You are pleased to say, that "our provincial or local laws have, in numerous instances, had relation to acts of Parliament, made to respect the plantations, and this colony in particular." The authority of the Legislature, says the same author who is quoted by your Excellency, "does not extend so far as the fundamentals of the constitution. They ought to consider the fundamental laws as sacred, if the nation has not in very express terms, given them the power to change them. For the constitution of the state ought to be fixed; and since that was first established by the nation, which afterwards trusted certain persons with the Legislative power, the fundamental laws are excepted from their commission." Now the fundamentals of the constitution of this province, are stipulated in the charter; the reasoning, therefore, in this case, holds equally good. Much less, then, ought any acts or doings of the General Assembly, however numerous, to neither of which your Excellency has pointed us, which barely relate to acts of Parliament made to respect the plantations in general, or this colony in particular, to be taken as an acknowledgment of this people, or even of the Assembly, which inadvertently passed those acts, that we are subject to the supreme authority of Parliament; and with still less reason are the decisions in the executive courts to determine this point. If they have adopted that "as part of the rule of law," which, in fact, is not, it must be imputed to inattention or error in judgment, and cannot justly be urged as an alteration or restriction of the Legislative authority of the province.