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edmund-burke
I’ve just finished Jesse Norman’s biography of the eighteenth century politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, so that’s where I’ll turn for this week’s dose of historical miscellany. Burke lived in the great age of political oratory and this is an extract one of his most enduring and celebrated speeches, outlining the independence of a political representative.
This speech was addressed to the electors of Bristol, one of the various constituencies that Burke represented during his roving policial career. His language is typically fulsome, a heady mix of deference and persuasion. Though a representative should be mindful of their constituents, Burke contends, they should not always submit to their will.
It’s a brilliantly put argument that has now stood firm for almost a quarter of a millennium.
Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
