William Blackstone - Commentaries on the Laws of England

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The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.

William Blackstone
That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution.

William Blackstone
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

William Blackstone
The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of our island.

William Blackstone
The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.. are found upon comparison to be really part of the original law of nature. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.

William Blackstone
The most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. for when this reason ceased, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it.

William Blackstone
Sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other: nor is there any branch of learning, but may be helped and improved by assistances drawn from other arts.

William Blackstone
So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community.

William Blackstone
By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law, that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage.

William Blackstone
Man..must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being..And, consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker's will.

William Blackstone
Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.

William Blackstone
The law rarely hesitates in declaring its own meaning; but the Judges are frequently puzzled to find out the meaning of others.

William Blackstone
The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind.

William Blackstone
All the several pleas and excuses, which protect the committer of a forbidden act from the punishment which is otherwise annexed thereto, may be reduced to this single consideration, the want or defect of will. An involuntary act, as it has no claim to merit, so neither can it induce any guilt: the concurrence of the will, when it has its choice either to do or to avoid the fact in question, being the only thing that renders human actions either praiseworthy or culpable. Indeed, to make a complete crime, cognizable by human laws, there must be both a will and an act.

William Blackstone
Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.

William Blackstone
Mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity.

William Blackstone
In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.

William Blackstone
There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right.

William Blackstone
A third subordinate right of every Englishman is that of applying to the courts of justice for redress of injuries.

William Blackstone
Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other.

William Blackstone
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.

William Blackstone
Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.

William Blackstone
The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of... the sacred and inviolable rights of private property.

William Blackstone
THIS law of nature, being co-eval 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
Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.

William Blackstone