EDMUND BURKE, SPEECH
TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL [1774]
The eighteenth century
politician and philosopher Edmund Burke addressed this speech to the electors
of Bristol, one of the various constituencies that he represented during his
roving political career.
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.
My worthy colleague says, his will
ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If
government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought
to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and
judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the
determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and
another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three
hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?
To
deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty
and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to
hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative
instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly
to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction
of his judgment and conscience,–these are things utterly unknown to the laws of
this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and
tenor of our constitution.
Parliament is not a congress of
ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must
maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but
parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of
the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but
the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a
member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but
he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest,
or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the
rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any
other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on
this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a
respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your
devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish
for.