LIBERTY, too, must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of restraint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely.
But it ought to be the constant aim of every wise public council to find out by cautious experiments, and rational, cool endeavours, with how little, not how much, of this restraint the community can subsist. For liberty is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be lessened.
For as the sabbath (though of Divine institution) was made for man, not man for the sabbath, government, which can claim no higher origin or authority, in its exercise at least, ought to conform to the exigencies of the time, and the temper and character of the people with whom it is concerned; and not always to attempt violently to bend the people to their theories of subjection.
Précis
English statesman Edmund Burke told the sheriffs of his constituency, Bristol, that liberty requires light and very careful regulation for it to survive. If the restrictions are too heavy or driven by some inflexible ideology unsuited to a specific people, they will strangle liberty and harm the nation. (48 / 60 words)