Edmund Burke: “This I take to be a fair description of the principles and leading maxims of the enlightened of our day who are commonly…”

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.

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.

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.