JOHANN KASPAR BLUNTSCHLI. 445 



FOEEIGN HONORAEY MEMBERS. 



JOHANN KASPAR BLUNTSCHLI. 



JoHANX Kaspar BLUNTSCnLi, elected a Foreign Honorary Member 

 of this Academy in 18G8, was born at Zurich, March 7, 1808, and 

 died at Heidelberg, Oct. 21, 1881. Being unwilling to conform with 

 his mother's wish that he should become a minister of the gospel, 

 he entered the Political Institute of Zurich, where history, philosophy, 

 public law, and political economy were taught. After spending some 

 time here, he went to Germany in 1827, gained a prize at Berlin 

 on a question touching the Roman law of succession, and sustained 

 an examination at Bonn for a doctorate in 1829. Returning to his 

 native town, he began to teach Roman law in the Institute ; and in 

 1833, on the opening of the University of Ziirich, he was there 

 appointed a professor in that branch, and held some offices connected 

 with the courts. In 1837 he was chosen to be a deputy to the Grand 

 Council of the Swiss Confederation, and in an agitated time took the 

 Conservative side agjlinst the Radicals. From 1839 to 1846 he was 

 one of the leaders of that party, and represented its political views in 

 the Diet. 



His career as a writer began in this fii-st period of his academical 

 life, while he yet remained in his native city. He made his debut by 

 publishing his " Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte der Stadt und Land- 

 schaft Zurich," which saw the light in 1838-1839, and went into a 

 second edition in 1856. In the year 1839 he gave to the world also 

 an essay entitled " Die neuere Rechtsschulen der deutschen Juristen," 

 in which he strove to show the importance of uniting the historical 

 and philosophical methods of treating jural science. In 184G-49 he 

 published the first volume of his " Geschichte des schweizerischen 

 Bundesrechts von den ersten ewigen Bunden bis auf die Gegenwart." 

 The second volume, containing documents, followed in 1852. A less 

 important work in 1844, entitled " Psychologische Studien iiber Staat 

 und Kirche," compared the periods of liuman life with those of states. 

 The infancy of states is radicalism ; their youth, liberalism ; their 

 mature age is conservative ; their old age, absolute. And to this 

 questionable theory he returned more than once afterward. 



In his public and political life, while he remained in Switzerland, he 

 seems to have steered a middle course between the Conservative and 

 the Radical parties, hoping to form a Conservative-Liberal centre able 



