Edmund Burke: “Those parliaments had furnished, not the best certainly, but some considerable corrective to the excesses and vices of…”

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

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.

Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?

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