The Press. — London, England, 1855-07-21 00:00:00

JULY 21, 1855. Sittraturt. Blaokstone's Commentaries. Systematically Abridged and Adapted to the Existing State of the Law and Constitution. With Great Additions. By Samuel Warren, D.C.L., &c. London : Maxwell. IT is great praise when a critic can conscien tiously say that a work the title of which dis plays so much promise as the present, has fully, honestly, and thoughtfully redeemed the pledge. Blackstone extricated the law of England from the confusion of some six ten tunes of legislation and judicial decisions. Subsequent commentators before Mr. Warren were content to reproduce Blackstone, and point out in notes or brackets where he was obsolete or repealed, so that at last the notes outgrew the work itself, and Blackstone be came a rivulet of text in a meadow of annota tions. In the meantime the confusion of legislation went on. A reformed Parliament arrived in which there was a deadly struggle, not amongst law makers, but law repealers— the very " eodifiers " themselves being the most rapid in altering the code—in fact, a style of legislation under which, if the dictum is true that every man must know the law, every man must have no other earthly pursuit than its study. With this chaos Mr. Warren has dealt with a success which, to those who are familiar with the subject, will fully justify the attention of twenty years which, in the intervals of the more active duties of his pro fession, he has bestowed upon his task. We had occasion to say, in reviewing the collected edition of Mr. Warren's works in lighter literature, that he presented an ex ample of the absurdity of the former profes sional prejudice that law was inimical to the more elegant studies or to the higher efforts of the imagination. This book will do as much as Mr. Warren's professional success has done to prove the truth of our opinion. It bears marks that cannot be mistaken, nut only of study, research, and care, but of a cor rect and analytical judgment, and of that " legal mind " which finds a grateful pursuit, not only in investigating the minutiae of the science, but also the great principles which should guide that highest human effort, the making of laws to regulate the rights and duties of mankind. When Blackstone published what was called by his enemies in derision " the book," the science of legislation was but little studied or understood. The " gentlemen of fortune " to whom he addressed himself were content to go on as their class had done since the Revo lution, and " make new laws without under " standing the old." The remedy for crimes of any amount was hanging ; for debts, or claims of debt, instant and indefinite imprison ment. The policy of making punishments moderate and certain, instead of excessive and uncertain, though often broached, had never secured sufficient followers to obtain its adoption ; and this policy found in Sir William Blackstone, not only a commentator, but to some degree an advocate. Hence the difficulty in the way of Mr. Warren when he desired to adapt Blackstone's text. The pro gress of legislation, of which this work gives a most valuable history, had gone ahead of those opinions—in some instances even to rashness —and Mr. Warren found himself doing for a new system of jurisprudence what Blackstone had done fer the old—there being little in common between the subjects of either author but the great principles of English liberty. The practice of the law bad also changed; and to the philosophical jurist the prac tice is an important and essential portion of the very nature of a code. In the time of Blackstone special pleading had grown into a cumbersome and pedantic science—to those who understood it, a weapon to defeat rights; and to those who did not, a maze and a snare. All this Mr. Warren found abolished. On the principle that the best thing to do with a sick man is to kill him, our reformed legislators have swept away special pleading at a blow, gone back to the days of the Plantagenets, and reduced us almost to oral pleadings, leaving in some cases the issue itself THE PRESS. to be wrangled over and ascertained after the case is called, and requiring judges to legislate from the bench as questions nominally of practice, but greatly affecting the result, arise before them. This system has of course left the commentator a shorter task to perform in the portions devoted to pleading ; but other almost numberless alterations in the very nature and principle of the law have required Mr. Warren to substitute for Blackstone 's text new matter to the extent of full two thirds of his work. Entirely new chapters also have been added to the plan of Blackstone, not the least valuable being that which gives a short and lucid ac count of the constitution of the Kirk of Scotland —a subject to which i t is strange that Blackstone himself did not even advert, seeing that the affairs of that Establishment come not unfre quently by appeal before the House of Lords, and that the Act of Union requires from the monarch so strict an undertaking to preserve it in its entirety. Perhaps the portion of the present work which contains the most matter collected at the expense of the greatest re search is that in which Mr. Warren takes up the account of the progress of the laws of England at the date (1836) where Mr. Justice Coleridge, in his " Blackstone," left it, and brings it down to the last Common Law Procedure Act. In performing this task Mr. Warren had to con dense the alterations and additions that have taken place in our code during the last twenty years—a period during which the Statute Law constitutes nineteen folio volumes, and the rules of court and bye-laws no doubt would occupy several more. During that period our gigantic railway system and its necessary statutes have both arisen nearly together. Much attention has in the same time been paid to international law, as affecting, for instance, copyright and extradition ; our whole maritime code has been repealed and reconstituted ; the Constitution itself, as regards Parliament, altered : the Protestantism of the country re- asserted by statute ; poor laws, education, joint-stock companies, almost every social and commercial subject, have been submitted to change ; and the legal history of these bustling nineteen years is given by Mr. Warren with a conciseness that makes the late assurances in Parliament of the difficulty of codification seem greatly exaggerated. This portion of the work (as, indeed, the book •generallvl %ill be found of great interest to the general reader, whether he belongs to the rising generation desiring to inquire how the changes came, or whether he may be reminded by these pages of events to which he was a witness. Of certain unsuccessful attempts at innova tion in legislation, and of the necessary posi tion of the House of Commons to command the respect of public opinion, Mr. Warren has some reflections which will strike the reader as timely and just : To this glittering catalogue of the accomolielied acts of the Legislature, during the period with which we are here concerned, may be added a mere passing allusion to mea sures attempted, but unsuccessfully ; proposed and re jected, by either House of Parliament, or both ; or at this moment occupying the grave attention due to subjects of serious magnitude. Some of the former, if adopted. would have virtually changed our form of Government, and in the opinion of the vast majority of the nation in volved us in confusion and ruin. Measures of such a character and tendency have been proposed in, and as peremptorily negatived by, the popular branch of the Legislature. Never before was so visible as now, the truth of that apophthegm of the great Lord Burleigh, cited by Blackstone, that " England could never be ruined hut by a Parliament," and of the saying of Sir Matthew Hale, that, " if by any means a misgovernment should fall on it, the subjects of this kingdom are left without all manner of redress." On the moderation, foresight, and patriotism of our remodelled House of Commons now really depend, under Providence, the welfare and very existence of our empire. If ever the day shall unhappily arrive when either of these august houses has become deficient in re spect for the other; no longer exhibiting the dignified deference and forbearance due from two such great legis lative assemblies towards each other ; and both, or either, careless of their high and delicate relations to the Crown ; if either become insensible to its glorious position and immense responsibilities, our dismayed descendants will read, or we ourselves may be fated to read, inscribed over the portals of our national greatness, Ichabod ; the glory is departed. In vain will then be the sagacity of oar statesmen, in vain the valour of our warriors, in vain the benignant and equitable sway of an enlightened constitu tional sovereign. The House of Commons. however—the very focus of the national will and intelligence—depends, for its character, on those who call it into existence : in other words, on those who exercise the elective franchise. Ours is a land, 691 to use the happy language of an accomplished living " all the institutions of which seek the genial sun shine of public opinion, and must languish without it ;" and the cultivation and right direction of that public opinion is thus of unspeakably momentous concern, and must be sought for in Christianity: whose strengthening and hallowing influence can alone give vitality to our in stitutions, making us safe and happy among ourselves, and respected by all other nations. There is, of course, in such a work as this no party or political allusion, phrase, or sugges tion; yet, as a picture of the Constitution, it is one great Continuous argument for en. lightened Conservatism. Like every work that has proceeded from the pen of its accom plished author, the basis of its teaching is Christianity, which Mr Warren ever treats in the spirit of the dictum of Sir Matthew Hale, as " part and parcel of the law of the land." Indeed, there could not be placed in the hands of the inquiring student a book more sound and safe, and, at the same time, more full. In one particular Mr. Warren's work will be found more beneficial than that of Sir William Blackstone. It is quite devoid of the unreasonable optimism of that distin guished writer. Due praise is given to the excellencies of our Constitution, and care and power shown in bringing out its beauties; but we find nothing of the great judge's self complacency where he passes without repro bation the law which made it capital to steal to the value of tenpence in a dwelling-house, or considers the statute of jeofails a sufficient suppression of " superfluous niceties." Mr. Warren's "Blackstone," which extends to 834 pages, is truly what it professes to he, accu rately adapted to the existing law, and con taining large additions to the text. For educational, general, and even professional reading it is a complete and valuable text book, forming as concise a compendium of our jurisprudence as the "Code Napoleon " of the law of Franco. Ballads. Romantic, Fantastical, and Humorous. By William Harrison Ainsworth. Illustrated by John Gilbert. London : G. Routledge and Co. WE have often desired to see Mr. Ainsworth's lyrics collected, and not long since expressed our belief that such an anthology would be certain of a wide popularity. The means of forming a more accurate judgment is now before us ; and a re-perusal of the whole has confirmed us in our early estimate of the peculiar utialities of vigour, elasticity, and originality of treatment by which these pieces are distinguished. Mr. Ainsworth distributes his songs and ballads under three heads. His arrangement appears to us arbitrary and injudicious. It limits beforehand, so to speak, the kind of enjoyment the reader is to expect, and does injustice by implication to several pieces which combine within themselves the characteristics special to each of the three divisions. Some of these bounding verses do not properly come under any of these heads, but, bursting the confines of definition, soar into regions of fancy where it becomes difficult to seize and fix them. Others suspend the judgment of the reader between their pathos and their gaiety ; and, in short, they would all have been better left to make their individual impression, without being coerced by a classification of any sort. But this objection applies merely to the form of presentation, and does not in the least diminish the intrinsic interest of the book. It is an objection, too, which, we are bound to say, becomes rapidly absorbed in perusal. We soon forget in the fascination of these remark able lyrics the order in which the author has marshalled them. We have ventured to call these lyrics re markable, and we think there are ample grounds for the distinction implied by that epithet. In the first place, the style and manner possess the very rare merit of ori ginality. Fresh, racy, and vigorous, we cannot trace throughout the numerous varieties they exhibit the slightest reminiscence of any other writer. The melody is everywhere new, and the treatment of the subjects is always marked by a strking appropriateness of diction and images. In the second place, the structure of the verse is very perfect in its way. It " steps in music." With measures, frequently difficult,