Edmund Burke: “Such spectacles and such examples will overbear all the laws that ever blackened the cumbrous volumes of our statutes.”

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.

The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.

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

Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.