Conscience vs Will of the People, (part 2)

When grandpa reentered the house he sat down in a chair across from and continued with these words;

"Boy, the first thing a person needs to do when speaking of a issue is to look at history. And on this issue we can start at the beginning of government as formed by our founding fathers. And when we do that in consideration of deciding the issue of whether or not a representative elected is to abide by the will of the people the answer is obvious.

In order to abide by the will of the people there must be constant and almost immediate communications between the people and their representatives in government. Now, with this in mind, we must admit that until communication can be established so as to permit this, a representative has to act upon his own conscience.

And anyone who has knowledge about communication would have to agree that communication with a representative and his constituents would be considered as impossible for the purpose of carrying out their will at the beginning. Back then newspapers and word of mouth were the primary means of communication. And the speed of the news reported of government was dependent upon the speed of a horse.

So, from this we can see from tradition that a representative was expected to vote in accordance to his conscience by his constituents. And the idea of a representative voting according to the will of the people is a foolish idea that reality cannot support regardless of how well it sounds in theory. There are other factors that need to be considered before that idea should even be considered feasible and this be but one."

With this said he asked; "keeping up with me so far?"

I only nodded while a million questions seem to race through my head. Grandpa had taught me to hold my questions until the end for the answer may be found before they were asked. Also, that by doing so we prevent ourselves from jumping to conclusions from the answers. So I listened as he continued.