The activity, private interest, and the sharp eye of personal superintendency may now and then succeed in such projects; but the remote inspection and unwieldy movements of great public bodies can find nothing but loss in them.
Burke reflects on the inefficiencies of large public organizations compared to private interests in managing projects.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.
Other voices in this conversation
