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We end up with hundreds and hundreds of laws and decisions made to placate noisy minority groups rather than the quiet majority. We have news agencies specifically created to report and promote one sided news and spin the events to sway popular opinion. Our representatives work to protect the votes of themselves and their parties no matter what the effect on the masses.
It is the duty of a representative to chose and support the ideals which are best for the people and the nation over a State, a Party, or a group.
In 1776 Dr. Lyman Hall, the representative of Georgia was pro-Independence, the State populous was not. He thought the matter over, hearing the arguments on both sides, listing the pros and cons. He then voted for the Independence of the United States of America.
When asked why he quoted a member of England's Parliament.
Edmund Burke, 3 November 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 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.
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| Governour Dr.Lyman Hall |
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| Edmund Burke |
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