Alexander Fraser Tytler

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Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (October 15, 1747 - January 5, 1813) Scottish-born British lawyer and writer.

Tytler wrote an important treatise for the history of translation, the Essay on the Principles of Translation (London, 1790). Gan Kechao has argued (in a 1975 book) that Yan Fu's famous translator's dictim of fidelity, clarity and elegance came from Tytler.

Tytler said that translation should fully represent the 1) ideas and 2) style of the original and should 3) possess the ease of original composition.

Tytler is also known for the attributed quote:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.

This quote is often attributed to a book titled something like "The Fall of the Athenian Republic", but no such book is known to exist and the line the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits makes no sense in the context of Athens. Athens was a direct democracy, not a representative one; in Athens, voters voted on issues directly rather than voting for candidates. Thus there is strong suspicion the quote is an urban myth. The Bartleby quotation given below expresses similar sentiment in a wording more appropriate for his times. Tytler was a friend of Robert Burns, and prevailed upon him to remove lines from his poem Tam o' Shanter which were insulting to the legal and clerical professions.