GOVERNMENT & THE STATE
LEGISLATIVE FUNCTION
A deliberative assembly does not rise above the level of its average members. It is neither very foolish nor very wise.
ACTON, LORD JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG, Lectures on the French Revolution: The Heralds of the Revolution, MacMillan and Co., Limited, London (1910)
Often the natural rights of an individual are opposed to the presumed interests or heated passions of a large majority of democratic government; if these rights are not clearly and expressly ascertained, the individual must be lost; and for the truth of this I appeal to every man who has borne a part in the legislative councils of America. In such government the tyranny of the legislative is most to be dreaded.
ANONYMOUS FARMER, Reply to Cassius by Brutus, published in Virginia Independent Chronicle, May 14, 1788, quoted in What the Anti-Federalists Were For by Herbert J. Storing [University of Chicago 1981], p. 40
[L]egislation...is...the battlefield for the fantasies and greed of everyone.
What is law, or at least what ought it to be? What is its rational and moral mission? Is it not to hold the balance even between all rights, all liberties, and all property? Is it not to cause justice to rule among all? Is it not to prevent and to repress oppression and robbery wherever they are found? And are you not shocked at the immense, radical, and deplorable innovation introduced into the world by compelling the law itself to commit the very crimes to punish which is its especial mission - by turning the law in principle and in fact against liberty and property?
BASTIAT, M. FREDERIC, Spoliation and the Law
Your system has written over the entrance of the legislative halls these words: “Whoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of the legalized pillage.” And what has been the result? All classes of society have become demoralized by shouting around the gates of the palace: “Give me a share of the spoils.”
BASTIAT, M. FREDERIC, Spoliation and the Law
[When universal suffrage was proclaimed, I had for a moment hopes to have heard this sentiment: “No more pillage for any one, justice for all.” And that would have been the real solution...Such was not the case...In making inroads upon the National Assembly, each class, in accordance with your system, has endeavored to make the law an instrument of rapine. There have been demanded heavier imposts, gratuitous credit, the right to employment, the right to assistance, the guaranty of incomes and of minimum wages, gratuitous instruction, loans to industry, etc., etc.: in short, every one has endeavored to live and thrive at the expense of others.
BASTIAT, M. FREDERIC, Spoliation and the Law
But they discovered no constitutional way for protecting Individual Liberty against the possible tyranny of the Legislature. Men seemed to think, notwithstanding the experiences of the French Convent of 1793, that, as the Legislature represented the people, it would protect the Individual against oppression from any and every quarter. But this is found to be true only where the suffrage is limited to men of intelligence, character, and means, and eligiblity to a seat in the legislative body is conditioned upon the same qualities.
BURGESS, JOHN WILLIAM, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (1915)
Where universal suffrage is the source of legislative mandate the legislative majority is a far more consummate despot than any King or Prince has ever shown himself to be.
BURGESS, JOHN WILLIAM, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (1915)
Legislatures...were intended more as a check upon Government in behalf of Liberty than as an active part of Government. Only gradually did they become an equal participant in Government, and then the dominant factor. So gradually and imperceptibly did this come about that it has not been generally remarked that they themselves were becoming more and more affected by the exercise of governmental power, and less and less reliable as a defense of Liberty. Today every political scientist knows that the Legislature is a more formidable foe of Individual Liberty than the Executive.
BURGESS, JOHN WILLIAM, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (1915)
The bicameral Legislatures...were far less likely to encroach upon the sphere of Individual Liberty than a unicameral Legislature, with its more concentrated power and its more speedy action.
BURGESS, JOHN WILLIAM, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (1915)
[T]he legislative constitutencies are generally dominated by those who have the lesser stake in the welfare of the state, and who have manifested everywhere the disposition to make use of the Legislature for the curtailment of the Immunity of the Individual against governmental power, under the claim that such Immunity enables the intelligent and the capable to get the advantage in the acquisition of wealth over the ignorant and the incapable.
BURGESS, JOHN WILLIAM, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (1915)
[T]he unicameral system...whose members shall be chosen by an electorate in which all natural distinctions shall be ignored, in which the mere biped shall equal the sage...[s]uch a Legislature will surely be no defense for Individual Liberty against its own encroachments. Such a legislature will always seek to substitute its own unlimited rule for the constitutional system of limited Government and defined and guaranteed Civil Liberty.
BURGESS, JOHN WILLIAM, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (1915)
A Legislature consisting of small farmers elected by small farmers is the most favorable Legislature to the preservation of the freedom of the Individual in a certain sphere against Governmental power, whether exercised by an Execute or by itself, and history shows that even such a Legislature does not always do it. Just so soon, however, as society becomes divided into classes by the development of divergent economical interests, then the struggle begins for the capture of the powers of Government, to be exercised in the furtherance of the interests of a class. At first the more intelligent and capable generally win...but finally the less intelligent and capable, which are always in numerical majority, learn the lesson, and seize the Government and then through legislation reduce all Individual Immunity against governmental power to a minimum.
BURGESS, JOHN WILLIAM, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (1915)
[M]embers of the legislature...seem to be inoculated with the bacillus of irrepressible activity, the desire continually to be proposing new laws, new restrictions, new exactions.
EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter VI, Bill of Rights
The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands, for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.
LOCKE, JOHN, Two Treatises of Government, Book II, Chapter XI
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens?
MADISON, JAMES, The Federalist Papers, No. 10
[T]he propensity of all single and numerous assemblies [is] to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.
MADISON, JAMES, The Federalist Papers, No. 62
There are few historical errors more serious than the assumption that popular governments have always been legislating governments.
MAINE, SIR HENRY SUMNER, The Age of Progress
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
O’ROURKE, P.J., Parliament of Whores
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
Mass fabrication of laws ends by jeopardizing the other fundamental requisite of law—certainty.
SARTORI, GIOVANNI, Liberty and Law, 1976
No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
TWAIN, MARK, Attributed; also quoted by TUCKER, GIDEON J., Final Accounting in the Estate of A.B._, 1, Tucker (N.Y. Surr.) 247, 249 (1866)