Edmund Burke: “They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader.”

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

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

All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…

By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.