The Project Gutenberg EBook of Commentaries on the Laws of England, by
William Blackstone

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Title: Commentaries on the Laws of England
Book the First

Author: William Blackstone

Release Date: December 30, 2009 [EBook #30802]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMMENTARIES--LAWS ENGLAND--BOOK 1 ***

Produced by The Bookworm, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
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[Transcriber's Note: Sir William Blackstone's _Commentaries on the
Laws of England_ was first published in 1765-1769. It contains a
number of archaic spellings (including "goaler" for "gaoler" and
"it's" for "its") that have been preserved as they appear in the
original. All such spellings have been verified using the Oxford
English Dictionary. Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation,
hyphenation, capitalization, and italicization have also been
preserved. Obvious printer errors have been preserved and marked with
a [Transcriber's Note]. Long s in the original has been modernized as
modern s. The archaic convention of placing quotation marks at the
beginning of each line of a quotation has also been modernized to
quotation marks only at the beginning and end of the quotation.]

COMMENTARIES

ON THE

LAWS

OF

ENGLAND.

BOOK THE FIRST.

BY

WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, ESQ.

VINERIAN PROFESSOR OF LAW,

AND

SOLICITOR GENERAL TO HER MAJESTY.

OXFORD,

PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.

M. DCC. LXV.

TO

THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY,

THE FOLLOWING VIEW

OF THE LAWS AND CONSTITUTION

OF ENGLAND,

THE IMPROVEMENT AND PROTECTION OF WHICH

HAVE DISTINGUISHED THE REIGN

OF HER MAJESTY'S ROYAL CONSORT,

IS,

WITH ALL GRATITUDE AND HUMILITY,

MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED

BY HER DUTIFUL

AND MOST OBEDIENT

SERVANT,

WILLIAM BLACKSTONE.

PREFACE.

_THE following sheets contain the substance of a course of lectures on
the laws of England, which were read by the author in the u