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Man Was Not Made for the Government Good government is not about enforcing uniform order, but about maximising liberty among a particular people.
1777
Music: Franz Joseph Haydn

© Jonathan Billinger, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0. Source

About this picture …

‘Freedom is a good to be improved, not an evil to be lessened.’ Ponies on common land below Hay Bluff and above Wenallt near Llanigon in Powys, central Wales.

Man Was Not Made for the Government
Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol, would have had little truck with European ‘harmonisation’. He argued that the job of any government is to judge sensitively, for a particular people, the smallest degree of restraint needed to keep their freedom fresh — in that country, and at that time — and then stop.

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)

Source

From ‘A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol’ by Edmund Burke MP (1729-1797).

Suggested Music

Symphony No. 104 D major (‘London’)

2: Andante

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Performed by the Orchestra of the 18th Century, conducted by Frans Brüggen.

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How To Use This Passage

You can use this passage to help improve your command of English.

IRead it aloud, twice or more. IISummarise it in one sentence of up to 30 words. IIISummarise it in one paragraph of 40-80 words. IVMake notes on the passage, and reconstruct the original from them later on. VJot down any unfamiliar words, and make your own sentences with them later. VIMake a note of any words that surprise or impress you, and ask yourself what meaning they add to the words you would have expected to see. VIITurn any old-fashioned English into modern English. VIIITurn prose into verse, and verse into prose. IXAsk yourself what the author is trying to get you to feel or think. XHow would an artist or a photographer capture the scene? XIHow would a movie director shoot it, or a composer write incidental music for it?

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