As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us, they rise where they are least expected; they fail whe… - Edmund Burke

The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient, indisputable laws and liberties and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty. If you are desirous of knowing the spirit of our constitution and the policy which predominated in that great period which has secured it to this hour, pray look for both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of parliament, and journals of parliament, and not in the sermons of the Old Jewry and the after-dinner toasts of the Revolution Society. In the former you will find other ideas and another language. Such a claim is as ill-suited to our temper and wishes as it is unsupported by any appearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any scion alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle of reverence to antiquity.

Mr. Burke appeared often in despair when he read the Papers & saw how violent party rage was become in England as well as in France. He often said that he could not consider the party for a reform in part by Mr. Fox & his Friends as distinct from that party of Sir F. Burdet at the Crown & Anchor, because Mr. F— though he might have spoken against the last out of Doors, did not condemn it in parliam[en]t, which would be the manly way of proceeding.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.