Edmund Burke: “I know no measure, in such a case, but the nature of the subject, and the duty which we owe to it.”

Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.

If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?

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…

The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.