Edmund Burke: “You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of…”

Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.

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

This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.

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.