Edmund Burke: “Having, therefore, resolved upon the last and only resource, a penal prosecution, it was our next business to act in a…”

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 threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…

They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.

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