of wisdom, goodness and power." Yet there is nowhere any proof in his book that steps have been taken in the British Constitution to associate these with the actual exertion of authority.

Nor has he clear notions of the way in which property is to be founded.

Communism, he writes in seventeenth century fashion, is the institution of the all-beneficent Creator who gave the earth to men; property comes when men occupy some special portion of the soil continuously or mix their labor with movable possessions.

This is pure Locke; though the conclusions drawn by Blackstone are utterly remote from the logical result of his own premises.
The truth surely is that Blackstone had, upon all these questions, only the most confused sort of notions.

He had to preface his work with some sort of philosophic theory because the conditions of the age demanded it.