Edmund Burke: “You can never survey, from its proper point of sight, the work you have finished, before you decree its final execution.”

The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.

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.

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

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…