Thomas Carlyle
was a stone-mason, whose walls stood true and needed no
rebuilding. Carlyle's prayer was: "Let me write my books as
he built his houses."

HENRY VAN DYKE: _Books, Literature and the People_,
1900

6. All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical
to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical
politicians who have no place among us--a sort of people who
think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and
who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of
the great movement of empire, are unfit to turn a wheel in
the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught,
these ruling and master principles, which in the opinion of
such men as I have mentioned have no substantial existence,
are in truth everything and all in all. Magnanimity in
politics is not seldom the truest wisdom: and a great empire
and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our
station, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our
situation and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public
proceedings on America with the old warning of the church,
_Sursum corda!_ We ought to elevate our minds to the
greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has
called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling,
our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious
empire; and have made the most extensive, and the only
honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the
wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us
get an American revenue as we have got an American empire.
English privileges have made it all that it is; English
privileges alone will make it all it can be.

In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now (_quod
felix faustumque sit!_) lay the first stone of the Temple of
Peace; and I move you;--

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and
containing two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have
not had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any
knights and burgesses, or others, to represent them in the
high court of Parliament.

EDMUND BURKE: _Conciliation with America_, 1775

7. Now, Mr. Speaker, having fully answered all the arguments of
my opponents, I will