of some of his editors he has the courage to face the logical result, that theft is punished, not by any natural right, but only because it is detrimental to society. It is a _malum prohibitum_, not a _malum in se_. He goes so far as to say that where the law prohibits certain acts under pecuniary penalties, the prohibition does not make the transgression a moral offence, or sin, and that the only obligation in conscience is to submit to the penalty. He affirms as a thing beyond doubt that human laws have no concern with private vices. And he professes to defend the measures which placed Catholics and Dissenters under disabilities, not upon theological grounds, but simply because all dissent is subversive of civil government. We may be sure that Blackstone would not have spoken as he did if he had believed that average men in his time would consider his doctrines offensive; and taking him as an index of contemporary opinion, we can see that the field was ready for Bentham. Blackstone’s hostility to reform has a special interest. There is, perhaps, no better example to be found in our literature of the typical Englishman, who loves his country, who considers its constitution the best constitution, its laws the best laws, and the liberty which its citizens enjoy the completest liberty which the world has known. He was conservative by circumstances and profession, as well as by temperament. His opinions were formed at a time when men lived politically at a lower level than they ever did before or have done since. No bold reforming spirit could have grown up in the Jacobite unrest of half a century, with the Whigs, to all appearance, permanently seated in power, and desirous of showing that the party of the Revolution was capable of moderation. There was no party of progress. No clear line of principle divided Whigs from Tories; so that it became a plausible thesis that they had exchanged positions. There were, in short, no great ideals in the air, which could stimulate to movement such a sluggish man as Blackstone. Perhaps some of his conservatism was due to his profession. The instances are probably rare of an English lawyer, with either extensive practice or great learning, who, on questions of personal liberty, whether of religion or of speech or of trade, has stood far in advance of the average opinion of his age. The profession tends to foster conservatism. The habit of deciding by precedents and usage is not to be shaken off when the mind turns from law to politics; and the men who declared that the common law is the perfection of reason, and who thought that it savored of profanity to speak disrespectfully of common recoveries, could not be expected to doubt the excellence of the British constitution or the necessity of Catholic disabilities. Something, too, must be allowed for the influence of a training which both narrows the scope of reasoning, and within the narrower limits makes it close and unbroken. A mind so