Edmund Burke: “But commonwealths are not physical, but moral essences.”

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

The only difference among their financial factions is on the greater or the lesser quantity of assignats to be imposed on the public sufferance.

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

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.