And how could the stream rise higher than the source?
Was it not absurd to say that the Convention was supreme in the state, and yet a nullity; a legislature for the highest of all purposes, and yet no legislature for the humblest purposes; competent to declare the throne vacant, to change the succession, to fix the landmarks of the constitution, and yet not competent to pass the most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier or the building of a parish church?
These arguments would have had considerable weight, even if every precedent had been on the other side.

But in truth our history afforded only one precedent which was at all in point; and that precedent was decisive in favour of the doctrine that royal writs are not indispensably necessary to the existence of a Parliament.

No royal writ had summoned the Convention which recalled Charles the Second.

Yet that Convention had, after his Restoration, continued to sit and to legislate, had settled the revenue, had passed an Act of amnesty, had abolished the feudal tenures.

These proceedings had been sanctioned by authority of which no party in the state could speak without reverence.
Hale had borne a considerable share in them, and had always maintained that they were strictly legal.