Edmund Burke on why a politician can’t obey his constituents

But must use his best judgment because they can be wrong

Generally considered the founder of modern Anglo-American conservatism, Edmund Burke was a more complicated thinker, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy remarking that he did not “bequeath a straightforward legacy to any political party or to any ideological brand of thought.” He famously favored prejudice or tradition as a guide to action, but also favored free trade, some degree of Catholic emancipation, and opposed slavery and most forms of capital punishment. He entered Parliament in 1765, at the age of 36, and stayed until 1794. Of his many books, the most influential was his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke gave his thought on the subject in concluding his “Speech to the electors of Bristol,” subtitled “On his being declared by the sheriffs duly elected one of the representatives in Parliament for that city,” delivered in 1774.’

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 opinions high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasure, his satisfactions, to theirs, — and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.

But his unbiased 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? . . .

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 endeavor to give it effect. . . .

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