Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/79



HE municipal law of England, or the rule of civil conduct precribed to the inhabitants of this kingdom, may with ufficient propriety be divided into two kinds; the , the unwritten, or common law; and the , the written, or tatute law. , or unwritten law, includes not only general cutoms, or the common law properly o called; but alo the particular cutoms of certain parts of the kingdom; and likewie thoe particular laws, that are by cutom oberved only in certain courts and juridictions. I call thee parts of our law , I would not be undertood as if all thoe laws were at preent merely oral, or communicated from the former ages to the preent olely by word of mouth. It is true indeed that, in the profound ignorance of letters which formerly overpread the whole wetern world, all laws were intirely traditional, for this plain reaon, that the nations among which they prevailed had but little idea of writing. Thus the Britih as well as the Gallic druids committed all their laws as well as learning to memory ; and it is aid of the primitive Saxons here, as well as their brethren on the continent, that. But, with us at preent, the monuments and evidences of our legal cutoms are contained in the records of the everal courts of jutice, in books of