Edmund Burke: “Whatever power the supreme sovereign of the empire had, we deny that it was delegated to Sujah Dowlah.”

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.

But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.

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

So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…