Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/80

64 of reports and judicial deciions, and in the treaties of learned ages of the profeion, preerved and handed down to us from the times of highet antiquity. However I therefore tile thee parts of our law , becaue their original intitution and authority are not et down in writing, as acts of parliament are, but they receive their binding power, and the force of laws by long and immemorial uage, and by their univeral reception throughout the kingdom. In like manner as Aulus Gellius defines the jus non criptum to be that, which is “.” antient lawyers, and particularly Fortecue, init with abundance of warmth, that thee cutoms are as old as the primitive Britons, and continued down, through the everal mutations of government and inhabitants, to the preent time, unchanged and unadulterated. This may be the cae as to ome: but in general, as Mr Selden in his notes oberves, this aertion mut be undertood with many grains of allowance; and ought only to ignify, as the truth eems to be, that there never was any formal exchange of one ytem of laws for another: though doubtles by the intermixture of adventitious nations, the Romans, the Picts, the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans, they mut have inenibly introduced and incorporated many of their own cutoms with thoe that were before etablihed: thereby in all probability improving the texture and widom of the whole, by the accumulated widom of divers particular countries. Our laws, aith lord Bacon, are mixed as our language: and as our language is o much the richer, the laws are the more complete. indeed our antiquarians and firt hitorians do all poitively aure us, that our body of laws is of this compounded nature. For they tell us, that in the time of Alfred the local cutoms of the everal provinces of the kingdom were grown o various, that he found it expedient to compile his dome-book or , for the general ue of the whole kingdom. This book