These rights, contended for by the Commons in their impeachments, and admitted by the Peers, were asserted in the proceedings preparatory to the trial of Lord Stafford, in which that long chain of uniform precedents with regard to the publicity of the Judges' opinions in trials begins.
Burke discusses the historical context of legal rights asserted during impeachments.
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The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
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.
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