Edmund Burke: “Unless where Heaven has mingled uncommon ingredients of virtue in the composition,--quos meliore luto finxit præcordia…”

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.

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…

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.