B L A 



493 



B L A 



the whale of it, what distresses me is, not the meeting with 

 any positions, such as, thinking them false, I find a diffi- 

 culty in proving so : but the not meeting with any positions, 

 true or false (unless it be here and there a self-evident one), 

 that I can find a meaning for. If I can find nothing posi- 

 tive to accede to, no more can I to contradict. Of this latter 

 kind of work, indeed, there is the less to do for any one 

 else, our author himself having executed it, as we have 

 seen, so amply.' 



In the last edition of Blackstone, published in 1829 

 (Commentaries, &c., with copious notes by Thomas Lee, 

 Esq., of Gray's Inn, Barrister at Law), the life of Black- 

 stone prefixed to the first volume terminates with the fol- 

 lowing extract from the Preface to the ' Fragment :' ' He 

 (Blackstone) it is, in short, who, first of all institutional 

 writers, has taught jurisprudence to speak the language of 

 the scholar and the gentleman : put a polish on that rugged 

 science : cleansed her from the dust and cobwebs of the 

 office : and if he has not enriched her with that precision 

 that is drawn only from the sterling treasury of the sciences, 

 has decked her out, however, to advantage, from the toilette 

 of classic erudition : enlivened her with metaphors and 

 allusions : and sent her abroad in some measure to instruct, 

 and in still greater measure to entertain, the most miscel- 

 laneous and even the most fastidious taste.' This some- 

 what dubious praise Bentham gave to the author of the 

 'Commentaries,' that he might not, while 'exposing the 

 author's ill deserts, be backward in paying homage to his 

 various merits.' But to do full justice both to the author of 

 the ' Commentaries' and the author of the ' Fragment,' it will 

 be necessary to continue the citation of the panegyric one 

 short paragraph further, with which the compliment con- 

 cludes. ' The merit to which, as much perhaps as to any, 

 the work stands indebted for its reputation, is the enchant- 

 ing harmony of its numbers : a kind of merit that of itself 

 is sufficient to give a certain degree of celebrity to a work 

 devoid of every other. So much is man governed by the 

 ear.' We do not find any other reference to the ' Fragment 

 on Government ' in this last edition of Blackstone (we have 

 only examined the notes on the Introduction) than the first 

 part of the panegyric to which we have supplied the con- 

 clusion. If any student has bewildered, or is still bewilder- 

 ing himself with trying to find out a meaning in Black- 

 stone's Introduction, in threading a labyrinth to which there 

 is no clue, he may probably find the solution of his diffi- 

 culties in the five chapters of Bentham's 'Fragment.' 



This little work, in which the utmost severity of reason- 

 ing is united with the greatest imaginable felicity and per- 

 spicuity of expression, with the happiest and most playful 

 humour, and the most pointed sarcasm, without the ap- 

 pearance of ill-nature, is still further recommended by the 

 sincerity with which every line in it is stamped. It is not 

 difficult to understand why this corrective to Blackstone's 

 absurdities only reached a second edition in 1823. 



It remains briefly to notice, and more briefly than the im- 

 portance of the subject demands, the arrangement of the 

 matter of law in Blackstone ; for with the facts of law as 

 stated by him we have little to do. The work as far as it 

 goes is useful ; at least, on this point there is not so much 

 difference of opinion. In Blackstone's chapter on the ' Abso- 

 lute Rights of Individuals,' we have his fundamental defini- 

 tion of law, which, coupled with his views contained in 

 the Introduction, will sufficiently account for the confusion 

 that prevails in numerous passages. (See vol. i. p. 133, and 

 indeed the whole of the chapter entitled ' Of the Absolute 

 Rights of Individuals.') In this chapter he says that the 

 ' primary and principal objects of law are rights and wrongs.' 

 ' Rights ' he subdivides into, ' first, those which concern and 

 are annexed to the persons of men, and are then called 

 jura personarum, or the rights of persons ; or they are, se- 

 condly, such as a man may have over external objects or 

 things unconnected with his person, which are styled jura 

 rerun, or the rights of things.' He divides wrongs into 

 private and public, the foundation and the nature of which 

 division must be sought in those writers who adopt it. (See 

 Blackstone, i. 1 22, &c.) In his division of his matter into 

 these great heads, and the subdivision of these heads into 

 their several parts, Blackstone followed the Analysis of Hale, 

 though, so far from improving upon it, his division and ar- 

 rangement are very much inferior. His method is styled 

 by 1'rofessor Austin, 'a slavish and blundering copy of that 

 very imperfect method which Hale had roughly delineated 

 in his short and unfinished "Analysis." From the outset to 



the end of his " Commentaries," he blindly adopts the mis- 

 takes of his rude and compendious model : missing inva- 

 riably, with a nice and surprising infelicity, the pregnant 

 but obscure suggestions which it proffered to his attention, 

 and which would have guided a discerning and inventive 

 writer to an arrangement comparatively just.' (See Austin's 

 Outline of a Course of Lectures on General Jurispru- 

 dence.) 



The singular confusion in Blackstone's notion of the 

 rights of persons and things is rendered still more apparent 

 by comparing the 1st chapter of vol. ii. ' of Property in 

 General,' with the beginning of chap. 2. of the s'ame 

 yol ii., where he comes to speak of the division of property 

 into things real and personal, according to the system of 

 English law. He borrowed the terms (rights of persons and 

 things) from Hale's ' Analysis,' who however has used them 

 in a sense far less objectionable than that of Blackstone. 



BLACKSTONE CANAL, in the United States, extends 

 from Worcester in the centre of the state of Massachusetts, 

 in a S.S.E. direction to Providence in Rhode Island. It 

 follows, in the greater part of its course, the valley of the 

 Blackstone river, from which it derives its supply of water. 

 Its entire length is forty-five miles ; its breadth at the 

 surface is thirty-five feet, and at the bottom eighteen feet : 

 the depth of water is four feet. The fall, from the summit 

 at Worcester to tide-water at Providence, is 45T61 feet, 

 The canal has forty-eight locks, eighty feet long by ten wide. 

 It was formed by a company incorporated by charters of the 

 Massachusetts and Rhode Island legislatures, and was com- 

 pleted in 1828 at a cost of 600,000 dollars. (American 

 Almanac for 1833.) 



BLACKWALL.' [See LONDON.] 



BLACKWATER, the principal river of the county of 

 Essex, called also the Pant and Freshwell in the early part 

 of its course. It has its source near Debden, in the north- 

 east part of the county, on the borders of Cambridgeshire, 

 and, after a winding course through Booking and Coggeshall, 

 approaches Witham, and receives the stream which passes 

 through that town ; then, flowing south-east, it unites with 

 the Chelmer at Maldon, after which it widens and forms 

 the extensive aostuary to which it gives the name of Black- 

 water Bay, by which it enters the German Ocean. The 

 course of the river, including its chief bends, is about forty- 

 five miles ; but the direct distance between its source and 

 the sea does not exceed thirty miles. This bay is celebrated 

 for its oysters, called Walfleet oysters, which Camden con- 

 jectures to be those which, according to Pliny, supplied the 

 Roman kitchens, to which Mucian gives the third rank 

 after the Cyzicenian oysters, which he describes as ' larger 

 than the Lucrine, and sweeter than the British ;' and which, 

 finally, Ausonius calls ' wonderful.' In high tides the 

 waters cover a large tract of country at the mouth of the 

 Blackwater river. Whence it derived its name is net 

 known. ' But,' says Camden, ' Ptolemy calls it Idumanus, 

 which signifies the same, Ydu being black in British.' 



(Gough's Camden's Britannia ; Beauties of England 

 and Wales, fyc.) 



BLACKWATER, the chief river of the county Cork, in 

 Ireland, rises on the confines of Kerry, and flows west- 

 ward by Mill Street, Mallow, Lismore, and Cappoquin ; it 

 thence runs southward to the sea, which it enters at Youg- 

 hall, between the counties of Cork and Waterford. The 

 Blackwater is not navigable to any considerable distance 

 above its sostuary at Youghall, but the loss of carriage 

 arising from its rapidity is counterbalanced by the gain of 

 immense water-power which it affords to the rich corn coun- 

 try on its north bank. On the south its course is bounded 

 by a continuous chain of lofty mountains. Beginning from 

 the west, the highlands of Muskerry (the old Slieve Logher) 

 run into the Boghra range, and these again are continued 

 by the chain of the Nagles, which bound the valley to the 

 borders of Waterford. The river's chief feeders come 

 from the more open country on the opposite bank : these 

 are the Alia, the Awbeg (the ' gentle Mulla' of Spenser), 

 the Puncheon, and the Araghlin. The scenery all along 

 is highly beautiful and picturesque, and a recent tourist 

 has lately pronounced the descent of the Blackwater from 

 Mallow to Lismore equal to that of any other river of 

 its size in Europe. It is celebrated for salmon, although 

 its fish have not so fine a flavour as those of the neighbour- 

 ing Lee. This is the river to which Spenser (whose castle of 

 Kilcolman stands near its junction with the Awbeg) alludes 

 in the lines 



