The American bills of rights do not attempt merely to set forth certain principles for the state's organization, but they seek above all to draw the boundary line between state and individual. According to them the individual is not the possessor of rights through the state, but by his own nature he has inalienable and indefeasible rights. The English laws know nothing of this. They do not wish to recognize an eternal, natural right, but one inherited from their fathers, "the old, undoubted rights of the English people." The English conception of the rights of the subject is very clear upon this point. When one looks through the Bill of Rights carefully, one finds but slight mention there of individual rights. That laws should not be suspended, that there should be no dispensation from them, that special courts should not be erected, that cruel punishments should not be inflicted, that jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, that taxes should not be levied without a law, nor a standing army kept without consent of Parliament, that parliamentary elections should be free, and Parliament be held frequently--all these are not rights of the individual, but duties of the government. Of the thirteen articles of the Bill of Rights only two contain stipulations that are expressed in the form of rights of the subject,[52] while one refers to freedom of speech in Parliament. When nevertheless all the stipulations of the Bill of Rights are therein designated as rights and liberties of the English people,[53] it is through the belief that restriction of the crown is at the same time right of the people.