Edmund Burke: “On every principle which supposes society to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive incorporation must be null…”

The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.

Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.

It therefore secures both an hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance.

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.