Well, I am busy. Worked 37 hours in the last three days.
Where do you find the official version of God’s laws and those of nature?
http://books.google.com/books?id=-Yo0AAAAMAAJ&printsec=titlepage#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=lIs0AAAAMAAJ&printsec=titlepage#v=onepage&q&f=false
A question deeply interesting to the American States now presents itself. Should the elements of a law education, particularly as it respects public law, be drawn entirely from another country—or should they be drawn, in part, at least, from the constitutions and governments and laws of the United States, and of the several States composing the Union ?
The subject, to one standing where I stand, is not without its delicacy: let me, however, treat it with the decent but firm freedom, which befits an independent citizen, and a professor in independent states.
Surely I am justified in saying, that the principles of the constitutions and governments and laws of the United States, and the republics, of which they are formed, are materially different from the principles of the constitution and government and laws of England; for that is the only country, from the principles of whose constitution and government and laws, it will be contended, that the elements of a law education ought to be drawn. I presume to go further: the principles of our constitutions and governments and laws are materially better than the principles of the constitution and government and laws of England...
States are moral persons, who live together in a natural society, under the law of nations. To give a state a right to make an immediate figure in the great society of nations, it is sufficient, if it be really sovereign and independent; that is, it must govern itself by its own authority.* Thus, when the United Colonies found it necessary to dissolve the political bonds, which had connected them with Great Britain, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station, to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them ; they had a right to publish and declare, as, in fact, they did publish and declare, that “ they were free and independent states ; and that, as free and independent states, they had full power to levy war, to conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do ajl other acts and things, which independent states may of right do j” though, at that time, no articles of confederation were agreed upon; nor was any form of civil government instituted by them...
By Sir William Blackstone, from whose Commentaries, a performance in many respects highly valuable, the elements of a foreign law education would probably be borrowed—by Sir William Blackstone,. this great and fundamental principle is treated as a political chimera, existing only in the minds of some theorists-; but, in practice, inconsistent with the dispensation of any government upon earth.
http://books.google.com/books?id=l24DAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage#v=onepage&q&f=false