Edmund Burke: “Yet those men, in order to force others to break their most sacred trust, inflict tortures upon them.”

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.

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.

They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs,--as a benefit, not as a grievance,--as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude.

Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?