Edmund Burke: “It is not because redress has been rendered impracticable that oppression does not exist; nor is the despair of…”

But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.

We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.

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?

They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they…