As he knows that we are pleased with the Paris taste for the orders of knighthood, he will fling a bloody sash across his shoulders with the order of the Holy Guillotine, surmounting the Crown, appendant to the riband.
Burke satirically describes a grotesque display of honors that a controversial figure might flaunt.
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I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
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.
If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
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