Edmund Burke: “How can the Lord-Lieutenant form the least judgment of their merits, so as to discern which of the Popish priests is fit…”

To establish a current circulating credit upon any land-bank, under any circumstances whatsoever, has hitherto proved difficult at the very least.

They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.

But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue?

Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of rebuilding it with the materials of…