Edmund Burke: “Through you, these burghers dispose of the lives and fortunes of us all.”

Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…

But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.

The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.

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.