Edmund Burke: “On our part, why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws of material Nature, to be, at this time reversed?”

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

In some people I see great liberty, indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude.

But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue?

To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of their public estate is a cruel and insolent imposition.