Edmund Burke: “Recover your old ground, and your old tranquillity; try it; I am persuaded the Americans will compromise with you.”

The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.

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.

But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service.

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.