Edmund Burke: “Ardent spirit is a great medicine, often to remove distempers, much more frequently to prevent them, or to chase them…”

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

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.

They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that of the raven.