Edmund Burke: “If the public honour is tarnished, if the public safety suffers any detriment, the ministers, not the people, are to…”

This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.

No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.

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.

The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.