Edmund Burke: “I have said, my Lords, that ignorance is the other cause of this calumny by which the House of Commons is assailed.”

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

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.

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.