Edmund Burke: “It is to delude ourselves, to consider the state of France, since their Revolution, as a state of anarchy: it is…”

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.

Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.

Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.

This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.