"The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind"
About this Quote
The intent is conservative in the technical sense: to justify legal constraint as the price of social order, and to reconcile coercion with freedom. “Mischief” is doing strategic work here. It sounds almost playful, but it covers real harms - theft, violence, intimidation - while avoiding melodrama. That tonal choice makes the state’s power feel like common sense housekeeping rather than a looming threat.
Context matters: Blackstone wasn’t writing as a revolutionary but as an 18th-century English jurist systematizing the common law for an empire that needed legitimacy. His Commentaries became a transatlantic manual for how to think about rights and authority, deeply shaping early American legal education. The subtext is a bargain: accept limits on what you may do, and the state (ideally) will secure what can be done to you. It’s persuasive because it shifts “freedom” from a private feeling to a public infrastructure - less romance, more warranty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Commentaries on the Laws of England (Book I) (William Blackstone, 1765)
Evidence:
Hence we may collect that the law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind: but every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny. (Book I, Chapter I (“Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals”), p. 122). This sentence appears in William Blackstone’s own work, in the first published volume of the Commentaries (Book I), printed at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, dated M. DCC. LXV. (1765). The wording in your query matches this primary-source text (often the quote is truncated before the “but every wanton…” clause). The Commentaries were published in multiple volumes over 1765–1769; this specific passage is in the 1765 Book I. For a non-quote-collection corroboration of location, the University of Chicago Press ‘Founders’ site reproduces the same passage and cites it to Blackstone, Commentaries 1:119–23. ([gutenberg.org](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30802.html.images)) |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Blackstone, William. (2026, February 8). The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-law-which-restrains-a-man-from-doing-mischief-117947/
Chicago Style
Blackstone, William. "The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind." FixQuotes. February 8, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-law-which-restrains-a-man-from-doing-mischief-117947/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind." FixQuotes, 8 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-law-which-restrains-a-man-from-doing-mischief-117947/. Accessed 8 Feb. 2026.
