When men, circumstanced as these are, publicly declare such admiration of a foreign Constitution, and such contempt of our own, it would be, in the author of the Reflections, thinking as he does of the French Constitution, infamously to cheat the rest of the nation to their ruin to say there is no danger.
Burke warns against the dangers of admiring foreign constitutions while disregarding one's own.
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A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.
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