Edmund Burke: “The people maintain them, and not they the people.”

When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.

Those who are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.

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.