Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/31

§. 1. imperial law is much cultivated and it’s deciions pretty generally followed, we are informed by Van Leeuwen, that, “it receives it’s force from cutom and the conent of the people, either tacitly or exprely given: for otherwie, he adds, we hould no more be bound by this law, than by that of the Almains, the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths, the Vandals, and other of the antient nations.” Wherefore, in all points in which the different ytems depart from each other, the law of the land takes place of the law of Rome, whether antient or modern, imperial or pontificial. And in thoe of our Englih courts wherein a reception has been allowed to the civil and canon laws, if either they exceed the bounds of that reception, by extending themelves to other matters, than are permitted to them; or if uch courts proceed according to the deciions of thoe laws, in caes wherein it is controlled by the law of the land, the common law in either intance both may, and frequently does, prohibit and annul their proceedings : and it will not be a ufficient excue for them to tell the king’s courts at Wetminter, that their practice is warranted by the laws of Jutinian or Gregory, or is conformable to the decrees of the Rota or imperial chamber. For which reaon it becomes highly neceary for every civilian and canonit that would act with afety as a judge, or with prudence and reputation as an advocate, to know in what caes and how far the Englih laws have given anction to the Roman; in what points the latter are rejected; and where they are both o intermixed and blended together, as to form certain upplemental parts of the common law of England, ditinguihed by the titles of the king’s maritime, the king’s military, and the king’s eccleiatical law. The propriety of which enquiry the univerity of Oxford has for more than a century o thoroughly een, that in her tatutes he appoints, that one of the three quetions to be annually dicued at the act by the jurit-inceptors hall relate to the common law; ubjoining this reaon, “undefined “teri