28 COBBETT'S [No. 



there mentioned flic- foul conduct of BLACKSTONE, the 

 author of the "Commentaries on the Laws of 1. 

 land." I will not treat this unprincipled lawyer, i 

 shocking court sycophant; I will not treat him as he 

 has treated Kinir Soli.mmi and the Holy Scriptures; 

 I will not garble, misquote, and helie him, as ne gar- 

 hied, misquoted, and belied them; 1 will give- 

 whole of the passage to which I allude, and which 

 my reader- may find in the Fourth Book of his Com- 

 mentaries. 1 request vou t< read it with irreat atten- 

 tion ; and to compare it. very rarefullv. with the pas- 

 e that I have quoted from SIR MATTIIKW HALE, 

 which you will find in paragraphs from 19 to 21 

 inrhi-ive. The passage from BLAC.. 

 follows: 



There is yet another case of necessity, 

 whieii has occasioned great speculation among the 

 writers upon ireneral law; vi/.. whether a man in 

 extreme want of food or clothing may justify steal- 

 ing either, to relieve his present necessities. And 

 this both GROTIITS and !ier with 



vtftiiy <////</ of the foreign jurists, hold in the 

 allirmative; maintaining hy many ingenious, hu- 

 e, and plau>iMe reasons, that in such cases the 

 community oi'iroods hy a kind of tacit concession of 

 society is revived. And some even of our own law- 

 have held the same; though it seems to be an 

 unwarranted doctrine, borrowed from the notions of 

 some civilians: at least it is now antiquated, the law 

 of England admitting no such excuse at present. 

 And this its doctrine is agreeable not only to the sen- 

 timonts of many of the wisest ancients, particularly 

 CICERO, who holds that c suum cuique incommodum 

 potius quam de alterius commodis de- 

 trahendum;' but also to the Jewish law. as certified 

 by King Solomon himself: If a thief steal to Balk 

 his soul when he is hungry, he shall restore se\ 

 fold, and shall give all the substance of his house:' 

 which was the ordinary punishment for theft in that 

 kingdom. And this is founded upon the hi^he-t rea- 

 son: for men's properties would be under a strange 



