Edmund Burke: “The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the chartered rights…”

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.

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…

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.