Edmund Burke: “You have a standard, a measure of extortion, and that is all: ex pede Herculem: guess from thence what was extorted from…”

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

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.

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.