Edmund Burke: “We state our experience, and then we come to the manly resolution of acting in contradiction to it.”

Our people will find employment enough for a truly patriotic, free, and independent spirit, in guarding what they possess from violation.

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…

I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.