Edmund Burke: “That it should be a matter of public discretion in me to be silent on the affairs of Ireland is what on all accounts I…”

We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.

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

The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.

Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.