of the means by which they are conducted to that desirable end.  This they owe as an act of homage and just deference to a reason which the necessity of government has made superior to their own.  But though the means, and indeed the nature, of a public advantage may not always be evident to the understanding of the subject, no one is so gross and stupid as not to distinguish between a benefit and an injury.  No one can imagine, then, an exclusion of a great body of men, not from favors, privileges, and trusts, but from the common advantages of society, can ever be a thing intended for their good, or can ever be ratified by any implied consent of theirs.  If, therefore, at least an implied human consent is necessary to the existence of a law, such a constitution cannot in propriety be a law at all.

But if we could suppose that such a ratification was made, not virtually, but actually, by the people, not representatively, but even collectively, still it would be null and void.  They have no right to make a law prejudicial to the whole community, even though the delinquents in making such an act should be themselves the chief sufferers by it; because it would be-made against the principle of a superior law, which it is not in the power of any community, or of the whole race of man, to alter,—­I mean the will of Him who gave us our nature, and in giving impressed an invariable law upon it.  It would be hard to point out any error more truly subversive of all the order and beauty, of all the peace and happiness of human society, than the position, that any body of men have a right to make what laws they please,—­or that laws can derive any authority from their institution merely, and independent of the quality of the subject-matter.  No arguments of policy, reason of state, or preservation of the constitution can be pleaded in favor of such a practice.  They may, indeed, impeach the frame of that constitution, but can never touch this immovable principle.  This seems to be, indeed, the doctrine which Hobbes broached in the last century, and which was then so frequently and so ably refuted.  Cicero exclaims with the utmost indignation and contempt against such a notion:[22] he considers it not only as unworthy of a philosopher, but of an illiterate peasant; that of all things this was the most truly absurd, to fancy that the rule of justice was to be taken from the constitutions of commonwealths, or that laws derived their authority from the statutes of the people, the edicts of princes, or the decrees of judges.  If it be admitted that it is not the black-letter and the king’s arms that makes the law, we are to look for it elsewhere.