Edmund Burke: “Are not the people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh?”

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

But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.

They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.

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…