Edmund Burke: “Oh, my Lords, what resources there are in oblivion! what resources there are in bad memory!”

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.

Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?

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

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.