From Bristol and Burke:
"Edmund Burke -- politician, philosopher and polemicist -- was MP for Bristol for just six years: from 1774 to 1780.
During that time he visited his constituency infrequently, and, by the time he moved on to the pocket borough of Malton,
he had alienated the mercantile interest to a point where he had no hope of re-election.

"Perhaps this explains why Bristol has just one memorial to Burke, a statue in Colston Avenue erected in 1894.
But if Burke's connection to Bristol was fairly short-lived, it is one that will endure in the collective memory,
not least because of his Speech to the Electors of Bristol of 1774. On the day of his election,
Burke famously argued against the idea that an MP is just the delegate of his electorate:

"'Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests;
which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates;
but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes,
not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him,
he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.'

"The speech is cited in constitutional and political argument to this day.
That it was made in Bristol makes it part of the city's history and heritage.
Burke is by far the most distinguished political figure ever to have represented the city,
and he is certainly the one with the most enduring international reputation."