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One of the scholarly critics of Magna Carta suggests that this enactment of 1369 was quite an "illogical theory" on the part of parliament, because, to quote his language, "if parliament had power to alter the sacred terms of Magna Carta, it had power to alter the less sacred statute of 1369 which declared it unalterable."ssss1 The conclusive answer to this kind of reasoning, at least as it must seem to statesmen and lawyers, is that Magna Carta was then regarded as something very different from and much higher than any ordinary statute. The people of that day would have protested, if the logic of parliament had then been challenged by the learned, that Magna Carta was a permanent charter of liberties and as such not subject to amendment or nullification by mere statute. But logical or illogical as the act of 42 Edward III. may have been at the time, or may seem to be to the logicians of the twentieth century, it serves to show that in the fourteenth century the English people understood and intended, and the king and parliament expressly agreed and conceded, that the liberties guaranteed by the Great Charter, then being again and again confirmed, were unalterable, and that any statute to the contrary should be "holden for none."