Edmund Burke: “Therefore it can give rights,--rights where no rights existed before; and it can take away rights where they were before…”

Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.

The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.

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.

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.