Title: The Justice and Necessity of punishing great Crimes, though committed against no subsisting Law of the State.
"This is nothing less than asserting, that a nation has not a power within itself to save itself: That the whole ought not to preserve the whole: That particular men have the liberty to subvert the government which protects them, and yet continue to be protected by that government which they would destroy: That they may overturn all law, and yet escape by not being within the express words of any particular law."
Thanks for posting the link to Cato’s No. 11. I had not heard of that before. It certainly encapsulates this situation, doesn’t it?
“Salus populi suprema lex esto” — That the benefit and safety of the people constitutes the supreme law.