Edmund Burke: “These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people,--testators to a posterity which they…”

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.

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.

They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.

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