Edmund Burke: “If there have been none, the case in future is desperate.”

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.

Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of…

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.