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more broadly, and recurs to it repeatedly. "The law of nature" he says "being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original." * * * "If any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit murder, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine law."
Again, this great legal authority says, "Those rights which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human law, to be more effectually invested in men than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength, when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the man shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." More might be quoted from him to the same effect.
Lord Bacon says, "as the common law is more worthy than the statute law, so the law of nature is more worthy than them both."
Lord Brougham, also says, "There is a law above all human enactments, written by the finger of God, on the heart of man."
Chief Justice Parsons, one of the brightest lights of legal science in our country, used often to say "Gentlemen, what what is right, what is right, for that is law, or we must make it so."
The same principle also, is laid down distinctly, and often appealed to, in the writings of our own Chancellor Kent, than whom we have no higher authority on the theory, or the practical application of Law.
Indeed, it is a maxim with the writers on Law generally, "that nothing can sanction or legalize injustice; that no law subversive of natural right, has any binding obligation." Even the authors of the Code Napoleon, have said with no less elegance than truth, "that no legislator can escape that invisible power, that silent judgment of the people, which tends to correct the mistakes of arbitrary legislation, and to
