Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/84

68 .&ensp; to general cutoms, or the common law, properly o called; this is that law, by which proceedings and determinations in the king’s ordinary courts of jutice are guided and directed. This, for the mot part, ettles the coure in which lands decend by inheritance; the manner and form of acquiring and transferring property; the olemnities and obligation of contracts; the rules of expounding wills, deeds, and acts of parliament; the repective remedies of civil injuries; the everal pecies of temporal offences, with the manner and degree of punihment; and an infinite number of minuter particulars, which diffue themelves as extenively as the ordinary ditribution of common jutice requires. Thus, for example, that there hall be four uperior courts of record, the chancery, the king’s bench, the common pleas, and the exchequer;—that the eldet on alone is heir to his ancetor;—that property may be acquired and transferred by writing;—that a deed is of no validity unles ealed and delivered;—that wills hall be contrued more favorably, and deeds more trictly;—that money lent upon bond is recoverable by action of debt;—that breaking the public peace is an offence, and punihable by fine and imprionment;—all thee are doctrines that are not et down in any written tatute or ordinance, but depend merely upon immemorial uage, that is, upon common law, for their upport.

have divided the common law into two principal grounds or foundations:&ensp;1.&ensp;Etablihed cutoms; uch as that where there are three brothers, the eldet brother hall be heir to the econd, in excluion of the younget:&ensp;and 2.&ensp;Etablihed rules and maxims; as, “that the king can do no wrong, that no man hall be bound to accue himelf,” and the like. But I take thee to be one and the ame thing. For the authority of thee maxims rets entirely upon general reception and uage; and the only method of proving, that this or that maxim is a rule of the common law, is by hewing that it hath been always the cutom to oberve it.