Edmund Burke

The most determined exertions of that authority against them only showed their radical independence.

They required several more alterations to adapt them to the system of a free Constitution.

These venerable bodies, like the rest of the old government, stood in need of reform, even though there should be no change made in the monarchy.

According to their invariable course, the framers of your Constitution have begun with the utter abolition of the parliaments.

As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in the plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly.

He is now sitting on the ruins of the finances and of the monarchy of France.

From that worst of evils, thank God, we are still free.

But, if he did possess them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly, advantages would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensating the risk.

I do not say that this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king, unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it, which he does not now hold.

The expense is exorbitant; and neither the show nor the use deserve the tenth part of the charge.--Oh! but I don't do justice to the talents of the legislators: I don't allow, as I ought to do, for necessity.

In short, I see nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it authority) that has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the smallest degree of just correspondence or symmetry or amicable relation with the supreme power, either as it…

If he reads,--whether he reads or not, some good or evil genius will tell him his ancestors were kings.

Will foreign states seriously treat with him who has no prerogative of peace or war,--no, not so much as in a single vote by himself or his ministers, or by any one whom he can possibly influence?

Is the conduct of a war to be trusted to a man who may abhor its principle,--who, in every step he may take to render it successful, confirms the power of those by whom he is oppressed?

Those competitors of the ministers are enabled by your Constitution to attack them in their vital parts, whilst they have not the means of repelling their charges in any other than the degrading character of culprits.

In France it is full of peril, and incapable of glory.

In all other countries the office of ministers of state is of the highest dignity.

But to be raised to it and to descend to it are different things, and suggest different sentiments.

If he feels as men commonly feel, he must he sensible that an office so circumstanced is one in which he can obtain no fame or reputation.

You may call half a dozen leading individuals, whom we have reason to fear and hate, the nation.

But these ministers, who were chosen by affairs, not by affections, acted in the name of and in trust for kings, and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible masters.

In vain will the law attempt to anticipate or to follow such studied neglects and fraudulent attentions.

It is a trust, indeed, that has much depending upon its faithful and diligent performance, both in the person presiding in it and in all its subordinates.

The power and preëminence of Paris does certainly press down and hold these republics together as long as it lasts: but, for the reasons I have already given you, I think it can not last very long.

It is boasted that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas should be sunk, and that the people should be no longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans,--but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one Assembly.