Edmund Burke: “Hastings, though thus defeated, was only waiting for what he considered to be the fortunate moment for returning again…”

Those who are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.

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.

Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?

Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…