Product Description

Blackstone's Commentaries was the first organized compendium of English law which served as a model for all legal treatises to follow. The Commentaries was especially popular in the American colonies, and was instrumental in shaping the opinions of the founders of the United States in the years following its publication. Blackstone was cited by American lawyers in American courts for over 75 years. Blackstone's Commentaries is truly one of the most influential legal treatises ever written.

Based on the 1st edition, with corrections and most of the material additions in the 2nd edition. Footnotes have been converted to chapter end notes. Spelling has been modernized. *Exclusive!* This edition includes interlineated translations of latin, greek, italian and french quotations. In portable document (.pdf) file format, printable, electronically searchable by word or phrase, with chapter bookmarks. This is a fully digital edition of this work - it is not a facsimile reproduction. This electronic edition © Copyright 2003, 2005 Lonang Institute.

"For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws. * * * This law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. - It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original."    William Blackstone, Esq., from Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1, Introduction, Sect. 2.