The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
So is the other branch of our public council: I mean
the House of Lords. With us the King and the Lords are several and joint
securities for the equality of each district, each province, each city.
When did you hear in Great Britain of any province suffering from the
inequality of its representation? what district from having no
representation at all? Not only our monarchy and our peerage secure the
equality on which our unity depends, but it is the spirit of the House
of Commons itself. The very inequality of representation, which is so
foolishly complained of, is perhaps the very thing which prevents us
from thinking or acting as members for districts. Cornwall elects as
many members as all Scotland. But is Cornwall better taken care of than
Scotland? Few trouble their heads about any of your bases, out of some
giddy clubs. Most of those who wish for any change, upon any plausible
grounds, desire it on different ideas.
Your new Constitution is the very reverse of ours in its principle; and
I am astonished how any persons could dream of holding out anything done
in it as an example for Great Britain. With you there is little, or
rather no, connection between the last representative and the first
constituent. The member who goes to the National Assembly is not chosen
by the people, nor accountable to them. There are three elections before
he is chosen; two sets of magistracy intervene between him and the
primary assembly, so as to render him, as I have said, an ambassador of
a state, and not the representative of the people within a state. By
this the whole spirit of the election is changed; nor can any corrective
your Constitution-mongers have devised render him anything else than
what he is. The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce a
confusion, if possible, more horrid than the present. There is no way to
make a connection between the original constituent and the
representative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the candidate
to apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in order that by
their authoritative instructions (and something more perhaps) these
primary electors may force the two succeeding bodies of electors to make
a choice agreeable to their wishes. But this would plainly subvert the
whole scheme. It would be to plunge them back into that tumult and
confusion of popular election, which, by their interposed gradation of
elections, they mean to avoid, and at length to risk the whole fortune
of the state with those who have the least knowledge of it and the
least interest in it. This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are
thrown by the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they have
chosen. Unless the people break up and level this gradation, it is plain
that they do not at all substantially elect to the Assembly; indeed,
they elect as little in appearance as reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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