Doug Ford's shrinking of Toronto city council, mid-election

The difficult task is to promulgate only necessary laws, to remain forever faithful to this truly constitutional principle of society, to guard against the passion for ruling, the most fatal disease of modern governments.

Mirabeau the elder quoted in The Limits of State Action (1792)[1]

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[1] See Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, ed. and tr. J.W. Burrow (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993).  The above epigraph of the elder Mirabeau (1715-1789), here with my translation, appears at the beginning of Humboldt’s work, first published in Germany in 1792.