Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/177

Ch. 2. All michiefs and grievances, operations and remedies, that trancend the ordinary coure of the laws, are within the reach of this extraordinary tribunal. It can regulate or new model the ucceion to the crown; as was done in the reign of Henry VIII and William III. It can alter the etablihed religion of the land; as was done in a variety of intances, in the reigns of king Henry VIII and his three children. It can change and create afreh even the contitution of the kingdom and of parliaments themelves; as was done by the act of union, and the everal tatutes for triennial and eptennial elections. It can, in hort, do every thing that is not naturally impoible; and therefore ome have not crupled to call it’s power, by a figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of parliament. True it is, that what the parliament doth, no authority upon earth can undo. So that it is a matter mot eential to the liberties of this kingdom, that uch members be delegated to this important trut, as are mot eminent for their probity, their fortitude, and their knowlege; for it was a known apothegm of the great lord treaurer Burleigh, “that England could never be ruined but by a parliament:” and, as ir Matthew Hale oberves, this being the highet and greatet court, over which none other can have juridiction in the kingdom, if by any means a migovernment hould any way fall upon it, the ubjects of this kingdom are left without all manner of remedy. To the ame purpoe the preident Montequieu, though I trut too hatily, preages ; that as Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lot their liberty and perihed, o the contitution of England will in time loe it’s liberty, will perih: it will perih, whenever the legilative power hall become more corrupt than the executive.

mut be owned that Mr Locke, and other theoretical writers, have held, that “there remains till inherent in the people a upreme power to remove or alter the legilative, when they find the legilative act contrary to the trut repoed in them: Rh