Edmund Burke: “I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.”

But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.

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.

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.