Edmund Burke: “It ought to be environed with dignity, authority, and consideration, and it ought to lead to glory.”

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.

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.

This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.

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.