{"id":248,"date":"2012-12-18T12:43:23","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T17:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/?p=248"},"modified":"2012-12-19T10:09:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T15:09:30","slug":"the-comic-blackstone-by-gilbert-abbott-a-beckett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/the-comic-blackstone-by-gilbert-abbott-a-beckett\/","title":{"rendered":"The Comic Blackstone \/ by Gilbert Abbott \u00e0 Beckett."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cEvery gentleman ought to know a little of law, says Coke, and perhaps, say we, the less the better\u201d.<br \/>\nIt is not a message intended to discourage our students in their quest for legal wisdom but merely a quotation from the recent addition to the Law Library Rare Books collection, <a href=\"http:\/\/catalogue.mcgill.ca\/F\/?func=find-b&amp;find_code=SYS&amp;local_base=catalogue&amp;request=003486471\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Comic Blackstone<\/em> <\/a>(original 1844 edition).\u00a0 This witty and infinitely entertaining book was written by Gilbert Abbott \u00e0 Beckett (1811 \u20131856), an English humorist, journalist, and a lawyer, who belonged to a family claiming descent from Thomas Becket. It is so well written and so gently humorous that I am sure it will be appreciated even by exams-stressed Law students. These are few more quotes from <em>The Comic Blackstone<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIt is a beautiful fiction of the English law that no man pays taxes without his own consent; and, from this assertion, it would naturally be supposed that the tax-gatherers were the very idols of the people, who flocked round them, tendering specie and asking receipts for it. By legal imagery, the people are declared to tax themselves [&#8230;].\u201d (p. 25)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWhen the common law differs from the statute law, the latter prevails \u2014 and a new statute supersede an old one \u2014 which is just turning topside-turvy the principle which governs the common law, where the older the custom happens to be the better. Widdicomb and Methuselah are the two best authorities on questions of common law but this is not germane to the subject.\u201d (p. 12-13)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cEvery gentleman ought to know a little of law, says Coke, and perhaps, say we, the less the better\u201d. It is not a message intended to discourage our students in their quest for legal wisdom but merely a quotation from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/the-comic-blackstone-by-gilbert-abbott-a-beckett\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,19],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-that-i-liked","category-rare-books","tag-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/lawlibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}