GOVERNMENT AND LEGISLATION.

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?

Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke · 第 90 / 361 题