Edmund Burke: “It is material to know who they are, and how constituted, whom we consider as the people of France.”

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.

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

I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.

The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.