“If any human law shall allow or require us to commit crime, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and divine.”
COKE says:—
“What the Parliament doth, shall be holden for naught, whenever it shall enact that which is contrary to the rights of nature.”
HAMPDEN says:—
“The essence of all law is justice. What is not justice is not law; and what is not law, ought not to be obeyed.”
HARRINGTON says:—
“All men naturally, are equal; for though nature with a noble variety has made different features and lineaments of men, yet as to freedom, she has made every one alike, and given them the same desires.”
FORTESCUE says:—
“Those rights which God and nature have established, and which are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human power has any authority to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner himself shall commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.”