Page:A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1775) (IA declarationofpeo00shar).djvu/67

 power to give up the ancient and established Right of the people to be represented in the legislature; because an Act for so base a purpose would entirely subvert the principles and constitution on which the very Existence of the legislature itself, which ordained it, is formed! so that such an unnatural Act of the state would be parallel to the crime of felo de se in a private person; and, being thus contrary to "the nature of things, can never be rendered valid by any Authority whatsoever." (18) And indeed it is laid down as a maxim, by the great Lord Sommers, that “no man of society of men have power to deliver up their preservation, or the means of it, to the absolute Will of any man" (or men); "and they will have always a right to preserve what they have not power