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… is from page 37 of the 1978 collection, edited by Eric Mack, of Auberon Herbert’s essays, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State [2]:
And yet the very words “general principles” cause a sort of horror to those who are engaged in politics.
Principles, by their very nature, counsel those who hold them to attend to the often-unseen, long-run consequences of their actions; politics, by its very nature, counsels those who practice it to attend only to the seen, short-run consequences of their actions.