Edmund Burke: “We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact.”

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.

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.

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