'Therefore seeing that you and I are subjects to the king, I demand to be
tried by the laws of my own nation.' It was answered, 'You shall be tried
by a bench and a jury.' For it seems they began to be afraid to go on in
the former course, of trial without a jury ... But Wenlock said, 'That is
not the law, but the manner of it; for I never heard nor read of any law
that was in England to hang Quakers.' To this the governor reply'd 'that
there was a law to hang Jesuits.' To which Wenlock return'd, 'If you put
me to death, it is not because I go under the name of a Jesuit, but of a
Quaker. Therefore, I appeal to the laws of my own nation.' But instead of
taking notice of this, one said 'that he was in their hands, and had
broken their law, and they would try him.'" [Footnote: Sewel, pp. 278,
279.]

Yet, though the ecclesiastical party in Massachusetts obstinately refused
to admit appeals to the British judiciary up to the last moment of their
power, for the obvious reason that the existence of the theocracy depended
upon the enforcement of such legislation as that under which the Quakers
suffered, there was no principle in the whole range of English
jurisprudence more firmly established. By a statute of Henry VI. passed in
1436, corporate enactments were to be submitted to the judges for
approval; and the Court of King's Bench always set aside such as were bad,
whenever the question of their validity was presented for adjudication.
[Footnote: Stat. 15 H. VI. ch. 6. Stat 19 H. VII. ch. 7. Clark's Case, 5
Coke, 633, decided A. D. 1596. See Kyd on Corporations, ii. 107-110, where
authorities are collected. Child v. Hudson Bay Co., 2 P. W. 207.]

But discussion is futile; the proposition is self-evident, that an
association endowed with the capacity of acting like a single man, for
certain defined objects, which shall attempt other objects, or shall seek
to compass its ends by unlawful means, violates the condition upon which