Edmund Burke: “That act has calculated the probable duration of our quarrel with the colonies, and is accommodated to that supposed…”

Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?

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

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…

Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.