Edmund Burke: “In this state of the kingdom, it was equally dangerous to exert the fulness of the sovereign authority or to suffer it…”

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.

Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…

Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.

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.