Mansfield and Blackstone's Commentaries

Abstract

N THE eighteenth century, a period when prose came to a higher excellence than it had yet attained in England, Blackstone, who lived from I723 to 1780, rendered an unparalleled service for jurisprudence' in writing Commentaries, the prose epic of common law.2 It has been said of this work, published from 1765 to 1769 and based on lectures at Oxford from 1753 to I766,3 that Continent derived. its knowledge of English chiefly from it, that on it study of in England was based, and that in America work was regarded as repository of common law.4 Of Mansfield, who lived from 1705 to 1793, it has been said that was not only greatest common judge but greatest judge in Anglo-American legal history.5 An eminent American legal scholar said of him that he broke down narrow barrier of common law and redeemed it from feudal selfishness and barbarity, that he was one of those great men raised up by Providence, at a fortunate moment, to effect a salutary revolution in world, and that he became, what intended, jurist of commercial world.... .6 What were relations in eighteenth century London between these two, scholarly Blackstone,7 first university lecturer on laws of