Edmund Burke: “Great crimes then apprehended, and great evils then impending, were to be prevented.”

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

They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.

They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…

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?