Edmund Burke: “It would surprise us, if we were to examine the thing critically, how few good original stories there are in the world.”

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 think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…

Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests.

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