prefer the depotic monarchy of Rome and Byzantium, for whoe meridians the former were calculated, to the free contitution of Britain, which the latter are adapted to perpetuate.

detracting therefore from the real merit which abounds in the imperial law, I hope I may have leave to aert, that if an Englishman mut be ignorant of either the one or the other, he had better be a tranger to the Roman than the Englih intitutions. For I think it an undeniable poition, that a competent knowlege of the laws of that ociety, in which we live, is