with which it has been invested by lawful contract; and that an unlawful
contract for the establishment of government, is as unlawful and void as
any other contract to do injustice.

No oaths, which judicial or other officers may take, to carry out and
support an unlawful contract or constitution of government, are of any
moral obligation. It is immoral to take such oaths, and it is criminal
to fulfil them. They are, both in morals and law, like the oaths which
individual pirates, thieves and bandits give to their confederates, as
an assurance of their fidelity to the purposes for which they are
associated. No man has any moral right to assume such oaths; they impose
no obligation upon those who do assume them; they afford no moral
justification for official acts, in themselves unjust, done in pursuance
of them.

If these doctrines are correct, then those contracts of government,
state and national, which we call constitutions, are void, and unlawful,
so far as they purport to authorize, (if any of them do authorize,) any
thing in violation of natural justice, or the natural rights of any man
or class of men whatsoever. And all judicial tribunals are bound, by the
highest obligations that can rest upon them, to declare that these
contracts, in all such particulars, (if any such there be,) are void,
and not law. And all agents, legislative, executive, judicial and
popular, who voluntarily lend their aid to the execution of any of the
unlawful purposes of the government, are as much personally guilty,
according to all the moral and legal principles, by which crime, in its
essential character, is measured, as though they performed the same acts
independently, and of their own volition.

Such is the true character and definition of law. Yet, instead of being
allowed to signify, as it in reality does, that natural, universal and
inflexible principle, which has its origin in the nature of man, keeps
pace every where with the rights of man, as their shield and protector,
binds alike governments and men, weighs by the same standard the acts of
communities and individuals, and is paramount in its obligation to any
other requirement which can be imposed upon men--instead, I say, of the
term law being allowed to signify, as it really does, this immutable and
overruling principle of natural justice it has come to be applied to
mere arbitrary rules of conduct, prescribed by individuals, or
combinations of individuals, self-styled