minister never paid the least regard to the miseries of this
extensive continent, but suffered the time for the taking place
of the Act to elapse months before a single stamp was received.
Though this was a high piece of infidelity to the interest of his
royal master, yet it makes it evident that it could never be
intended, that if stamps were not to be had, it should put a stop
to all justice, which is, ipse facto, a dissolution of society.

It is a strange kind of law which we hear advanced nowadays, that
because one unpopular Act can't be carried into execution, that
therefore there shall be an end of all law. We are not the first
people who have risen to prevent the execution of a law; the very
people of England themselves rose in opposition to the famous
Jew-bill, and got that immediately repealed. And lawyers know
that there are limits, beyond which, if parliaments go, their
acts bind not.

The king is always presumed to be present in his courts, holding
out the law to his subjects; and when he shuts his courts, he
unkings himself in the most essential point. Magna Charter and
the other statutes are full, "that they will not defer, delay,
nor deny any man justice"; "that it shall not be commanded by the
Great Seal, or in any other way, to disturb or delay common
right." The judges of England are "not to counsel, or assent to
anything which may turn to the damage or disherison of the
crown." They are sworn not to deny to any man common right, by
the king's letters, nor none other man's, nor for none other
cause. Is not the dissolution of society a disherison of the
crown? The "justices are commanded that they shall do even law
and execution of right to all our subjects, rich and poor,