The doctrine so laid down demands that every several circumstance should in itself be conclusive, or at least should afford a violent presumption: it must, we were told, without question, be material to the charge depending.
Burke discusses the necessity of each piece of evidence being conclusive in legal matters.
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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.
But the course of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitution.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
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