I. LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY COLLECTIVELY.—The authority of par liament extends over the United Kiligdom and all its colonies and foreign possessions. There are no other limits to its power of making laws for the whole empire than those which are common to it. and to all other sovereign authority, the willingness of the people to obey, or their power to resist them. It has power to alter the constitution of the country, for that is the constitution which the last act of parliament has made. It may take away life by acts of attainder, and make an alien he as a natural-born subject.
Parliament does not in the ordinary course legislate directly for the colonies. For some, the queen in council legislates, and others have legislatures of their own, and propound laws for their intenial govern. !tient, subject to the approval of the queen in council; but these may afterwards be repealed or amended by direct statutes from this country. Their legislatures and their laws are both subordinate to the mother country.
The power of imposing taxes upon colonies for the support of the parent state was attempted to be exercised by parliament upon the provinces of North America ; but this attempt was the immediate occasion of the severance of that great country from our own. The
injustice and hardship of colonial taxation must be admitted ; but the legal power of parliament to impose such taxes can only be restrained by its own acts conferring constitutions and privileges upon the colonies, which are all subject to its authority.
There are some subjects indeed upon which parliament, in familiar language, is said to have no right to legislate ; such for instance as the Church ; but no one can intend more by that expression than that it is inexpedient to make laws as to such matters. The very prayers and services of the Church are prescribed by statute. Parliament has changed the professed religion of the country, and has altered tho hereditary succession to the throne. To conclude, in the worth; of Sir Edward Coke, the power of parliament "is so transcendent and absolute, that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds."