All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation, the consolidated corruption of ages, the patterns of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of this single act.
Burke critiques a significant act of corruption, comparing it to historical examples of wrongdoing.
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Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
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