PREFACE.*

(BY SARAH AUSTIN.)

IT SEEMS NECESSARY that I should endeavour to justify the step I have taken, in bringing before the public writings of such a nature and value as those of my deceased husband. I have also to explain why I have determined to publish them in the incomplete and unfinished state in which he left them. The latter decision was, indeed, a necessary consequence of the former; since I could hardly be guilty of the irreverence and presumption of attempting to correct or alter what he had written.

I respectfully offer these explanations to the few to whom it is fit that any mention of such a man should be made; and I beg them not to think me so careless of his fame, as to have lightly and unadvisedly undertaken to do what might lower the reputation which (almost in spite of himself) he has left among them. To their judgment and candour I commend these imperfect remains. Whatever defects they may find, let them be assured he would have found more and greater.

It is well known to all who are interested in the science of Jurisprudence, that the volume of which the present is a republication has for many years been out of print. From the time this was known, earnest and flattering entreaties that he would publish a second edition reached him from various quarters. They were sufficient to stimulate any vanity but his.

Unfortunately they came too late. The public, or that small portion of it which interests itself in such subjects, did not discover the deep and clear stream of legal science within

This preface, ending with the division on p. 26, belonged to the edition or reprint published in 1861, of 'The Province of Jurisprudence determined.'

VOL. I.

B

What follows the division on p. 26 belonged to the edition of the remaining lectures, published in 1863, forming the sequel to the volume published in 1861.

its reach, till its waters had been diverted into other channels, or had disappeared altogether. In proportion as the demand for the book became urgent, more years and more occupations were interposed between the state of mind in which it was written, and that in which this demand found him. Above all, the hope, the animation, the ardour with which he had entered upon his career as a teacher of Jurisprudence, had been blighted by indifference and neglect; and, in a temper so little sanguine as his, they could have no second spring.

It was not my intention to enter into the particulars of a life of which there is little but disappointment and suffering to relate, and which, from choice as much as from necessity, was passed in the shade. Nothing could be more repugnant to a man of his proud humility and fastidious reserve than the submitting his private life to the inspection of the public; nor would it consist with my reverence for him to ask for the admiration (even if I were sure of obtaining it) of a world with which he had so little in common.

But as, influenced by considerations which have appeared to me, and to those of his friends best qualified to advise, conclusive, I have determined to re-publish the following volume, and to publish the rest of the series of Lectures of which those herein contained form a part, it appears necessary to give some explanation of the state in which he left them; to tell why the work which the Author meditated was never completed; why the portion already in print was so long and so obstinately withheld from the public; and, lastly, what has determined me to take upon myself the arduous task of preparing these materials for the press. In order to do this, I must relate those passages of his life which are immediately connected with the course of his studies; and also, though with infinite pain, must touch upon the qualities, or the events, which paralyzed his efforts for the advancement of legal science and the diffusion of important truths.

If I dwell longer upon his personal character than may be thought absolutely necessary to my purpose, my apology, or my justification, will be found in the words of a writer who understood and appreciated him :

His personal character was, or ought to have been, more instructive in these days than his intellectual vigour. He lived and died a poor man. He was little known and little appreciated, nor did he seek for the rewards which society

had to give; but in all that he said and did there was a dignity and magnanimity which conveyed one of the most impressive lessons that can be conceived as to the true nature and true sources of greatness.'

At a very early age Mr. Austin entered the army, in which he served for five years; a fact which would have no place here, but for the permanent traces it left in his character and sentiments. Though he quitted it for a profession for which his talents appeared more peculiarly to fit him, he retained to the end of his life a strong sympathy with, and respect for, the military character, as he conceived it. The high and punctilious sense of honour, the chivalrous tenderness for the weak, the generous ardour mixed with reverence for authority and discipline, the frankness and loyalty, which were, he thought, the distinguishing characteristics of a true soldier, were also his own; perhaps even more pre-eminently, than the intellectual gifts for which he was so remarkable.

Mr. Austin was called to the Bar in 1818. If confidence in his powers and prospects could have been given to so sensitive and fastidious a mind by the testimony and the predictions of others, he would have entered on his career with an undoubting and buoyant spirit; for every one of the eminent lawyers in whose several chambers he studied, spoke of his talents and his application as unequalled, and confidently predicted for him the highest honours of his profession.

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But he was never sanguine. Even in the days when hope is most flattering, he never took a bright view of the future; nor (let me here add) did he ever attempt to excite brilliant anticipations in the person whom he invited to share that future with him. With admirable sincerity, from the very first, he made her the confidant of his forebodings. Four years before his marriage, he concluded a letter thus:... and may God, above all, strengthen us to bear up under those privations and disappointments with which it is but too probable we are destined to contend!' The The person to whom such language as this was addressed has, therefore, as little right as she has inclination to complain of a destiny distinctly put before her and deliberately accepted. Nor has she ever been able to imagine one so consonant to her ambition, or so gratifying to her pride, as that which rendered her the sharer in his honourable poverty.

I must be permitted to say this, that he may not be thought to have disappointed expectations he never raised; and that the effect of what I have to relate may not be enfeebled by the notion that it is the querulous expression of personal disappointment. Whatever there may be of complaint in this brief narrative, is excited by the recollection of great qualities unappreciated, great powers which found no congenial employment, great ardour for the good of mankind, chilled by indifference and neglect; by the recollection of the struggles and pangs of an over-scrupulous and over-sensitive spirit, vainly trying to establish, alone and unsustained, the claims of a science which he deemed so important to mankind. Nor is the sorrow of an immeasurable private loss so engrossing as not to be enhanced by regrets at the loss sustained by the world.

It became in no long time evident to one who watched him with the keenest anxiety, that he would not succeed at the Bar. His health was delicate: he was subject to feverish attacks which left him in a state of extreme debility and prostration; and as these attacks were brought on by either physical or moral causes, nothing could be worse for him than the hurry of practice, or the close air and continuous excitement of a court of law.

And if physically unfitted for the profession he had chosen, he was yet more disqualified by the constitution of his mind. Nervous and sensitive in the highest degree, he was totally deficient in readiness, in audacity, in self-complacency, and in reliance on the superiority of which he was conscious, but which oppressed rather than animated him. He felt that the weapons with which he was armed, though of the highest possible temper, were inapplicable to the warfare in which he was engaged; and he gradually grew more and more selfexacting and self-distrusting. He could do nothing rapidly or imperfectly; he could not prevail upon himself to regard any portion of his work as insignificant; he employed a degree of thought and care out of all proportion to the nature and importance of the occasion. These habits of mind were fatal to his success in business.

Indeed, even before his call to the Bar, he had detected in himself the germ of the peculiar disposition of mind which disqualified him for keeping pace with the current of human affairs. In a letter addressed to his future wife, dated 1817, when he was still in the chambers of an Equity Draftsman, he wrote, 'I almost apprehend that the habit of drawing