Edmund Burke: “I believed the ancient principles to be wise in all cases of a large empire that would be free.”

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

As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.

So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their…

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.