Sir,—In your August number (page 573) is a quotation from Mr. Burke's speech to the Electors of Bristol, upon the subject of instructions from constituents to their representatives. Will you oblige me by giving another passage or two from that speech, which will show how inapplicable Mr. Burke's remarks are to our country. Immediately after the word “arguments,” at the end of your last quotation, Mr. Burke proceeds thus:
“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 the 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 a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.”
This theory of each member's representing not those who chose him, but the whole nation, gave rise to what was called virtual representation, when the people of America complained that they had no representatives in Parliament. Is it not evident, that under our CONSTITUTION, if every member represents his own constituents, all will be represented? It was different indeed under the rotten borough system of England, now happily exploded. Mr. Burke was elected to Parliament, but having voted, under pretence of consulting the general good, for many measures obnoxious to the people of Bristol, he was defeated when he attempted to be re-elected. The making of loud professions of interest in the public welfare, and desire for the general good, accompanied by a neglect of immediate duties, reminds one of professions of universal philanthropy from the lips of a bad husband and a bad father.
Yours respectfully,
Q. V. Z.
[Our correspondent, in supposing Mr. Burke's remarks “inapplicable to this country,” seems to be misled by the word “congress.” Had not this term been appropriated to our National Assembly the paragraph would have escaped attention. The whole is applicable, we think, fully, even to “Congress” itself. Write “our General Legislature” in place of “Parliament,” “assembly” instead of “congress,” for “Bristol” read “Virginia,” and we see no difficulty whatever.
Our general legislature is not an assembly of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain as an agent, and advocate against the other agents and advocates; but our general legislature is a deliberative [Mr. B. has italicized deliberative] assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole. You choose a member indeed, but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Virginia, but a member of our general legislature.
We can see no inapplicability here, nor is a word of the paragraph to be denied, when made referrible to us. Mr. Burke, we apprehend, wished simply to place a representative and deliberative assembly, consisting of delegates from various sections of one nation, in contradistinction to a meeting of ambassadors from a number of distinct and totally hostile powers. In the former case, supposing the judgment, rather than the will of the people, to be represented, he allows of no “authoritative mandates” from the constituent to the representative—in the latter instance, and in such instance alone, he can imagine the binding power of letters of instruction from home, upon the ambassadors assembled.
In regard to the “making of loud professions of interest in the public welfare, and desire for the general good, accompanied by a neglect of immediate duties”—we conceive that, in the case of Burke, or in any similar case, if the passage of a law is to operate for the general good, yet for the individual harm of the Senator's constituents, then the Senator has but one “immediate duty”—to vote for it.]