Civil law, with which alone he is concerned, is "a rule of civil conduct
prescribed by the supreme power in a state, commanding what is right and
prohibiting what is wrong." It is, he tells us, "called a rule to
distinguish it from a compact or agreement." It derives from the
sovereign power, of which the chief character is the making of laws.
Society is based upon the "wants and fears" of men; and it is coeval
with their origin. The idea of a state of nature "is too wild to be
seriously admitted," besides being contrary to historical knowledge.
Society implies government, and whatever its origins or its forms there
"must be in all of them a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled
authority, in which the _jura summa imperii_, or rights of sovereignty
reside." The forms of government are classified in the usual way; and
the British constitution is noted as a happy mixture of them all. "The
legislature of the Kingdom," Blackstone writes, "is entrusted to three
powers entirely independent of each other; first the King, secondly the
lords spiritual and temporal, which is an aristocratical assembly of
persons, chosen for their piety, their birth, their wisdom, their valour
or their property; and, thirdly, the House of Commons, freely chosen by
the people from among themselves, which makes it a kind of democracy;
and as this aggregate body, actuated by different springs and attentive
to different interests, composes the British Parliament and has the
supreme disposal of everything; there can be no inconvenience attempted
by either of the three branches, but will be withstood by one of the
other two; each branch being armed with a negative power, sufficient to
repel any innovation which it shall think inexpedient or dangerous." It
is in the king in Parliament that British sovereignty resides. Eschewing
the notion of an original contract, Blackstone yet thinks that all the
implications of it are secured. "The constitutional government of this
island," he says, "is so admirably tempered and compounded, that nothing
can endanger or hurt it, but destroying the equilibrium of power between