Edmund Burke: “It is already on the wane, eclipsed by the enlarging orb of reason and the luminous Revolutions of America and France.”

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.

They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.

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.