Edmund Burke

But they will be afraid to act ill, if they know that the day of their account is always near.

But an House of Commons without power and without dignity, either in itself or in its members, is no House of Commons for the purposes of this Constitution.

Nothing will ever make a seat in this House not an object of desire to numbers by any means or at any charge, but the depriving it of all power and all dignity.

One thing is certain,--that in this political game the great lottery of power is that into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them.

A seat in this House, for good purposes, for bad purposes, for no purposes at all, (except the mere consideration derived from being concerned in the public counsels,) will ever be a first-rate object of ambition in England.

The spirit of emulation has also been extremely increased, and all who are acquainted with the tone of that country have no doubt that the spirit is still growing, that new candidates will take the field, that the contests will be more…

We have not only our own historical experience in England upon this subject, but we have the experience coexisting with us in Ireland, where, since their Parliament has been shortened, the expense of elections has been so far from being…

Will they make fewer demands for the advantages o£ patronage in favors and offices, because their member is brought more under their power?

Will they change their wine for ale, because they are to get more ale three years hence?

Will any one think that a corporation will be contented with a bowl of punch or a piece of beef the less, because elections are every three, instead of every seven years?

But they think the greatness and frequency of the evil would itself be, a remedy for it,--that, sitting but for a short time, the member would not find it worth while to make such vast expenses, while the fear of their constituents will…

Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge of elections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to the people.

There the contest was only between citizen and citizen: here you have the contests of ambitious citizens of one side supported by the crown to oppose to the efforts (let it be so) of private and unsupported ambition on the other.

They had nothing but faction, bribery, bread, and stage-plays, to debauch them: we have the inflammation of liquor superadded, a fury hotter than any of them.

So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, though those of Rome were sober disorders.

They will all grow politicians; every one, quitting his business, will choose to enrich himself by his vote.

Their heads will never cool; the temptations of elections will be forever glittering before their eyes.

I think no stable and useful advantages were ever made by the money got at elections by the voter, but all he gets is doubly lost to the public: it is money given to diminish the general stock of the community, which is in the industry of…

It will be said I do not allow for the operation of character: but I do; and I know it will have its weight in most elections,--perhaps it may be decisive in some; but there are few in which it will prevent great expenses.

I do not seriously think this Constitution, even to the wrecks of it, could survive five triennial elections.

The charge, therefore, of elections ought never to be lost sight of in a question concerning their frequency; because the grand object you seek is independence.

It is ten thousand times more necessary to show himself a man of power than a man of integrity, in almost all the elections with which I have been acquainted.

But the practice and knowledge of the world will not suffer us to be ignorant that the Constitution on paper is one thing, and in fact and experience is another.

It would be so, if every corruptible representative were to find an enlightened and incorruptible constituent.

Theory, I know, would suppose that every general election is to the representative a day of judgment, in which he appears before his constituents to account for the use of the talent with which they intrusted him, and for the improvement…