Edmund Burke: “This power is and ever was inherent in the supreme sovereignty, and was not, as the political divines vainly talk…”

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.

But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.

Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…

The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.