The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace.
Burke describes the destruction in France not as the result of civil war, but as a consequence of ill-advised counsel during a period of peace.
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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.
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of…
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