order of the
profession, he who had quitted the bar for an academic life was sent
back from the college to the bar with a considerable increase of
business. He was likewise elected to parliament, first for Hindon, and
afterwards for Westbury in Wilts; but in neither of these departments
did he equal the expectations which his writings had raised. The part he
took in the Middlesex election drew upon him many attacks as well as a
severe animadversion from the caustic pen of "Junius." This circumstance
probably strengthened the aversion he professed to parliamentary
attendance, "where," he said, "amidst the rage of contending parties, a
man of moderation must expect to meet with no quarter from any side." In
1770 he declined the place of solicitor-general; but shortly afterwards,
on the promotion of Sir Joseph Yates to a seat in the court of common
pleas, he accepted a seat on the bench, and on the death of Sir Joseph
succeeded him there also. He died on the 14th of February 1780.

The design of the _Commentaries_ is exhibited in his first Vinerian
lecture printed in the introduction to them. The author there dwells on
the importance of noblemen, gentlemen and educated persons generally
being well acquainted with the laws of the country; and his treatise,
accordingly, is as far as possible a popular exposition of the laws of
England. Falling into the common error of identifying the various
meanings of the word law, he advances from the law of nature (being
either the revealed or the inferred will of God) to municipal law, which
he defines to be a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power
in a state commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. On
this definition he founds the division observed in the _Commentaries_.
The objects of law are rights and wrongs. Rights are either rights of
persons or rights of things. Wrongs are either public or private. These
four headings form respectively the subjects of the four books of the
_Commentaries_.

Blackstone was by no means what would now be called a scientific jurist.
He has only the vaguest possible grasp of the elementary conceptions of
law. He evidently regards the law of gravitation, the law of nature, and
the law of England, as different examples of the same principle--as
rules of action or conduct imposed by a superior power on its subjects.
He propounds in terms the doctrine that municipal or positive laws
derive their validity from their conformity