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Surely the Peerage was taken off the drawing-room table and removed to papa's study, where it could not open, as it used naturally once, to Highgate, Baron, or Farintosh, Marquis of, being shut behind wires and closely jammed in on an upper shelf between Blackstone's Commentaries and the Farmer's Magazine!
If he carefully, or even jealously guarded his own interests, and held the leading law firm in the hollow of his hand, he was not oppressive, to the general knowledge. He was a despot, perhaps, but he was Blackstone's ideal of the head of a state, a good despot.
The Johnstons are a clan distinguished in Scottish border history, and as brave as any Highland clan that ever wore brogues; but they lay entirely out of Lochbuy's knowledge nor was he thinking of them. This maxim, however, has been controverted. See Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. ii. p. 291; and the authorities there quoted.
His next book was Blackstone's "Commentaries." The accidental way in which he gained possession of, and read, this book is of sufficient interest to narrate in his own words. It was shortly after he got into the grocery business: "One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder.
I will come to him directly I hear it." I may just mention that Jabez and his wife, who formed the whole of Mr. Blackstone's household, did not belong to his congregation, but were members of a small community in the neighborhood, calling themselves Peculiar Baptists. About ten minutes passed, during which little was said: Mr.
Blackstone also says: "It is agreed by all our historians that the Great Charter of King John was, for the most part, compiled from the ancient customs of the realm, or the laws of Edward the Confessor; by which they usually mean the old common law which was established under our Saxon princes." Blackstone's Introduction to the Charters. See Blackstone's Law Tracts, 289.
We were to be fitted for practice in the courts, not only by our reading, but by a season of pettifogging before justices of the peace, which I looked forward to with no small shrinking of my shy spirit; but what really troubled me most, and was always the grain of sand between my teeth, was Blackstone's confession of his own original preference for literature, and his perception that the law was "a jealous mistress," who would suffer no rival in his affections.
See Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 352. State Trials, vol. i. p. 144. Strype, voL iv. p. 21. Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 343. The case of Penry was, if possible, still hardier. This man was a zealous Puritan, or rather a Brownist, a small sect, which afterwards increased, and received the name of "Independents."
Also that a brewer, for "selling ale contrary to the assize," "debeat amerciari, vel pati judicium tumbrelli "; that is, ought to be amerced, or suffer the punishment, or judgment, of the tumbrel. 51 Henry 3, St. 6. See 1 Rughead's Statutes, 187, 188. 1 Statutes of the Realm, 203. Blackstone's Law Tracts, 126.
The narrow, obstinate and ungenerous mind of George had been fed on high notions of the power he might exert. He had been taught the kingship of Bolingbroke's glowing picture; and a reading in manuscript of the seventh chapter of Blackstone's first book can only have confirmed the ideals he found there.
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