Edmund Burke: “They judge of every man's capacity for office by the offices he has filled; and the more offices, the more ability.”

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.

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.

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.

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