Edmund Burke: “Earth below shook; heaven above menaced; all the elements of ministerial safety were dissolved.”

No experience has taught us that in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right.

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.

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

We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.