Edmund Burke: “The king no longer doubted his fortune, and therefore no longer respected his promises or his charter.”

The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder.

They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.

I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…

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.