Edmund Burke: “It acts with the officious cruelty of a mercenary nurse, who, under pretence of tenderness, stifles us with our clothes…”

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.

Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…

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.