What is a parliament?

In a speech to the electors of Bristol, on 3rd November 1774, the eloquent British statesman Edmund Burke defines what a parliament ought to be: “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 member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.”
Our politicians who froth at their mouth over democracy should better take note of above quotation from Edmund Burke on parliament.