laws and sausages

[James A. Landau <JJJRLandau@netscape.com>]

My daughter asked me the following.  Can anyone help?

    - James A. Landau

<q>
Jonathan and I were discussing the behind-the-scenes drama of our favorite TV comedy, and I said that I wasn't looking forward to next season because I knew too much about how the sausage got made.


Jonathan then promptly asked me what the sausage refers to, and when its origin is, having heard the phrase but never an explanation. I remembered the quote about laws and sausages, but not why they referred to sausages as the gross thing. I guessed that it came in the wake of "The Jungle", but it sounds earlier than that, and I found this citation:


Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made. Though similar remarks are often attributed to Bismarck, this is the earliest known quote regarding laws and sausages, and is attributed to John Godfrey Saxe in The Daily Cleveland Herald (29 March 1869)


Apparently the OED doesn't allow searching for idioms. Is this correct? Could the ADS list help?
</q>



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