Therefore I am apprehensive that this bill, though it shifts the place of the disorder, does by no means relieve the Constitution.
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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They are men,--it is saying nothing worse of them; many of them are but ill informed in their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easily overreached, easily seduced.
Of that they can well judge,--and I wish that they always exercised their judgment; but of the particular merits of a measure I have other standards....
They can well see whether we are tools of a court or their honest servants.
Of all these things they are perfect sovereign judges without appeal; but as to the detail of particular measures, or to any general schemes of policy, they have neither enough of speculation in the closet nor of experience in business to…
In doing so, we should not dutifully serve, but we should basely and scandalously betray the people, who are not capable of this service by nature, nor in any instance called to it by the Constitution.
But our duty, if we are qualified for it as we ought, is to give them information, and not to receive it from them: we are not to go to school to them, to learn the principles of law and government.
Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights and privileges of the people.
The task is of another nature to those who mean to promise nothing that it is not in their intention, or may possibly be in their power to perform,--to those who are bound and principled no more to delude the understandings than to violate…
We are agreed, too, that the term ought not to be chosen most likely in its operation to spread corruption, and to augment the already overgrown influence of the crown.
All are agreed that Parliaments should not be perpetual; the only question is, What is the most convenient time for their duration?--on which there are three opinions.
This bill, I fear, would precipitate one of two consequences,--I know not which most likely, or which most dangerous: either that the crown, by its constant, stated power, influence, and revenue, would wear out all opposition in elections…
The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible hour,--and may it be a very late one!
The perfect cure is impracticable; because the disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be derived.
It is wise to compass as many good ends as possibly you can, and, seeing there are inconveniences on both sides, with benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit to soften the inconvenience.
To cure these distempers is difficult, if not impossible; the only thing, therefore, left to save the commonwealth is, to prevent their return too frequently.
They are the distempers of elections that have destroyed all free states.
This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election; and popular election is a mighty evil.
To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of government.
That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it can make any sort of approach to perfection.
But your remedy is to be suited to your disease, your present disease, and to your whole disease.
If we thought frequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them.
It is certainly necessary to resort to the theory of your government, whenever you propose any alteration in the frame of it,--whether that alteration means the revival of some former antiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or the…
Here it is not, how long the people are bound to tolerate the illegality of our judgments, but whether we have a right to substitute our occasional opinion in the place of law, so as to deprive the citizen of his franchise....
And then the question is,--By the Constitution of this country, what degree of submission is due to the authoritative acts of a limited power?
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