The Good Constitution: Sir David Williams Lecture

" I knew Sir David Williams only in the last years of his life, and was much the richer in consequence. He illuminated every assembly; not only by his formidable intellectual gifts, but by his humour and his warmth. These lectures, begun in his lifetime, are now a memorial. I am honoured to be allowed a place within it.

What makes a good constitution? The question touches everyone who lives in society; we are all of us therefore – all of us save Pericles’ useless man, the idiotis - interested in finding it. In this lecture I will describe what I think is an important feature of the good constitution: its possession of two political moralities, which I will call the morality of law and the morality of government..."