Edmund Burke: “In their defence of one crime they are sure to meet the ghost of some former defence, which, like the spectre in Virgil…”

Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?

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?

By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.

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.