Aristocracy: Theory and Practice 49
was a proper subject of study by gentlemen who must govern the country, because
at Oxford “gentlemen may associate with gentlemen of their own rank and de-
gree,” and at Oxford were assembled the future peers, future members of the
House of Commons, future justices of the peace, landowners, lawyers, and clergy-
men. At the Inns of Court the subject was approached in too technical and voca-
tional a way. Properly considered, the study of law was a liberal subject, a “science
which distinguishes the criterions of right and wrong.” Blackstone therefore pro-
posed to impart, in addition to a certain amount of purely legal lore, a philosophi-
cal comprehension of the subject.
The philosophical arguments of the book are somewhat as follows: English con-
stitutional liberties are “the residuum of natural liberty.” They are in a sense the
rights of all mankind, but by an inscrutable dispensation have been debased else-
where while they survive in England, being “in a peculiar and emphatical manner
the rights of the people of England.” They are mainly the rights of personal liberty,
personal security, and private property, but include also, as secondary rights calcu-
lated to preserve the primary ones, certain political rights specifying the composi-
tion and powers of Parliament. By the Rights of Persons the people are divided
into certain orders, clergy and laity, nobility and commonalty; about forty status
levels, from duke to laborer, are described. Rank and honors, by offering an incen-
tive to virtuous ambition, are useful in a well- ordered state. A “body of nobility”
curbs and protects both crown and people. Parliament is an autonomous body; the
lords sit in their own right, and the commons serve for the kingdom as a whole,
with no such dependence on their constituents as obtains in the United Provinces.
Locke was mistaken in believing that, if Parliament abused its trust, the people
retained a supreme power to “remove or alter” it. “So long as the English constitu-
tion lasts, we may venture to affirm that the power of Parliament is absolute and
without control.”^12
Blackstone was certainly conservative enough, even believing that no rights or
wrongs existed in England except those actionable under English law. He thought
that no power except Parliament itself could make changes in Parliament; cer-
tainly Parliament could not lawfully be influenced by pressures from outside. But
Blackstone was not as conservative as conservatives were soon to become in the
face of American and European developments. He could conceive of the possibil-
ity, in the 1750’s and 1760’s, of parliamentary reform. He thought it “a misfortune
that deserted boroughs should continue to be summoned,” and observed that “if
any alteration were to be wished or suggested in the present frame of Parliament,
it should be in favor of a more complete representation of the people.”^13
William Warburton, who rose to be the Bishop of Gloucester, published his Al-
liance between Church and State in 1736. He reissued it in various editions, includ-
ing in the one of 1766 a lively rejoinder to Rousseau. His purpose was to justify the
establishment of the Church of England, and of the Test Act designed to keep
non- Anglicans out of important office. Could one sufficiently know the political
12 Commentaries, I (Philadelphia, 1860), 128, 140 ff., 144, 153, 157–60. The American editor,
Sharswood, takes care to explain, in his notes, that in the United States the legislative body is not
supreme, but exercises only powers delegated by the people.
13 Ibid., 171–80.