Dormiunt aliquando leges, moriuntur nunquam. The laws sometimes sleep, they never die. Although it was a maxim of the civil law that as laws might be established by custom, they could likewise become obsolete by disuse or be abrogated by contrary usage, Ea vero quæ ipsa sibi quæque civitas constituit sæpe mutari solent vel tacito consensu populi vel aliâ posteâ, lege latâ (I. L. 2, 11, Irving, Civil Law, 4th ed., 123): and by the law of Scotland a statute is said to lose its force by disuse (Stair, Macdonal, Wallace), if it has not been in execution for sixty years, and, according to some Scotch lawyers for a hundred years, and a distinction is made between statutes which are as it were half obsolete and those in viridi observantiâ, yet by the law of England every statute continues in force until it is repealed by a subsequent Act of Parliament. Lex Angliæ sine parliamento mutari non potest (2 Institute, 619), for nothing is so agreeable to natural equity as that everything should be dissolved by the same means which made it binding. Nihil tam conveniens est naturali æquitati quam unumquodque dissolvi eo ligamine quo ligatum est (2 Institute, 360). The statutes can only be altered or repealed by the same authority by which they were made—jura eodem modo distituuntur quo constituuntur (Dwarr. Stats. 672), eodem ligamine quo ligatum est dissolvitur (Co. Litt. 212b). _Wolsey._ That seal You ask with such a violence, the king (Mine and your master) with _his own hand gave me_; Bad me enjoy it, with the place and honours, During my life; and to confirm his goodness, Tied it by letters-patents:—now, who’ll take it? _Sur._ The king, that gave it. _Wol._ It must be himself, then. _Henry VIII._, Act iii. Scene 2.