I found, accordingly, that the great jurists, Cicero, Grotius, Coke, Blackstone, Burlamaqui, Montesquieu, Vattel, Burke, Mackintosh, Jefferson, do all affirm this. I have no intention to recite these passages I had marked:—such citation indeed seems to be something cowardly (for no reasonable person needs a quotation from Blackstone to convince him that white cannot be legislated to be black), and shall content myself with reading a single passage. Blackstone admits the sovereignty “antecedent to any positive precept, of the law of Nature,” among whose principles are, “that we should live on, should hurt nobody, and should render unto every one his due,” etc. “_No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this._” “Nay, if any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit a crime” (his instance is murder), “we are bound to transgress that human law; or else we must offend both the natural and divine.” Lord Coke held that where an Act of Parliament is against common right and reason, the common law shall control it, and adjudge it to be void. Chief Justice Hobart, Chief Justice Holt, and Chief Justice Mansfield held the same. Lord Mansfield, in the case of the slave Somerset, wherein the _dicta_ of Lords Talbot and Hardwicke had been cited, to the effect of carrying back the slave to the West Indies, said, “I care not for the supposed _dicta_ of judges, however eminent, if they be contrary to all principle.” Even the _Canon Law_ says (_in malis promissis non expedit servare fidem_), “Neither allegiance nor oath can bind to obey that which is wrong.” No engagement (to a sovereign) can oblige or even authorize a man to violate the laws of Nature. All authors who have any conscience or modesty agree that a person ought not to obey such commands as are evidently contrary to the laws of God. Those governors of places who bravely refused to execute the barbarous orders of Charles IX. for the famous “Massacre of St. Bartholomew,” have been universally praised; and the court did not dare to punish them, at least openly. “Sire,” said the brave Orte, governor of Bayonne, in his letter, “I have communicated your majesty’s command to your faithful inhabitants and warriors in the garrison, and I have found there only good citizens, and brave soldiers; not one hangman: therefore, both they and I must humbly entreat your majesty to be pleased to employ your arms and lives in things that are possible, however hazardous they may be, and we will exert ourselves to the last drop of our blood.”[130] The practitioners should guard this dogma well, as the palladium of the profession, as their anchor in the respect of mankind. Against a principle like this, all the arguments of Mr. Webster are the spray of a child’s squirt against a granite wall.