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There is no man on earth, I believe, more willing than I am to lay it
down as a fundamental of the Constitution, that the Church of England
should be united and even identified with it; but, allowing this, I
cannot allow that all _laws of regulation_, made from time to time, in
support of that fundamental law, are of course equally fundamental and
equally unchangeable. This would be to confound all the branches of
legislation and of jurisprudence. The _crown_ and the personal safety of
the monarch are _fundamentals_ in our Constitution: yet I hope that no
man regrets that the rabble of statutes got together during the reign of
Henry the Eighth, by which treasons are multiplied with so prolific an
energy, have been all repealed in a body; although they were all, or
most of them, made in support of things truly fundamental in our
Constitution. So were several of the acts by which the crown exercised
its supremacy: such as the act of Elizabeth for making the _high
commission courts_, and the like; as well as things made treason in the
time of Charles the Second.


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