Edmund Burke: “Avowedly and systematically, they have given the upperhand to all the vicious and degenerate part of human nature.”

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

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.

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

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.