Edmund Burke: “Our attempts to banish this importunate duty will only make it return upon us again and again, and every time in a shape…”

As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.

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?

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.

Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.