It is enough for them to justify their adherence to a pernicious system, that it is not of their contrivance,--that it is an inheritance of absurdity, derived to them from their ancestors,--that they can make out a long and unbroken pedigree of mismanagers that have gone before them.
Burke points out that some justify their adherence to a flawed system by claiming it is inherited, rather than their own design.
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But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.
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.
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