e superior in obligation to any other. It is binding
over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws
are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid,
derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or
immediately, from this original."--_Blackstone, Vol. 1, p. 41._

Mr. Christian, one of Blackstone's editors, in a note to the above
passage, says:

"Lord Chief Justice Hobart has also advanced, that even an act of
Parliament made against natural justice, as to make a man judge in his
own cause, is void in itself, for _jura naturae sunt immutabilia_, and
they are _leges legum_"--(the laws of nature are immutable--they are the
laws of laws.)--_Hob. 87._

Mr. Christian then adds:

"With deference to these high authorities, (Blackstone and Hobart,) I
should conceive that in no case whatever can a judge oppose his own
opinion and authority to the clear will and declaration of the
legislature. His province is to interpret and obey the mandates of the
supreme power of the state. And if an act of Parliament, if we could
suppose such a case, should, like the edict of Herod, command all the
children under a certain age to be slain, the judge ought to resign his
office rather than be auxiliary to its execution; but it could only be
declared void by the same legislative power by which it was ordained. If
the judicial power were competent to decide that an act of parliament
was void because it was contrary to natural justice, upon an appeal to
the House of Lords this inconsistency would be the consequence, that as
judges they must declare void, what as legislators they had enacted
should be valid.

"The learned judge himself (Blackstone) declares in p. 91, if the
Parliament will positively enact a thing to be done which is
unreasonable, I know of no power in the ordinary forms of the
constitution, that is vested with authority to control it."

It will be seen from this note of Mr. Christian, that he concurs in the
opinion that an enactment contrary to natural justice is _intrinsically_
void, and not law; and that the principal, if not the only difficulty,
which he sees in carrying out that doctrine, is one that is peculiar to
the British constitution, and does not exist in the United States. That
difficulty is, the "inconsistency" there would be, if the House of
Lords, (which is the highest law court in England, and at the same time
one branch of the legislature,) were to