Edmund Burke: “Else the whole idea of propriety, that is, the only distinction between the just and chimerical in the arts, would be…”

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

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.

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.