Quotulatiousness

September 10, 2013

QotD: Law-making

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

One might have expected that whether they observed the implication of these domestic failures, or whether they contemplated in every newspaper the indications of a social life too vast, too varied, too involved to be even vaguely pictured in thought, men would have entered on the business of law-making with the greatest hesitation. yet in this more than anything else do they show a confident readiness. Nowhere is there so astounding a contrast between the difficulty of the task and the unpreparedness of those who undertake it. Unquestionably among monstrous beliefs one of the most monstrous is that while for a simple handicraft, such as shoe-making, a long apprenticeship is needful, the sole thing which needs no apprenticeship is making a nation’s laws.

Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 1884.

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