Edmund Burke: “We here see a scene of dark, mysterious contrivance: let us now see what is brought out in the face of open day.”

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.

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…

They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…

The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.