It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation. - John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

It is no longer true in the sense in which it was true when these dicta were uttered, that " Christianity is part of the law of the land." Nonconformists and Jews were then under penal laws, and were hardly allowed civil rights. But now, so far as I know the law, a Jew might be Lord Chancellor. Certainly he might be Master of the Rolls, and the great Judge whose loss we have all had to deplore2 might have had to try such a case, and if the view of the law supposed be correct, he would have had to tell the jury, perhaps partly composed of Jews, that it was blasphemy to deny that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, which he himself did deny, and which Parliament has allowed him to deny, and which it was part of " the law of the land " that he might, deny.

It is far more important the law should be administered with absolute integrity, than that in this case or in that the law should be a good law or a bad one.

What is one man's gain is another's loss.