Edmund Burke: “If we send out obscure people, unknowing and unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must say it is a bitter…”

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.

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

They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.

Not being illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind.