Edmund Burke: “You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity.”

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

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

I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…

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.