Assuredly the remembrance of these celebrated English enactments, which the Americans regarded as an inherent part of the law of their land, had a substantial share in the declarations of rights after 1776. Many stipulations from Magna Charta and the English Bill of Rights were directly embodied by the Americans in their lists. And yet a deep cleft separates the American declarations from the English enactments that have been mentioned. The historian of the American Revolution says of the Virginia declaration that it protested against all tyranny in the name of the eternal laws of man's being: "The English petition of right in 1688 was historic and retrospective; the Virginia declaration came directly out of the heart of nature and announced governing principles for all peoples in all future times."[49] The English laws that establish the rights of subjects are collectively and individually confirmations, arising out of special conditions, or interpretations of existing law. Even Magna Charta contains no new right, as Sir Edward Coke, the great authority on English law, perceived as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century.[50] The English statutes are far removed from any purpose to recognize general rights of man, and they have neither the power nor the intention to restrict the legislative agents or to establish principles for future legislation. According to English law Parliament is omnipotent and all statutes enacted or confirmed by it are of equal value. The American declarations, on the other hand, contain precepts which stand higher than the ordinary lawmaker. In the Union, as well as in the individual states, there are separate organs for ordinary and for constitutional legislation, and the judge watches over the observance of the constitutional limitations by the ordinary legislative power. If in his judgment a law infringes on the fundamental rights, he must forbid its enforcement. The declarations of rights even at the present day are interpreted by the Americans as practical protections of the minority.[51] This distinguishes them from the "guaranteed rights" of the European states. The American declarations are not laws of a higher kind in name only, they are the creations of a higher lawmaker. In Europe, it is true, the constitutions place formal difficulties in the way of changing their specifications, but almost everywhere it is the lawmaker himself who decides upon the change. Even in the Swiss Confederacy judicial control over the observance of these forms is nowhere to be found, although there, as in the United States, the constitutional laws proceed from other organs than those of the ordinary statutes.