Volume 4, Slice 1 Part 8 (1/2)

BLACK SEA (Russ. _Chernomorskaya_), a military district of the province of Kuban, formerly an independent province of Transcaucasia, Russia; it includes the narrow strip of land along the N.E. coast of the Black Sea from Novorossiysk to the vicinity of Pitsunda, between the sea and the crest of the main range of the Caucasus. Area, 2836 sq. m. Pop. (1897) 54,228; (1906, estimate) 71,900. It is penetrated by numerous spurs of this range, which strike the sea abruptly at right angles to the coast, and in many cases plunge down into it sheer. Owing to its southern exposure, its sheltered position, and a copious rainfall, vegetation, in part of a sub-tropical character, grows in great profusion. In consequence, however, of the mountainous character of the region, it is divided into a large number of more or less isolated districts, and there is little intercourse with the country north of the Caucasus, the pa.s.ses over the range being few and difficult (see CAUCASUS). But since the Russians became masters of this region, its former inhabitants (Circa.s.sian tribes) have emigrated in thousands, so that the country is now only thinly inhabited. It is divided into three districts--Novorossiysk, with the town (pop. in 1897, 16,208) of the same name, which acts as the capital of the Black Sea district; Velyaminovsk; and Sochi. Novorossiysk is connected by rail, at the west end of the Caucasus, with the Rostov-Vladikavkaz line, and a mountain road leads from Velyaminovsk (or Tuapse) to Maikop in the province of Kuban.

BLACKSTONE, SIR WILLIAM (1723-1780), English jurist, was born in London, on the 10th of July 1723. His parents having died when he was young, his early education, under the care of his uncle, Dr Thomas Bigg, was obtained at the Charterhouse, from which, at the age of fifteen, he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford. He was entered in the Middle Temple in 1741. In 1744 he was elected a fellow of All Souls' College. From this period he divided his time between the university and the Temple, where he took chambers in order to attend the law courts. In 1746 he was called to the bar. Though but little known or distinguished as a pleader, he was actively employed, during his occasional residences at the university, in taking part in the internal management of his college. In May 1749, as a small reward for his services, and to give him further opportunities of advancing the interests of the college, Blackstone was appointed steward of its manors. In the same year, on the resignation of his uncle, Seymour Richmond, he was elected recorder of the borough of Wallingford in Berks.h.i.+re. In 1750 he became doctor of civil law. In 1753 he decided to retire from London work to his fellows.h.i.+p and an academical life, still continuing the practice of his profession as a provincial counsel.

His lectures on the laws of England appear to have been an early and favourite idea; for in the Michaelmas term immediately after he abandoned London, he entered on the duty of reading them at Oxford; and we are told by the author of his _Life_, that even at their commencement, the high expectations formed from the acknowledged abilities of the lecturer attracted to these lectures a very crowded cla.s.s of young men of the first families, characters and hopes. Bentham, however, declares that he was a ”formal, precise and affected lecturer--just what you would expect from the character of his writings--cold, reserved and wary, exhibiting a frigid pride.” It was not till the year 1758 that the lectures in the form they now bear were read in the university. Blackstone, having been unanimously elected to the newly-founded Vinerian professors.h.i.+p, on the 25th of October read his first introductory lecture, afterwards prefixed to the first volume of his celebrated _Commentaries_. It is doubtful whether the _Commentaries_ were originally intended for the press; but many imperfect and incorrect copies having got into circulation, and a pirated edition of them being either published or preparing for publication in Ireland, the author thought proper to print a correct edition himself, and in November 1765 published the first volume, under the t.i.tle of _Commentaries on the Laws of England_. The remaining parts of the work were given to the world in the course of the four succeeding years. It may be remarked that before this period the reputation which his lectures had deservedly acquired for him had induced him to resume practice in London; and, contrary to the general order of the profession, he who had quitted the bar for an academic life was sent back from the college to the bar with a considerable increase of business. He was likewise elected to parliament, first for Hindon, and afterwards for Westbury in Wilts; but in neither of these departments did he equal the expectations which his writings had raised. The part he took in the Middles.e.x election drew upon him many attacks as well as a severe animadversion from the caustic pen of ”Junius.” This circ.u.mstance probably strengthened the aversion he professed to parliamentary attendance, ”where,” he said, ”amidst the rage of contending parties, a man of moderation must expect to meet with no quarter from any side.” In 1770 he declined the place of solicitor-general; but shortly afterwards, on the promotion of Sir Joseph Yates to a seat in the court of common pleas, he accepted a seat on the bench, and on the death of Sir Joseph succeeded him there also. He died on the 14th of February 1780.

The design of the _Commentaries_ is exhibited in his first Vinerian lecture printed in the introduction to them. The author there dwells on the importance of n.o.blemen, gentlemen and educated persons generally being well acquainted with the laws of the country; and his treatise, accordingly, is as far as possible a popular exposition of the laws of England. Falling into the common error of identifying the various meanings of the word law, he advances from the law of nature (being either the revealed or the inferred will of G.o.d) to munic.i.p.al law, which he defines to be a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. On this definition he founds the division observed in the _Commentaries_.

The objects of law are rights and wrongs. Rights are either rights of persons or rights of things. Wrongs are either public or private. These four headings form respectively the subjects of the four books of the _Commentaries_.

Blackstone was by no means what would now be called a scientific jurist.

He has only the vaguest possible grasp of the elementary conceptions of law. He evidently regards the law of gravitation, the law of nature, and the law of England, as different examples of the same principle--as rules of action or conduct imposed by a superior power on its subjects.

He propounds in terms the doctrine that munic.i.p.al or positive laws derive their validity from their conformity to the so-called law of nature or law of G.o.d. ”No human laws,” he says, ”are of any validity if contrary to this.” His distinction between rights of persons and rights of things, implying, as it would appear, that things as well as persons have rights, is attributable to a misunderstanding of the technical terms of the Roman law. In distinguis.h.i.+ng between private and public wrongs (civil injuries and crimes) he fails to seize the true principle of the division. Austin, who accused him of following slavishly the method of Hale's _a.n.a.lysis of the Law_, declares that he ”blindly adopts the mistakes of his rude and compendious model; missing invariably, with a nice and surprising infelicity, the pregnant but obscure suggestions which it proffered to his attention, and which would have guided a discerning and inventive writer to an arrangement comparatively just.”

By the want of precise and closely-defined terms, and his tendency to subst.i.tute loose literary phrases, he falls occasionally into irreconcilable contradictions. Even in discussing a subject of such immense importance as equity, he hardly takes pains to discriminate between the legal and popular senses of the word, and, from the small place which equity jurisprudence occupies in his arrangement, he would scarcely seem to have realized its true position in the law of England.

Subject, however, to these strictures the completeness of the treatise, its serviceable if not scientific order, and the power of lucid exposition possessed by the author demand emphatic recognition.

Blackstone's defects as a jurist are more conspicuous in his treatment of the underlying principles and fundamental divisions of the law than in his account of its substantive principles.

Blackstone by no means confines himself to the work of a legal commentator. It is his business, especially when he touches on the framework of society, to find a basis in history and reason for all the most characteristic English inst.i.tutions. There is not much either of philosophy or fairness in this part of his work. Whether through the natural conservatism of a lawyer, or through his own timidity and subserviency as a man and a politician, he is always found to be a specious defender of the existing order of things. Bentham accuses him of being the enemy of all reform, and the unscrupulous champion of every form of professional chicanery. Austin says that he truckled to the sinister interests and mischievous prejudices of power, and that he flattered the overweening conceit of the English in their own inst.i.tutions. He displays much ingenuity in giving a plausible form to common prejudices and fallacies; but it is by no means clear that he was not imposed upon himself. More undeniable than the political fairness of the treatise is its merits as a work of literature. It is written in a most graceful and attractive style, and although no opportunity of embellishment has been lost, the language is always simple and clear.

Whether it is owing to its literary graces, or to its success in flattering the prejudices of the public to which it was addressed, the influence of the book in England has been extraordinary. Not lawyers only, and lawyers perhaps even less than others, accepted it as an authoritative revelation of the law. It performed for educated society in England much the same service as was rendered to the people of Rome by the publication of their previously unknown laws. It is more correct to regard it as a handbook of the law for laymen than as a legal treatise; and as the first and only book of the kind in England it has been received with somewhat indiscriminating reverence. It is certain that a vast amount of the const.i.tutional sentiment of the country has been inspired by its pages. To this day Blackstone's criticism of the English const.i.tution would probably express the most profound political convictions of the majority of the English people. Long after it has ceased to be of much practical value as an authority in the courts, it remains the arbiter of all public discussions on the law or the const.i.tution. On such occasions the _Commentaries_ are apt to be construed as strictly as if they were a code. It is curious to observe how much importance is attached to the _ipsissima verba_ of a writer who aimed more at presenting a picture intelligible to laymen than at recording the principles of the law with technical accuracy of detail.

See also the article ENGLISH LAW.

BLACK VEIL, in the Roman Catholic Church, the symbol of the most complete renunciation of the world and adoption of a nun's life. On the appointed day the nun goes through all the ritual of the marriage ceremony, after a solemn ma.s.s at which all the inmates of the convent a.s.sist. She is dressed in bridal white with wreath and veil, and receives a wedding-ring, as spouse of the Church. Afterwards she presides at a wedding-breakfast, at which a bride-cake is cut. She thus bids adieu to all her friends, and having previously taken the white veil, the betrothal, she now a.s.sumes the black, and for ever forswears the world and its pleasures. Her hair is cut short, and her bridal robes are exchanged for the sombre religious habit. Her wedding-ring, however, she continues to wear, and it is buried with her.

BLACKWATER, the name of a number of rivers and streams in England, Scotland and Ireland. The Blackwater in Ess.e.x, which rises near Saffron Walden, has a course of about 40 m. to the North Sea. The most important river of the name is in southern Ireland, rising in the hills on the borders of the counties Cork and Kerry, and flowing nearly due east for the greater part of its course, as far as Cappoquin, where it turns abruptly southward, and discharges through an estuary into Youghal Bay.

The length of its valley (excluding the lesser windings of the river) is about 90 m., and the drainage area about 1300 sq. m. It is navigable only for a few miles above the mouth, but its salmon fisheries are both attractive to sportsmen and of considerable commercial value. The scenery of its banks is at many points very beautiful.

BLACKWATER FEVER, a disease occurring in tropical countries and elsewhere, which is often cla.s.sed with malaria (q.v.). It is characterized by irregular febrile paroxysms, accompanied by rigors, bilious vomiting, jaundice and haemoglobinuria (Sambon). It has a wide geographical distribution, including tropical Africa, parts of Asia, the West Indies, the southern United States, and--in Europe--Greece, Sicily and Sardinia; but its range is not coextensive with malaria. Malarial parasites have occasionally been found in the blood. Some authorities believe it to be caused by the excessive use of quinine, taken to combat malaria. This theory has had the support of Koch, but it is not generally accepted. If it were correct, one would expect blackwater fever to be regularly prevalent in malarial countries and to be more or less coextensive with the use of quinine, which is not at all the case.

It often resembles yellow fever, but the characteristic black vomit of yellow fever rarely occurs in blackwater fever, while the black urine from which the latter derives its name is equally rare in the former.

According to the modern school of tropical parasitology, blackwater fever is neither a form of malaria nor produced by quinine, but a specific disease due to a protozoal parasite akin to that which causes the redwater fever of cattle.

BLACKWELL, THOMAS (1701-1757), Scottish cla.s.sical scholar, was born at Aberdeen on the 4th of August 1701. He took the degree of M.A. at the Marischal College in 1718. He was appointed professor of Greek in 1723, and was princ.i.p.al of the inst.i.tution from 1748 until his death on the 8th of March 1757. In 1735 his first work, _An Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer_, was published anonymously. It was reprinted in 1736, and followed (in 1747) by _Proofs of the Enquiry into Homer's Life and Writings_, a translation of the copious notes in foreign languages which had previously appeared. This work, intended to explain the causes of the superiority of Homer to all the poets who preceded or followed him, shows considerable research, and contains many curious and interesting details; but its want of method made Bentley say that, when he had gone through half of it, he had forgotten the beginning, and, when he had finished the reading of it, he had forgotten the whole. Blackwell's next work (also published anonymously in 1748) was _Letters Concerning Mythology_. In 1752 he took the degree of doctor of laws, and in the following year published the first volume of _Memoirs of the Court of Augustus_; the second volume appeared in 1755, the third in 1764 (prepared for the press, after Blackwell's death, by John Mills). This work shows considerable originality and erudition, but is even more unmethodical than his earlier writings and full of unnecessary digressions. Blackwell has been called the restorer of Greek literature in the north of Scotland; but his good qualities were somewhat spoiled by pomposity and affectation, which exposed him to ridicule.

BLACKWOOD, WILLIAM (1776-1834), Scottish publisher, founder of the firm of William Blackwood & Sons, was born of humble parents at Edinburgh on the 20th of November 1776. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a firm of booksellers in Edinburgh, and he followed his calling also in Glasgow and London for several years. Returning to Edinburgh in 1804, he opened a shop in South Bridge Street for the sale of old, rare and curious books. He undertook the Scottish agency for John Murray and other London publishers, and gradually drifted into publis.h.i.+ng on his own account, removing in 1816 to Princes Street. On the 1st of April 1817 was issued the first number of the _Edinburgh Monthly Magazine_, which on its seventh number, bore the name of _Blackwood's_ as the leading part of the t.i.tle. ”Maga,” as this magazine soon came to be called, was the organ of the Scottish Tory party, and round it gathered a host of able writers. William Blackwood died on the 16th of September 1834, and was succeeded by his two sons, Alexander and Robert, who added a London branch to the firm. In 1845 Alexander Blackwood died, and shortly afterwards Robert.