"The law of nature is that which God, at man's creation, infused into him, for his preservation and direction; and this is an eternal law, and may not be changed."--_2 Shep. Abr. 356, also Jac. Law Dict._ "All laws derive their force from the law of nature; and those which do not, are accounted as no laws."--_Fortescue. Jac. Law Dict._ "No law will make a construction to do wrong; and there are some things which the law favors, and some it dislikes; it favoreth those things that come from the order of nature."--_1 Inst. 183, 197.--Jac. Law Dict._ "Of law no less can be acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power."--_Hooker._ "This law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original."--_Blackstone, Vol. 1, p. 41._ Mr. Christian, one of Blackstone's editors, in a note to the above passage, says: "Lord Chief Justice Hobart has also advanced, that even an act of Parliament made against natural justice, as to make a man judge in his own cause, is void in itself, for _jura naturæ sunt immutabilia_, and they are _leges legum_"--(the laws of nature are immutable--they are the laws of laws.)--_Hob. 87._ Mr. Christian then adds: "With deference to these high authorities, (Blackstone and Hobart,) I should conceive that in no case whatever can a judge oppose his own opinion and authority to the clear will and declaration of the legislature. His province is to interpret and obey the mandates of the supreme power of the state. And if an act of Parliament, if we could suppose such a case, should, like the edict of Herod, command all the children under a certain age to be slain, the judge ought to resign his office rather than be auxiliary to its execution; but it could only be declared void by the same legislative power by which it was ordained. If the judicial power were competent to decide that an act of parliament was void because it was contrary to natural justice, upon an appeal to the House of Lords this inconsistency would be the consequence, that as judges they must declare void, what as legislators they had enacted should be valid. "The learned judge himself (Blackstone) declares in p. 91, if the Parliament will positively enact a thing to be done which is unreasonable, I know of no power in the ordinary forms of the constitution, that is vested with authority to control it."