h to that hour, and even after the monstrous acts
of the 2nd and 8th of Anne, (the objects of our common hatred,) they
still enjoyed inviolate.

It is hard to distinguish with the last degree of accuracy what laws are
fundamental, and what not. However, there is a distinction between them,
authorized by the writers on jurisprudence, and recognized in some of
our statutes. I admit the acts of King William and Queen Anne to be
fundamental, but they are not the only fundamental laws. The law called
_Magna Charta_, by which it is provided that "no man shall be disseised
of his liberties and free customs but by the judgment of his peers or
the laws of the land," (meaning clearly, for some proved crime tried and
adjudged,) I take to be _a fundamental law._ Now, although this Magna
Charta, or some of the statutes establishing it, provide that that law
shall be perpetual, and all statutes contrary to it shall be void, yet I
cannot go so far as to deny the authority of statutes made in defiance
of Magna Charta and all its principles. This, however, I will say,--that
it is a very venerable law, made by very wise and learned men, and that
the legislature, in their attempt to perpetuate it, even against the
authority of future Parliaments, have shown their judgment that it is
_fundamental_, on the same grounds and in the same manner that the act
of the fifth of Anne has considered and declared the establishment of
the Church of England to be fundamental. Magna Charta, which secured
these franchises to the subjects, regarded the rights of freeholders in
counties to be as much a fundamental part of the Constitution as the
establishment of the Church of England was thought either at that time,
or in the act of King William, or in the act of Queen Anne.

The churchmen who led in that transaction certainly took care of the
material interest of which they were the natural guardians. It is the
first article of Magna Charta, "that the Church of England shall be
free," &c, &c. But at that period, churchmen and barons and knights took
care of the franchises and free customs of the people, too. Those
franchises are part of the Constitution itself, and inseparable from it.
It would be a very strange thing, if there should not only exist
anomalies in our laws, a thing not easy to prevent, but that the
fundamental parts of the Constitution should be perpetually and
irreconcilably at variance with each other. I cannot persuade myself
that the lo