Laws which God and nature established

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

—William Blackstone (10 July 1723 – 14 February 1780, English jurist, judge and Tory politician most noted for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England).