Joseph de Maistre on Legislators

“Why so many laws? Because there is no legislator. What have these so-called legislators done in six years? Nothing, for to destroy is not to make. It is hard to imagine the unbelievable spectacle of a nation giving itself three constitutions in five years. A real legislator does not fumble around; he says fiat and the machine goes.”

“I have spoken of one basic characteristics of true legislators. Another very remarkable feature, on which it would be easy to write a book, is that they are never what are called scholars: they do not write, they act on instinct and impulse more than on reasoning, and they have no other means of acting than a certain moral force that bends men's wills like grain before the wind.”