Edmund Burke: “They pursue even such as me into the obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolutionary tribunals.”

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?

Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?

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

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.