Edmund Burke: “It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a man.”

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.

To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of their public estate is a cruel and insolent imposition.

This was reserved to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened age.

Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of rebuilding it with the materials of…