Edmund Burke: “The imposing of a tribute upon a Mussulman, without his previous consent, is impracticable.”

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.

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.

It therefore secures both an hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance.

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.