Edmund Burke: “The people maintain them, and not they the people.”

If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.

Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of…

They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.

But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service.