Edmund Burke: “In the vastness of their promises and the confidence of their predictions they far outdo all the boasting of empirics.”

The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.

Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…

They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.

Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.