Edmund Burke: “The forfeiture even of your favor, if by such a declaration I could forfeit it, though the first object of my ambition…”

The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.

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.

No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.

A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.