The ancient records of the Exchequer afford many instances where some women purchased by heavy fines the privilege of a single life, some the free choice of an husband, others the liberty of rejecting some person particularly disagreeable.
Burke provides examples of women who paid fines for marital privileges in feudal society.
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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.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
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