ADVERTISEMENT TO THIS EDITION. Ir must be gratifying to all who value and appreciate the work of the late JOHN AUSTIN, to know that a new edition of these Lectures has been urgently called for. The circumstance is significant not only as a public recognition of the merit of the lectures themselves, but also as a proof of the growing interest which is becoming awakened in this country towards the philosophical study of jurisprudence. The present edition has been prepared with the assistance of notes of the original lectures which have been preserved by Mr. J. S. Mill, and were kindly furnished by him to the late Mrs. Austin for the purpose of a new edition which she meditated, but did not live to complete. These notes have now been collated with the lectures as already published; and are found so accurate and full in the parts where the printed lectures are complete, that they may be confidently relied on for supplying the lacunæ which, owing to the state of the author's MS., were in the former publication inevitable. In revising the six lectures which formed the volume published in the author's lifetime, care has been taken to make no material alteration except in accordance with a clearly expressed intention of the author contained in his memoranda preserved by the late editor, and published in the notes to the former edition. Where, however, such intention was clear upon the face of that text and notes, the present editor has chosen rather to venture on the attempt to embody it explicitly in the text, than to leave the task to each reader of collecting that intention from the scattered passages and fragments. In the instances, confined to the matter of a few pages, where any such alteration has been made, the nature and extent of the alteration is explicitly stated in the foot-notes by the present editor, distinguished by the initials 'R. C.' With regard to the remaining Lectures, free use has been made of the notes above described (hereafter shortly referred to as 'J. S. M.'s notes'), both for purposes of arrangement and addition. For the purpose of arrangement, these notes have often furnished the clue where, for want of such a clue, inevitable misplacement of passages had taken place in the former edition. Of the additions the most important are in the 39th and 40th lectures. The latter part of the 39th lecture, on the important topic of 'Codification,' formed an entire lecture in the course preserved in J. S. M.'s notes. The 40th lecture, which is described in the former edition as missing, is now restored, and forms the leading chapter of one of the author's main divisions of his subject. Neglect could not have effaced the impress which John Austin and his work has stamped upon the thought of posterity. But that so much has been recorded in explicit and substantive form, is due to the ability and diligence of the lady whose preface heads the following pages. Mrs. Austin died at Weybridge on the 8th of August, 1867, and it may be interesting to the reader, and can be scarcely inappropriate here, to supplement the ensuing preface with a short account of her own life. In doing so the editor takes the liberty of borrowing from the pen of one entitled to speak from long and intimate acquaintanc. The Times of the 12th August, 1867, contains the following notice :— 'It has already been announced, in another part of these columns, that Mrs. Austin, widow of the late John Austin, well known as one of the most eminent professors of the science of jurisprudence whom this country has produced, expired on the 8th inst. at her residence at Weybridge, after an acute attack of a malady of the heart, with which she had long been afflicted. Although the life of Mrs. Austin was spent in the active discharge of her private duties, and although no one was less disposed to court celebrity, which she might have enjoyed in a far larger degree had she cared to seek it, she undoubtedly filled so considerable a place in society and in literature that some record of so remarkable a woman may not unfitly appear in this place. To the attractions of great personal beauty in early life, and of a grace of manner undiminished by years, Mrs. Austin added a mascu- · line intellect and a large heart. It was not by the play of a vivid imagination, or by an habitual display of what is termed wit, that she secured the affections and the friendship of so many of the wisest and noblest of her contemporaries. The power she exercised in society was due to the sterling qualities of her judgment, her knowledge, her literary style --which was one of great purity and excellence—and, above all, to her cordial readiness to promote all good objects, to maintain high principles of action, and to confer benefits on all who claimed her aid. 'Mrs. Austin was descended from the Taylors of Norwich, a family which has in several generations produced men and women distinguished by literary and scientific ability. She was born in 1793, and she received in her father's house an education of more than common range. In 1820 she married Mr. John Austin, then a barrister on the Norfolk Circuit, and came to reside next door to Mr. Bentham and Mr. James Mill, in Queen Square, Westminster. Although that house could boast of none of the attractions of luxury, for the fortune of its owners was extremely small, it soon collected within its walls as remarkable an assemblage of persons as ever met in a London drawing-room. There might be seen-a dim and flitting figure of the past-Mr. Bentham and his two disciples, James and John Stuart Mill, the Grotes, the rising lawyers of that day whose success has justified the promise of their dawn, Bickersteth, Erle, Romilly, and Senior, and all this wisdom and learning was enlivened in later years by the wit of Charles Buller, by the hearty sallies of Sydney Smith, by the polished eloquence of Jeffrey, by the courteous amenity of Lord Lansdowne, and by the varied resources of foreign visitors who found a home by Mrs. Austin's hearth. 'Mrs. Austin never aspired to original literary composition. Except in some of the prefaces to her translations, she disclaimed all right to address the public in her own person. She, therefore, devoted the singular power of her pen to reproduce in English many of the best contemporary works of German and French literature. Her translations from the German, more especially, were of the highest excellence, and among these her version of Ranke's Popes of Rome has been commended by the best judges as deserving to retain a place in English historical literature. 'Much of Mrs. Austin's life was spent abroad, and not a few of the most eminent persons in continental society enjoyed her friendship. She had inhabited two German Universities for the prosecution of her husband's studies, after he had quitted the bar for a chair of jurisprudence in the London University. She had accompanied him to Malta when he was sent as a commissioner to that island. She remained for some years in Paris, where her small salon had an intellectual stamp and charm not inferior to that of her London circle. The revolution of 1848 drove the Austins back to England; they established themselves in the village of Weybridge, and calmly anticipated the day when they should rest side by side in Weybridge churchyard. Mrs. Austin, however, survived her husband for several years, and that interval was employed by her in accomplishing a task which to most women would have seemed hopeless. The greater part of the Lectures delivered by Professor Austin on the principles of jurisprudence had remained in manuscript. His ill-health led him constantly to postpone the task of preparing them for the press. After his death his widow, assisted by one or two legal friends on whose judgment she could rely, succeeded in completing the imperfect edifice from the fragments of it that remained; and we owe to Mrs. Austin, already advanced in years, and struggling with a painful disease, the production |