Edmund Burke: “It was, then, not my love, but my hatred to innovation, that produced my plan of reform.”

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

Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests.

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.

I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.