What should I think of those potentates who insulted their suffering brethren,--who treated them as vagrants, or at least as mendicants,--and could find no allies, no friends, but in regicide murderers and robbers?
Burke criticizes rulers who neglect their suffering subjects and align with tyrants.
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Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests.
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.
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
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.
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