My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here,--those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office.
Burke emphasizes the importance of hereditary peerage in maintaining justice and honor in society.
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More from Edmund Burke
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
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.
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
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