Edmund Burke: “Vain are all the prognostics taken from ideas and passions, which survive the state of things which gave rise to 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.

It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

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

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.