om the natural infirmity of human institutions, but from
substantial faults which contradict the nature and end of law
itself,--faults not arising from the imperfection, but from the
misapplication and abuse of our reason. As no legislators can regard the
_minima_ of equity, a law may in some instances be a just subject of
censure without being at all an object of repeal. But if its
transgressions against common right and, the ends of just government
should be considerable in their nature and spreading in their effects,
as this objection goes to the root and principle of the law, it renders
it void in its obligatory quality on the mind, and therefore determines
it as the proper object of abrogation and repeal, so far as regards its
civil existence. The objection here is, as we observed, by no means on
account of the imperfection of the law; it is on account of its
erroneous principle: for if this be fundamentally wrong, the more
perfect the law is made, the worse it becomes. It cannot be said to have
the properties of genuine law, even in its imperfections and defects.
The true weakness and opprobrium of our best general constitutions is,
that they cannot provide beneficially for every particular case, and
thus fill, adequately to their intentions, the circle of universal
justice. But where the principle is faulty, the erroneous part of the
law is the beneficial, and justice only finds refuge in those holes and
corners which had escaped the sagacity and inquisition of the
legislator. The happiness or misery of multitudes can never be a thing
indifferent. A law against the majority of the people is in substance a
law against the people itself; its extent determines its invalidity; it
even changes its character as it enlarges its operation: it is not
particular injustice, but general oppression; and can no longer be
considered as a private hardship, which might be borne, but spreads and
grows up into the unfortunate importance of a national calamity.

Now as a law directed against the mass of the nation has not the nature
of a reasonable institution, so neither has it the authority: for in all
forms of government the people is the true legislator; and whether the
immediate and instrumental cause of the law be a single person or many,
the remote and efficient cause is the consent of the people, either
actual or implied; and such consent is absolutely essential to its
validity. To the solid establishment of every law two thi