Edmund Burke: “The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity.”

When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.

Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?

But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.

But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.