Anglicans from the United Kingdom

5385 quotes found

"So very little is known of Emily Brontë that every little detail awakens an interest. Her extreme reserve seemed impenetrable, yet she was intensely lovable; she invited confidence in her moral power. Few people have the gift of looking and smiling as she could look and smile. One of her rare expressive looks was something to remember through life, there was such a depth of soul and feeling, and yet a shyness of revealing herself—a strength of self-containment seen in no other. She was in the strictest sense a law unto herself, and a heroine in keeping to her law. She and gentle Anne were to be seen twined together as united statues of power and humility. They were to be seen with their arms lacing each other in their younger days whenever their occupations permitted their Union. On the top of a moor or in a deep glen Emily was a child in spirit for glee and enjoyment; or when thrown entirely on her own resources to do a kindness, she could be vivacious in conversation and enjoy giving pleasure. A spell of mischief also lurked in her on occasions when out on the moors. She enjoyed leading Charlotte where she would not dare to go of her own free-will. Charlotte had a mortal dread of unknown animals, and it was Emily's pleasure to lead her into close vicinity, and then to tell her of how and of what she had done, laughing at her horror with great amusement. If Emily wanted a book she might have left in the sitting-room she would dart in again without looking at any one, especially if any guest were present. Among the curates, Mr. Weightman was her only exception for any conventional courtesy. The ability with which she took up music was amazing; the style, the touch, and the expression was that of a professor absorbed heart and soul in his theme. The two dogs, Keeper and Flossy, were always in quiet waiting by the side of Emily and Anne during their breakfast of Scotch oatmeal and milk, and always had a share handed down to them at the close of the meal. Poor old Keeper, Emily's faithful friend and worshipper, seemed to understand her like a human being. One evening, when the four friends were sitting closely round the fire in the sitting-room, Keeper forced himself in between Charlotte and Emily and mounted himself on Emily's lap; finding the space too limited for his comfort he pressed himself forward on to the guest's knees, making himself quite comfortable. Emily's heart was won by the unresisting endurance of the visitor, little guessing that she herself, being in close contact, was the inspiring cause of submission to Keeper's preference. Sometimes Emily would delight in showing off Keeper—make him frantic in action, and roar with the voice of a lion. It was a terrifying exhibition within the walls of an ordinary sitting-room. Keeper was a solemn mourner at Emily's funeral and never recovered his cheerfulness."

- Emily Brontë

0 likesPoets from EnglandNovelists from EnglandRomantic poetsAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from England
"[T]he intelligent reader of Wuthering Heights cannot fail to recognize that what he is reading is a tragedy simply because it is the work of a writer whose genius is essentially tragic. Those who believe that Heathcliff was called into existence by the accident that his creator had witnessed the agonies of a violent weakling in love and in disgrace might believe that Shakespeare wrote King Lear because he had witnessed the bad effects of parental indulgence, and that Æschylus wrote the Eumenides because he had witnessed the uncomfortable results of matricide. The book is what it is because the author was what she was; this is the main and central fact to be remembered. Circumstances have modified the details; they have not implanted the conception. If there were any need for explanation there would be no room for apology. As it is, the few faults of design or execution leap to sight at a first glance, and vanish in the final effect and unimpaired impression of the whole; while those who object to the violent illegalities of conduct with regard to real or personal property on which the progress of the story does undeniably depend—‘a senseless piece of glaring folly,’ it was once called by some critic learned in the law—might as well complain, in Carlylesque phrase, that the manners are quite other than Belgravian."

- Emily Brontë

0 likesPoets from EnglandNovelists from EnglandRomantic poetsAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from England
"For Wordsworth, as for Burke, local attachment is "the tap-root of the tree of Patriotism". That was particularly true of the part of England from which Wordsworth himself came—the dales of Cumberland and Westmorland, with their tiny scattered communities of "statesmen" as they were called, small independent owner-farmers, soon, alas, to be driven out of existence as such by the increasing prosperity of the country. "Neither high-born nobleman, knight, nor esquire, was here; but many of these humble sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land, which they walked over and tilled, had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of their name and blood." This is the environment out of which Wordsworth's political theory springs; and along with local patriotism it taught him the meaning of tradition in a nation's life. He draws his conclusions in phrases that wonderfully, and surely not accidentally, echo Burke. "There is a spiritual community binding together the living and the dead, the good, the brave, and the wise, of all ages." To Wordsworth, as to Burke, tradition is essential to a nation. How well he knew "the solemn fraternity which a great Nation composes—gathered together, in a stormy season, under the shade of ancestral feeling". He cries, as the shadow of Napoleon looms over his mind, "Perdition to the Tyrant who would wantonly cut off an independent nation from its inheritance in past ages"."

- William Wordsworth

0 likesPoets from EnglandRomantic poetsPoets laureateMysticsAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"A certain clumsiness always remains; but in his earlier period he had the power of arresting simple thought with the magic of poetical inspiration. The great stimulus came from the French revolution. The sympathy which he felt with the supposed restoration of an idyllic order disappeared when it took the form of social disintegration. The growth of pauperism and the factory system, and the decay of old simple society, intensified the impression; and some of his noblest poems are devoted to celebrating the virtues which he took to be endangered. Wordsworth's love of ‘nature’ is partly an expression of the same feeling. He loved the mountains because they were the barriers which protected the peasant. He loved them also because they echoed his own most characteristic moods. His ‘mystical’ or pantheistic view of nature meant the delight of the lonely musings when he had to ‘grasp a tree’ to convince himself of the reality of the world. The love of nature was therefore the other side of his ‘egotism.’ He hated the scientific view which substituted mere matter of fact for emotional stimulus. The truth and power of his sentiment make this the most original and most purely poetical element in his writings. He could as little rival Coleridge and Shelley in soaring above the commonplace world as Byron or Burns in uttering the passions. But in his own domain, the expression of the deep and solemn emotions of a quiet recluse among simple people and impressive scenery, he is equally unsurpassable."

- William Wordsworth

0 likesPoets from EnglandRomantic poetsPoets laureateMysticsAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"[I]n Northanger Abbey Jane Austen develops...her version of the revolutionary character, the man or woman who by acting on a system of selfishness, threatens friends of more orthodox principles; and ultimately, through cold-blooded cynicism in relation to the key social institution of marriage, threatens human happiness at a very fundamental level. Isabella Thorpe, Lady Susan, Mary Crawford, all like Isabella pursue the modern creed of self, and as such are Jane Austen's reinterpretation of a standard figure of the period, the desirable, amoral woman whose activities threaten manners and morals. … That Jane Austen is perfectly clear what she is doing can be demonstrated by identifying the same cluster of themes and characters in Sense and Sensibility. Inheriting a set of conservative dogmas, and some impossibly theatrical characters—notably the revolutionary villain—already in her first two full-length novels she produces a more natural equivalent, on a scale appropriate to comedy. Her villains are not only better art than her rivals'; they are also better propaganda. … Her selfish characters are consistently smaller and meaner than their orthodox opponents, the heroines; they are restricted within the bounds of their own being, and their hearts and minds are impoverished. Jane Austen's achievement, the feat of the subtlest technician among the English novelists, is to rethink the material of the conservative novel in terms that are at once naturalistic and intellectually consistent."

- Jane Austen

0 likesJane AustenNovelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandWomen born before the 19th century
"I have discovered that our great favourite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman; that mamma knew all her family very intimately; and that she herself is an old maid (I beg her pardon – I mean a young lady) with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers; and a friend of mine, who visits her now, says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of “single blessedness” that ever existed, and that, till ‘Pride and Prejudice’ showed what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; she is still a poker – but a poker of whom every one is afraid. It must be confessed that this silent observation from such an observer is rather formidable. Most writers are good-humoured chatterers – neither very wise nor very witty: – but nine times out of ten (at least in the few that I have known) unaffected and pleasant, and quite removing by their conversation any awe that may have been excited by their works. But a wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk, is terrific indeed!"

- Jane Austen

0 likesJane AustenNovelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandWomen born before the 19th century
"I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt. [...] This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane's article. [...] It is breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see further than you do. Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi. The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety. The character in That Hideous Strength whom the Professor never mentions is Miss Hardcastle, the chief of the secret police. She is the common factor in all revolutions; and, as she says, you won’t get anyone to do her job well unless they get some kick out of it."

- C. S. Lewis

0 likesChristian apologistsTheologians from Northern IrelandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from BelfastUniversity of Oxford faculty
"“Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not by tribal taboos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to civilization.”“She——” began Weston."I’m sorry,” interrupted Ransom, “but I’ve forgotten who She is.”“Life, of course,” snapped Weston. “She has ruthlessly broken down all obstacles and liquidated all failures and to-day in her highest form—civilized man—and in me as his representative, she presses forward to that interplanetary leap which will, perhaps, place her for ever beyond the reach of death.”“He says,” resumed Ransom, “that these animals learned to do many difficult things, except those who could not; and those ones died and the other animals did not pity them. And he says the best animal now is the kind of man who makes the big huts and carries the heavy weights and does all the other things I told you about; and he is one of these and he says that if the others all knew what he was doing they would be pleased. He says that if he could kill you all and bring our people to live in Malacandra, then they might be able to go on living here after something had gone wrong with our world. And then if something went wrong with Malacandra they might go and kill all the hnau in another world. And then another—and so they would never die out.”“It is in her right,” said Weston, “the right, or, if you will, the might of Life herself, that I am prepared without flinching to plant the flag of man on the soil of Malacandra: to march on, step by step, superseding, where necessary, the lower forms of life that we find, claiming planet after planet, system after system, till our posterity—whatever strange form and yet unguessed mentality they have assumed—dwell in the universe wherever the universe is habitable.”“I may fall,” said Weston. “But while I live I will not, with such a key in my hand, consent to close the gates of the future on my race. What lies in that future, beyond our present ken, passes imagination to conceive: it is enough for me that there is a Beyond.”"

- C. S. Lewis

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"And now, by a transition which he did not notice, it seemed that what had begun as speech was turned into sight, or into something that can be remembered only as if it were seeing. He thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity — only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern thereby disposed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated. He could see also (but the word "seeing" is now plainly inadequate) wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells — people, institutions, climates of opinion, civilizations, arts, sciences and the like — ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were the things of some different kind. At first he could not say what. But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities. If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it. Some of the thinner more delicate cords were the beings that we call short lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things we think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars. Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours form beyond our spectrum were the lines of personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some of them were universal truths or universal qualities. It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which lived and died in the clashing of their streams: But afterwards, when he came back to earth, he wondered. And by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole figure of these enamored and inter-inanimate circlings was suddenly revealed as the mere superficies of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped further and further behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of sky, and all simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into its own stillness. He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of stripping off encumbrances and awaking from a trance, and coming to himself. With a gesture of relaxation he looked about him..."

- C. S. Lewis

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"Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it's ill talking of such questions." "Because they are too terrible, Sir?" "No. Because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into Eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see — small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope — something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn't is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic's vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom."

- C. S. Lewis

0 likesChristian apologistsTheologians from Northern IrelandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from BelfastUniversity of Oxford faculty
"When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as “the journey homeward to habitual self.” You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: “Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last."

- C. S. Lewis

0 likesChristian apologistsTheologians from Northern IrelandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from BelfastUniversity of Oxford faculty
"Petitionary prayer is, nonetheless, both allowed and commanded to us: “Give us our daily bread.” And no doubt it raises a theoretical problem. Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will. “God,” said Pascal, “instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God's mind—that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures."

- C. S. Lewis

0 likesChristian apologistsTheologians from Northern IrelandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from BelfastUniversity of Oxford faculty
"Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate. It would be even worse to think of those who get what they pray for as a sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that. And I dare not leave out the hard saying which I once heard from an experienced Christian: “I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.” Does God then forsake just those who serve Him best? Well, He who served Him best of all said, near His tortured death, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” When God becomes man, that Man, of all others, is least comforted by God, at His greatest need. There is a mystery here which, even if I had the power, I might not have the courage to explore. Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle."

- C. S. Lewis

0 likesChristian apologistsTheologians from Northern IrelandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from BelfastUniversity of Oxford faculty
"The sheer weight of numbers of the human population, our habitations, our machinery and our ruthless exploitation of the living and organic resources of the earth; together these are changing our whole environment. This is what we call progress and much of this development is naturally to the direct and welcome benefit of mankind. However, we cannot at the same time ignore the awkward consequences and the most direct and menacing, but not the only consequence of this change, is pollution... Pollution is a direct outcome of man's ruthless exploitation of the earth's resources. Experience shows that the growth of successful organic populations is eventually balanced by the destruction of its own habitat. The vast man-made deserts show that the human population started this process long ago. There are two important differences today. In the first place the process has gone from a walking pace to a breakneck gallop. Secondly we know exactly what is happening. If not exactly in all cases, we know enough to appreciate what is happening and the need to take care... Pollution is no longer a matter of local incidents, today it has the whole biosphere in its grip. The processes which devastated the Welsh valleys a hundred years ago are now at work, over, on and under the earth and the oceans. Even if we bury all this waste underground there still remains the risk that toxic materials through chemical reactions will be washed out and into underground water courses. If ever there was an area of research more closely related to human welfare it is the problem of the safe disposal of waste and effluents... The fact is that we have got to make a choice between human prosperity on the one hand and the total well-being of the planet Earth on the other. Even then it is hardly a choice because if we only look for human prosperity we shall certainly destroy by pollution the earth and the human population which has existed on it for millions of years... If the world pollution situation is not critical at the moment it is as certain as anything can be that the situation will become increasingly intolerable within a very short time. The situation can be controlled and even reversed but it demands co-operation on a scale and intensity beyond anything achieved so far...I realise that there are any number of vital causes to be fought for, I sympathise with people who work up a passionate concern about the all too many examples of inhumanity, injustice, and unfairness, but behind all this hangs a really deadly cloud. Still largely unnoticed and unrecognised, the process of destroying our natural environment is gathering speed and momentum. If we fail to cope with this challenge, all the other problems will pale into insignificance."

- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

0 likesRoyaltyEnvironmentalists from EnglandPeople from GreeceAnglicans from the United KingdomHouse of Windsor
"A new criterion has been added, the conservation of the environment so that in the long run life, including human life, can continue. This new consideration must be taken into account at all levels and in all departments of government and in the boardrooms of every industrial enterprise. It is no longer sufficient simply to quantify the elements of existence as in old-fashioned material economics; conservation means taking notice of the quality of existence as well... The problem is of course to give some value to that quality and perhaps the only way to do this is to try and work out the cost in terms of loss of amenities, loss of holiday and recreation facilities, loss of property values, loss of contact with nature, loss of health standards and loss of food resources, if proper conservation methods are not used. Looked at in that light it may well turn out that money spent on proper pollution control, urban and rural planning and the control of exploitation of wild stocks of plants or animals on land and in the sea, is the less expensive alternative in the long run... The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth."

- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

0 likesRoyaltyEnvironmentalists from EnglandPeople from GreeceAnglicans from the United KingdomHouse of Windsor
"As long ago as 1798, Malthus explained what happens when the factors limiting the increase in any population are removed. One of the factors noticed by Darwin was that all species are capable of producing vastly greater populations than can be sustained by existing resources; populations did not increase at the rate at which they are capable was the basis for his theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. The relevance to natural selection of this capacity for overproduction is that as each individual is slightly different to all the others it is probable that under natural conditions those individuals which happen to be best adapted to the prevailing circumstances have a better chance of survival. Well, so what? Well, take a look at the figures for the human population of this world. One hundred fifty years ago it stood at about 1,000 million or in common parlance today, 1 billion. It then took about a 100 years to double to 2 billion. It took 30 years to add the third billion and 15 years to reach today's total of 4.4 billion. With a present world average rate of growth of 1.8%, the total population by the year 2000 will have increased to an estimated 6 billion and in that and in subsequent years 100 million people will be added to the world population each year. In fact it could be as much as 16 billion by 2045. As a consequence the demand on resources of land alone will mean a third less farm land available and the destruction of half of the present area of productive tropical forest. Bearing in mind the constant reduction of non-renewable resources, there is a strong possibility of growing scarcity and reduction of standards. More people consume more resources. It is as simple as that; and transferring resources and standards from the richer to the poorer countries can only have a marginal effect in the face of this massive increase in the world population. The object of the WWF is to "conserve" the system as a whole; not to prevent the killing of individual animals. Those who are concerned about their conservation of nature accept that all species are prey to some other species. They accept that most species produce a surplus that is capable of being culled without in any way threatening the survival of the species as a whole."

- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

0 likesRoyaltyEnvironmentalists from EnglandPeople from GreeceAnglicans from the United KingdomHouse of Windsor
"The great difficulty about "life" is that we humans are part of it, and it is therefore almost impossible to study objectively.... It therefore tends to be anthropocentric and gives scant attention to the welfare of all the other life-forms which share this planet with us. ...When the Bible says that man shall have "dominion" over God's creation, the choice is between understanding dominion as in "having power over", or dominion as "having responsibility for". Once you have interfered with the balance of nature it becomes necessary to maintain the balance by artificial means. This means that some animals have to be killed in the interest of maintaining the health and viability of the species as a whole as well as the benefit of other more vulnerable species. Unfortunately there are many people who object to that sort of thing. Ecology is not concerned with the fate of individual animals. It accepts the concept of the exploitation of surplus natural resources because that is in the way the natural system works, but it must always be done on the principle of maintaining a sustainable yield. ...The inexorable rule of nature is that if you mess up your environment you will have to pay a heavy price sooner or later.... Just look around the globe today and you cannot fail to notice areas which at one time supported highly successful and civilized populations are either deserts or they have reverted to jungle. The reason is quite simple: they over-exploited their natural resources and they paid the price. It is naive to think that we can escape the same fate for very much longer. We are only managing to put off the evil hour by frantically digging up and using mineral resources that can never be renewed. As if that were not enough, we are polluting the atmosphere, the land and the waters with every kind of noxious substance. The "greenhouse effect" alone could well have devastating consequences for all life on earth. This is a reflection of the duality of man's brain. The left brain produces the reasonable answers after objective scientific research, while the right brain prefers the acceptable and the emotionally satisfactory answers. How often do people say, "That may be so, but I prefer to 'believe' or I like to believe ... this, that or the other?" The duality of the brain has created great problems for modern man.... It is ... significant that successful engineering makes money. This is in stark contrast to the supernatural, whether it is religious or mythological. In the latter cases the truth may be equally certain, but it is not verifiable, and the outcome of following rules is seldom predictable. It is, of course, possible to exploit magic and mythology commercially, but it could hardly be described as a manufacturing industry... There is an understandable public pressure for schools and colleges to concentrate on utilitarian subjects to the exclusion of cultural and aesthetic development. In other words, the development of the left brain is given a great deal more attention than that of the right brain.... The trouble is that neglect of the development of the right brain leaves it in a state of vacuum.... This means that the right brain is ready to absorb the first plausible ideas it happens across. The occult, obscure religious rites, parapsychology, astrology and similar attractive but irrational notions are sucked into the vacant space without any discrimination or critical faculty.... I also suspect that the use of drugs might be seen as a substitute, or short cut, to filling the vacuum of the right brain. ... I mention all this because man's attitude to nature is partly a function of the left brain and partly a function of the right brain. It is easy enough to encourage an emotional concern for nature and the living world.... Everyone can comprehend the idea of cruelty, very few can comprehend the extinction of a species."

- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

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"I don't claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the "cull" to the size of the surplus population. It took about three and a half billion years for life on earth to reach the state of complexity and diversity that our ancestors knew as recently as 200 years ago. It has only taken industrial and scientific man those 200 years to put at risk the whole of the world's natural system. It has been estimated that by the year 2000, some 300,000 species of plants and animals will have become extinct, and that the natural economy, upon which all life depends, will have been seriously disrupted. The paradox is that this will have been achieved with the best possible intentions. The human population must be properly fed, human life must be preserved and human existence must be made safer and more comfortable. All these things are obviously highly desirable, but if their achievement means putting the survival of future generations at risk, then there is a pressing obligation on present generations to apply some measure of self-restraint. What has been described as the «balance of nature» is simply nature's system of self-limitation. Fertility and breeding success create the surpluses after allowing for the replacement of the losses. Predation, climatic variation, disease, starvation--and in the case of the inappropriately named Homo sapiens, wars and terrorism--are the principal means by which population numbers are kept under some sort of control. Viewed dispassionately, it must be obvious that the world's human population has grown to such a size that it is threatening its own habitat; and it has already succeeded in causing the extinction of large numbers of wild plant and animal species. Some have simply been killed off. Others have quietly disappeared, as their habitats have been taken over or disturbed by human activities."

- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

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"Here is the hatchet of war, of enmity, of bad feeling, which I now bury in Arrowe," said the Chief, at the same time plunging a hatchet in the midst of a barrel of golden arrows." "From all corners of the earth," said the Chief as soon as the cheering had subsided "you have journeyed to this great gathering of World Fellowship and Brotherhood. Today I send you out from Arrowe to all the World, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship, each one of you my ambassador bearing my message of Love and Fellowship on the wings of Sacrifice and Service, to the end of the Earth. From now on the Scout symbol of Peace is the Golden Arrow. Carry it fast and far so that all men may know the Brotherhood of Man." "To THE NORTH—From the Northlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homelands across the great North Seas as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World." "I bid you farewell." "TO THE SOUTH—From the Southland you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homes under the Southern Cross as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World." "I bid you farewell." "TO THE WEST—From the Westlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homes in the Great Westlands to the Pacific and beyond as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World." "I bid you farewell." "TO THE EAST—From the Eastlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homes under the Starry Skies and Burning Suns to your people of the thousand years, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship to the Nations of the Earth, pledging you to keep my trust." "I bid you farewell."

- Robert Baden-Powell

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"If we are frank with ourselves, we shall admit that we are engaged on a deliberate and sustained and concentrated effort to impose limitations upon the sovereignty and independence of the fifty or sixty local sovereign independent States which at present partition the habitable surface of the earth and divide the political allegiance of mankind.It is just because we are really attacking the principle of local sovereignty that we keep on protesting our loyalty to it so loudly. The harder we press our attack upon the idol, the more pains we take to keep its priests and devotees in a fool’s paradise—lapped in a false sense of security which will inhibit them from taking up arms in their idol’s defense. The local national state, invested with the attributes of sovereignty — is an abomination of desolation standing in the place where it ought not. It has stood in that place now — demanding and receiving human sacrifices from its poor deluded votaries — for four or five centuries. Our political task in our generation is to cast the abomination out, to cleanse the temple and to restore the worship of the divinity to whom the temple rightfully belongs. In plain terms, we have to re-transfer the prestige and the prerogatives of sovereignty from the fifty or sixty fragments of contemporary society to the whole of contemporary society — from the local national states by which sovereignty has been usurped, with disastrous consequences, for half a millennium, to some institution embodying our society as a whole.In the world as it is today, this institution can hardly be a universal Church. It is more likely to be something like a League of Nations. I will not prophesy. I will merely repeat that we are at present working, discreetly but with all our might, to wrest this mysterious political force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local national states of our world. And all the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands..."

- Arnold J. Toynbee

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"Over the years, historians have tried to discern grand patterns, perhaps one grand pattern, that explain everything. For some religions, history provides evidence of the working out of a divine purpose. For the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, it demonstrated the manifestation of the infinite spirit (Geist) on earth. Karl Marx built on Hegel to produce his “scientific” history, which purported to show that history was moving inexorably toward its destined end of full Communism. Johann Gottfried von Herder, the influential German thinker of the late eighteenth century, history showed that an organic German nation had existed for centuries, although in political terms it had not yet reached its full potential. For imperialists like Sir Charles Dilke, the study of the past confirmed the superiority of the British race. Arnold Toynbee, whose work is largely neglected now, saw a pattern of challenge and response as civilizations grew great in overcoming obstacles and then failed as they turned soft and lazy. The Chinese, unlike most Western thinkers, did not see history as a linear process at all. Their scholars talked in terms of a dynastic cycle where dynasties came and went in an unending repetition, following the unchanging pattern of birth, maturity, and death, all under the aegis of heaven."

- Arnold J. Toynbee

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"Look round at the marriages which you know. The true marriage — that noble union, by which a man and woman become together the one perfect being — probably does not exist at present upon earth. It is not surprising that husbands and wives seem so little part of one another. It is surprising that there is so much love as there is. For there is no food for it. What does it live upon — what nourishes it? Husbands and wives never seem to have anything to say to one another. What do they talk about? Not about any great religious, social, political questions or feelings. They talk about who shall come to dinner, who is to live in this lodge and who in that, about the improvement of the place, or when they shall go to London. If there are children, they form a common subject of some nourishment. But, even then, the case is oftenest thus, — the husband is to think of how they are to get on in life; the wife of bringing them up at home. But any real communion between husband and wife — any descending into the depths of their being, and drawing out thence what they find and comparing it — do we ever dream of such a thing? Yes, we may dream of it during the season of "passion," but we shall not find it afterwards. We even expect it to go off, and lay our account that it will. If the husband has, by chance, gone into the depths of his being, and found there anything unorthodox, he, oftenest, conceals it carefully from his wife, — he is afraid of "unsettling her opinions.""

- Florence Nightingale

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"These old Mystics whom we call superstitious were far before us in their ideas of God and of prayer (that is of our communion with God). "Prayer," says a mystic of the 16th century, "is to ask not what we wish of God, but what God wishes of us." "Master who hast made and formed the vessel of the body of Thy creature, and hast put within so great a treasure, the Soul, which bears the image of Thee": so begins a dying prayer of the 14th century. In it and in the other prayers of the Mystics there is scarcely a petition. There is never a word of the theory that God's dealings with us are to show His "power"; still less of the theory that "of His own good pleasure" He has " predestined" any souls to eternal damnation. There is little mention of heaven for self; of desire of happiness for self, none. It is singular how little mention there is either of "intercession " or of " Atonement by Another's merits." True it is that we can only create a heaven for ourselves and others "by the merits of Another," since it is only by working in accordance with God's Laws that we can do anything. But there is nothing at all in these prayers as if God's anger had to be bought off, as if He had to be bribed into giving us heaven by sufferings merely "to satisfy God's justice." In the dying prayers, there is nothing of the "egotism of death." It is the reformation of God's church — that is, God's children, for whom the self would give itself, that occupies the dying thoughts. There is not often a desire to be released from trouble and suffering. On the contrary, there is often a desire to suffer the greatest suffering, and to offer the greatest offering, with even greater pain, if so any work can be done. And still, this, and all, is ascribed to God's goodness. The offering is not to buy anything by suffering, but — If only the suppliant can do anything for God's children! These suppliants did not live to see the " reformation" of God's children. No more will any who now offer these prayers. But at least we can all work towards such practical " reformation." The way to live with God is to live with Ideals — not merely to think about ideals, but to do and suffer for them. Those who have to work on men and women must above all things have their Spiritual Ideal, their purpose, ever present. The "mystical " state is the essence of common sense."

- Florence Nightingale

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"They had in Miss Nightingale a woman of genius, who had made her subject her particular study... Moreover, he had no hesitation in saying that Miss Nightingale in her present position had exhibited greater power of organisation, a greater familiarity with details, while at the same time she took a comprehensive view of the general bearing of the subject, than had marked the conduct of any one connected with the hospitals during the present war. (Cheers.) An anecdote which had lately been sent to him by a correspondent, showed her great power over all with whom she came into contact. Here was the passage:—"I have just heard such a pretty account from a soldier describing the comfort it was to see even Florence pass—‘She would speak to one and another, and nod and smile to a many more; but she couldn't do it to all, you know, for we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again content.’" And his correspondent then very justly remarked,—"What poetry there is in these men!" And again:—"I think I told you of another, who said, ‘Before she came there was such cussin and swearin, but after that it was as holy as a church.’" He had been told, too, by eye-witnesses that it was most singular to remark how, when men, frenzied, perhaps, by their wounds and disease, had worked themselves into a passionate refusal to submit to necessary operations, a few calm sentences of hers seemed at once to allay the storm, and the men would submit willingly to the painful ordeal they had to undergo. They could not pretend to offer to such a woman any recompense for her services without lowering their high standard. The only suitable mark of gratitude which could be shown her would be one which would testify the confidence of the English people in her energy, ability, and zeal."

- Florence Nightingale

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"Miss Nightingale in appearance, is just what you would expect in any other well-bred woman, who may have seen perhaps rather more than thirty years of life; her manner and countenance are prepossessing, and this without the possession of positive beauty; it is a face not easily forgotten, pleasing in its smile, with an eye betokening great self possession, and giving when she wishes, a quiet look of firm determination to every feature. Her general demeanour is quiet and rather reserved; still I am much mistaken if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the ridiculous. In conversation, she speaks on matters of business with a grave earnestness, one would not expect from her appearance. She has evidently a mind disciplined to restrain under the principles of the action of the moment, every feeling which would interfere with it. She has trained herself to command, and learned the value of conciliation towards others, and constraint over herself. I can conceive her to be a strict disciplinarian; she throws herself into a work—as it's Head—as such she knows well how much success must depend upon literal obedience to her every order. She seems to understand business thoroughly, though to me she had the failure common to many "Heads," a too great love of management in the small details which had better perhaps have been left to others. Her nerve is wonderful; I have been with her at very severe operations; she was more than equal to the trial. She has an utter disregard of contagion; I have known her spend hours over men dying of cholera or fever. The more awful to every sense any particular case, especially if it was that of a dying man, her slight form would be seen bending over him, administering to his ease in every way in her power, and seldom quitting his side till death released him."

- Florence Nightingale

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"The noble Earl had alluded to the propriety of effecting Parliamentary Reform. The noble Earl had, however, been candid enough to acknowledge that he was not prepared with any measure of reform, and he could have no scruple in saying that his Majesty's Government was as totally unprepared with any plan as the noble Lord. Nay, he, on his own part, would go further, and say, that he had never read or heard of any measure up to the present moment which could in any degree satisfy his mind that the state of the representation could be improved, or be rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at the present moment... He was fully convinced that the country possessed at the present moment a Legislature which answered all the good purposes of legislation, and this to a greater degree than any Legislature ever had answered in any country whatever. He would go further and say, that the Legislature and the system of representation possessed the full and entire confidence of the country—deservedly possessed that confidence—and the discussions in the Legislature had a very great influence over the opinions of the country. He would go still further and say, that if at the present moment he had imposed upon him the duty of forming a Legislature for any country, and particularly for a country like this, in possession of great property of various descriptions, he did not mean to assert that he could form such a Legislature as they possessed now, for the nature of man was incapable of reaching such excellence at once; but his great endeavour would be, to form some description of legislature which would produce the same results. The representation of the people at present contained a large body of the property of the country, and in which the landed interests had a preponderating influence. Under these circumstances, he was not prepared to bring forward any measure of the description alluded to by the noble Lord. He was not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of this nature, but he would at once declare that as far as he was concerned, as long as he held any station in the government of the country, he should always feel it his duty to resist such measures when proposed by others."

- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

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"This was the death-year of the Great Duke—the "Iron Duke," as we so often called him. Living in Knightsbridge, about a quarter of a mile beyond Apsley House, I had to pass by his dwelling every time that I went into the heart of London; and saw him, sometimes, every day for weeks together. What a fascination, what an irresistible attraction there was about that grand old man! How all the memorable doings of our century seemed to gather around him, as you looked at his rigid, stern figure! I often walked close by his horse, for half a mile out of my way, marking his bearing, and noting the uniform "military tip," of his forefinger towards his forehead, that he gave to all those, great or little, who took off their hats to him; and there were usually scores who did this... I remembered his opposition to Reform... But all this had passed away; and Wellington had become not only the great pillar of State and most valued counsellor of his Queen; but, next to her, the most deeply respected and most heartily honoured person in the realm. Everybody liked to see "the Duke"; and no one would hear a word against him. Soldiers—old soldiers—they idolized him. They regarded him as the very personification of English valour and English sagacity. Politicians—they all had a glance towards him when they contemplated new measures. He was an institution in himself. We all felt as if we lived, now he was dead, in a different England."

- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

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"In spite of some foibles and faults, he was, beyond all doubt, a very great man—the only great man of the present time—and comparable, in point of greatness, to the most eminent of those who have lived before him. His greatness was the result of a few striking qualities—a perfect simplicity of character without a particle of vanity or conceit, but with a thorough and strenuous self-reliance, a severe truthfulness, never misled by fancy or exaggeration, and an ever-abiding sense of duty and obligation which made him the humblest of citizens and most obedient of subjects. The Crown never possessed a more faithful, devoted, and disinterested subject. Without personal attachment to any of the monarchs whom he served, and fully understanding and appreciating their individual merits and demerits, he alike reverenced their great office in the persons of each of them, and would at any time have sacrificed his ease, his fortune, or his life, to serve the Sovereign and the State. Passing almost his whole life in command and authority, and regarded with universal deference and submission, his head was never turned by the exalted position he occupied, and there was no duty, however humble, he would not have been ready to undertake at the bidding of his lawful superiors, whose behests he would never have hesitated to obey. Notwithstanding his age and his diminished strength, he would most assuredly have gone anywhere and have accepted any post in which his personal assistance might have been essential to the safety or advantage of the realm. He had more pride in obeying than in commanding, and he never for a moment considered that his great position and elevation above all other subjects released him from the same obligation which the humblest of them acknowledged. He was utterly devoid of personal and selfish ambition, and there never was a man whose greatness was so thrust upon him. It was in this dispassionate unselfishness, and sense of duty and moral obligation, that he was so superior to Napoleon Bonaparte."

- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

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"Our own Wellington was a far greater man. Not less resolute, firm, and persistent, but much more self-denying, conscientious, and truly patriotic. Napoleon's aim was "Glory;" Wellington's watchword, like Nelson's, was "Duty." The former word, it is said, does not once occur in his despatches; the latter often, but never accompanied by any high-sounding professions. The greatest difficulties could neither embarrass nor intimidate Wellington; his energy invariably rising in proportion to the obstacles to be surmounted. The patience, the firmness, the resolution, with which he bore through the maddening vexations and gigantic difficulties of the Peninsular campaigns, is, perhaps, one of the sublimest things to be found in history. In Spain, Wellington not only exhibited the genius of the general, but the comprehensive wisdom of the statesman. Though his natural temper was irritable in the extreme, his high sense of duty enabled him to restrain it, and to those about him his patience seemed absolutely inexhaustible. His great character stands untarnished by ambition, by avarice, or any low passion. Though a man of powerful individuality, he yet displayed a great variety of endowment. The equal of Napoleon in generalship, he was as prompt, vigorous, and daring as Clive; as wise a statesman as Cromwell; and as pure and high-minded as Washington. The great Wellington left behind him an enduring reputation, founded on toilsome campaigns won by skilful combination, by fortitude which nothing could exhaust, by sublime daring, and perhaps still sublimer patience."

- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

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"We can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory;—TAXES upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot—taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste—taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion—taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth—on every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home—taxes on the raw material—taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man—taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health—on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal—on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice—on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride—at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay:—The schoolboy whips his taxed top—the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle on a taxed road:—and the dying Englishman pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent.—flings himself back upon his chintz-bed which has paid 22 per cent.—makes his will on an eight pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of an hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10 per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers,—to be taxed no more."

- Sydney Smith

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"It is a very wise rule in the conduct of the understanding, to acquire early a correct notion of your own peculiar constitution of mind, and to become well acquainted, as a physician would say, with your idiosyncrasy. Are you an acute man, and see sharply for small distances? or are you a comprehensive man, and able to take in, wide and extensive views into your mind? Does your mind turn its ideas into wit? or are you apt to take a common-sense view of the objects presented to you? Have you an exuberant imagination, or a correct judgment? Are you quick, or slow? accurate, or hasty? a great reader, or a great thinker? It is a prodigious point gained if any man can find out where his powers lie, and what are his deficiencies, — if he can contrive to ascertain what Nature intended him for: and such are the changes and chances of the world, and so difficult is it to ascertain our own understandings, or those of others, that most things are done by persons who could have done something else better. If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes, — some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong, — and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly, that we can say they were almost made for each other."

- Sydney Smith

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"The history of the world shows us that men are not to be counted by their numbers, but by the fire and vigour of their passions; by their deep sense of injury; by their memory of past glory; by their eagerness for fresh fame; by their clear and steady resolution of ceasing to live, or of achieving a particular object, which, when it is once formed, strikes off a load of manacles and chains, and gives free space to all heavenly and heroic feelings. All great and extraordinary actions come from the heart. There are seasons in human affairs, when qualities fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless; and when men must trust to emotion, for that safety which reason at such times can never give. These are the feelings which led the ten thousand over the Carduchian mountans; these are the feelings by which a handful of Greeks broke in pieces the power of Persia: they have, by turns, humbled Austria, reduced Spain; and in the fens of the Dutch, and on the mountains of the Swiss, defended the happiness, and revenged the oppressions, of man! God calls all the passions out in their keenness and vigour, for the present safety of mankind. Anger, and revenge, and the heroic mind, and a readiness to suffer;— all the secret strength, all the invisible array, of the feelings,— all that nature has reserved for the great scenes of the world. For the usual hopes, and the common aids of man, are all gone! Kings have perished, armies are subdued, nations mouldered away! Nothing remains, under God, but those passions which have often proved the best ministers of His vengeance, and the surest protectors of the world."

- Sydney Smith

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"His wildest extravagances, too, were often the vehicle of sound arguments, and his humour generally played over the surface of strong good sense. His exuberant fun did not imply scoffing. He was sensitive to the charge of indifference to the creed which he professed. He took pains to protest against any writing by his allies which might shock believers. He had strong religious convictions, and could utter them solemnly and impressively. It must, however, be admitted that his creed was such as fully to account for the suspicion. In theology he followed Paley, and was utterly averse to all mysticism in literature or religion. He ridiculed the ‘evangelicals,’ and attacked the methodists with a bitterness exceptional in his writings. He equally despised in later days the party then called ‘Puseyites.’ He was far more suspicious of an excess than of a defect of zeal. His writings upon the established church show a purely secular view of the questions at issue. He assumes that a clergyman is simply a human being in a surplice, and the church a branch of the civil service. He had apparently few clerical intimacies, and his chief friends of the Edinburgh Review and Holland House were anything but orthodox. Like other clergymen of similar tendencies, he was naturally regarded by his brethren as something of a traitor to their order. Nobody, however, could discharge the philanthropic duties of a parish clergyman more energetically, and his general goodness and the strength of his affections are as unmistakable as his sincerity and the masculine force of his mind."

- Sydney Smith

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"Broadchalke is one of the most pleasing villages in England. Old Herbert Bundy, the defendant, was a farmer there. His home was at Yew Tree Farm. It went back for 300 years. His family had been there for generations. It was his only asset. But he did a very foolish thing. He mortgaged it to the bank. Up to the very hilt. Not to borrow money for himself, but for the sake of his son. Now the bank have come down on him. They have foreclosed. They want to get him out of Yew Tree Farm and to sell it. They have brought this action against him for possession. Going out means ruin for him. He was granted legal aid. His lawyers put in a defence. They said that, when he executed the charge to the bank he did not know what he was doing: or at any rate that the circumstances were such that he ought not to be bound by it. At the trial his plight was plain. The judge was sorry for him. He said he was a "poor old gentleman." He was so obviously incapacitated that the judge admitted his proof in evidence. He had a heart attack in the witness-box. Yet the judge felt he could do nothing for him. There is nothing, he said, "which takes this out of the vast range of commercial transactions." He ordered Herbert Bundy to give up possession of Yew Tree Farm to the bank. Now there is an appeal to this court. The ground is that the circumstances were so exceptional that Herbert Bundy should not be held bound."

- Alfred Denning, Baron Denning

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"To some this may appear to be a small matter, but to Mr. Harry Hook, it is very important. He is a street trader in the Barnsley Market. He has been trading there for some six years without any complaint being made against him; but, nevertheless, he has now been banned from trading in the market for life. All because of a trifling incident. On Wednesday, October 16, 1974, the market was closed at 5:30. So were all the lavatories, or 'toilets' as they are now called. They were locked up. Three quarters of an hour later, at 6:20, Harry Hook had an urgent call of nature. He wanted to relieve himself. He went into a side street near the market and there made water, or 'urinated' as it is now said. No one was about except one or two employees of the council, who were cleaning up. They rebuked him. He said: 'I can do it here if I like'. They reported him to a security officer who came up. The security officer reprimanded Harry Hook. We are not told the words used by the security officer. I expect they were in language which street traders understand. Harry Hook made an appropriate reply. Again, we are not told the actual words, but it is not difficult to guess. I expect it was an emphatic version of 'You be off'. At any rate, the security officer described them as words of abuse. Touchstone would say that the security officer gave the 'reproof valiant' and Harry Hook gave the 'counter-check quarrelsome'; As You Like It, Act V, Scene IV. On Thursday morning the security officer reported the incident. The market manager thought it was a serious matter. So he saw Mr. Hook the next day, Friday, October 18. Mr. Hook admitted it and said he was sorry for what had happened. The market manager was not satisfied to leave it there. He reported the incident to the chairman of the amenity services committee of the Council. He says that the chairman agreed that 'staff should be protected from such abuse'. That very day the market manager wrote a letter to Mr. Hook, banning him from trading in the market."

- Alfred Denning, Baron Denning

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"In summertime village cricket is a delight to everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in the County of Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good clubhouse for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team plays there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings they practice while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play anymore. He has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket, but now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket field. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that when a batsman hits a six the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at weekends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the judge to stop the cricket being played. And the judge, much against his will, has felt that he must order the cricket to be stopped: with the consequence, I suppose, that the Lintz Cricket Club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground."

- Alfred Denning, Baron Denning

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"The continuance of India within the British Empire is essential to the Empire's existence and is consequently a paramount interest both of the United Kingdom and of the Dominions...for strategic purposes there is no half-way house between an India fully within the Empire and an India totally outside it...Should it once be admitted or proved that Indians cannot govern themselves except by leaving the Empire – in other words, that the necessary goal of political development for the most important section of His Majesty's non-European subjects is independence and not Dominion status – then the logically inevitable outcome will be the eventual and probably the rapid loss to the Empire of all its other non-European parts. It would extinguish the hope of a lasting union between "white" and "coloured" which the conception of a common subjectship to the King-Emperor affords and to which the development of the Empire hitherto has given the prospect of leading...In discussion of the wealth of India it is usual to forget the principal item, which is four hundred millions of human beings, for the most part belonging to races neither unintelligent nor slothful...[British policy should be to] create the preconditions of democracy and self-government by as soon as possible making India socially and economically a modern state."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"Thus our generation is one which comes home again from years of distant wandering. We discover affinities with earlier generations of English, generations before the “expansion of England”, who felt no country but this to be their own... Backward travels our gaze, beyond the grenadiers and the philosophers of the eighteenth century, beyond the pikemen and the preachers of the seventeenth, back through the brash adventurous days of the first Elizabeth and the hard materialism of the Tudors, and there at last we find them, or seem to find them, in many a village church, beneath the tall tracery of a perpendicular East window and the coffered ceiling of the chantry chapel. From brass and stone, from line and effigy, their eyes look out at us, and we gaze into them, as if we would win some answer from their inscrutable silence. “Tell us what it is that binds us together; show us the clue that leads through a thousand years; whisper to us the secret of this charmed life of England, that we in our time may know how to hold it fast.” What would they say? They would speak to us in our own English tongue, the tongue made for telling truth in, tuned already to songs that haunt the hearer like the sadness of spring. They would tell us of that marvellous land, so sweetly mixed of opposites in climate that all the seasons of the year appear there in their greatest perfection... They would tell us too of a palace near the great city which the Romans built at a ford of the River Thames...to which men resorted out of all England to speak on behalf of their fellows, a thing called “Parliament”, and from that hall went out their fellows with fur-trimmed gowns and strange caps on their heads, to judge the same judgments, and dispense the same justice, to all the people of England."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The Labour Party, we all know, have fallen head over heels in love with science. The very mention of automation or computers brings a gleam into their eyes and a glow to their cheeks. They promise to favour automative re-equipment and computerisation. The irony is that these same people are dedicated to destroying the largest and most wonderful computer the world has ever known. This is the computer into which are fed the whole time millions of facts not only from all over this country but from all round the globe. The answers tumble out of it in an unending stream: it tells us all the time what it is most advantageous to import or export; it tells us what the relative benefits are of the imported article and the "home-produced substitute"; it tell us what can be produced "economically and competitively" and in what quantity and where. This wonderful silent mechanism—dare I say, this "automative" mechanism?—of the market the Labour Party want to smash, in order to install in its place—what? The pathetic figure of a President of the Board of Trade going through the old Trade Returns with his officials and trying to reproduce—no, to improve upon—the result of millions of acts of judgment made continuously throughout the economy by those who, in total, have available far more data than the Board of Trade ever dreamt of."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"I sometimes hear the suggestion made, even in the Conservative Party, that one would wish to see the official, responsible trade union leaders encouraged and strengthened, given the power to make binding contracts on behalf of their members, and placed under liability to penalties if their members break them. This would be the diametrically wrong direction in which to move. It would entrench and give legal sanctions to collective price-fixing itself, which is the essential economic evil. But there are more objections than on economic grounds alone; there are also grave political objections. If unions are to contract to deliver a stipulated quantity, and presumably quality, of labour at a stipulated price, then they would need to be endowed with disciplinary powers over their members, in order to secure the performance of the contract: the members would have to be subject, besides the general law, to a kind of private law or code. A trade union would cease to be in any sense a voluntary association; for only union members, and that, members of a specific trade union, would in practice be employable. This is the union shop and the closed shop—which the Tory Party has always repudiated—with a vengeance. The idea would carry us far down the road to the fascist, corporate state, where the economic life and decisions of the individual are regulated by corporations of employers and unions."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The right of free association, which is pleaded on behalf of collective price-fixing by trade unions, means nothing unless there is an equal right of non-association. It is contrary to the Rule of Law that any private association of citizens should be permitted to exercise, let alone to be endowed with the positive power to exercise, coercion over those who do not choose to belong to it. This power of coercion derives primarily from the legal privileges which trade unions, and trade unions uniquely, have enjoyed for the last sixty years, privileges which enable them to behave in ways that for any other associations would be unlawful and would result in damages for those who suffered injury at their hands... [N]o one has succeeded in showing that today these coercive powers are other than superfluous at best and at worst harmful, and that...the state of the law on which those privileges rest is ripe for urgent reform. The law of picketing, intimidation, contracting-out, immunity from process is not at this day defensible, either in itself or in its economic consequences. When combination to fix the price of labour enjoys no privileges which are denied to combinations for the purpose of fixing other prices, then the right of free association will be a reality and not a phrase, and one of the most serious obstacles will have been removed which impede at present the use of this nation's abilities and resources for the benefit of all her people."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"If the Western nations were to confer on the rest of mankind not, as at present, just a tiny fraction of their goods and capital, but were, literally, in the words of the epistle, to ‘bestow all their goods to feed the poor’ their wealth would only disappear, like a snowflake on boiling water, into the maw of these vast and astronomically increasing populations, and the outcome would be a common level of poverty and incompetence. Whence, then, if from anywhere, are the means of improvement to come? There is only one possible answer: essentially from within. The investment and the initiative which made possible the development of the Western economies was not subscribed or donated from outside; it came from within. The rise of Japan, in far less than a century from Admiral Perry's arrival, to challenge the Western countries in technology and production, was not because she was spoon-fed with grants and uneconomic loans from a benevolent Europe or America: it was due to the spirit and character of her people and their aptitude and appetite to learn. The great, the only truly beneficent gift we have to offer is the example of that which has made the West productive – capitalism and enterprise. But it is a gift which implies the power and will to receive it: and that, although we can teach and demonstrate by precept and by example, it is not in our power simply to confer. In short, the secret of aid to the developing countries is not capital itself: it is capitalism."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"It is no kindness on the part of politicians to minimize the size which those problems will assume, even if from now onwards every possible legislative and administrative action is taken to limit it. To draw attention to those problems and face them in the light of day is wiser than to apply the method of the ostrich which rarely yields a satisfactory result – even to ostriches. We have just been seeing in Wolverhampton the cloud no bigger than a man's hand in the shape of communalism. Communalism has been the curse of India and we need to be able to recognize it when it rears its head here. Large numbers of Sikhs, who had been serving the Wolverhampton Corporation voluntarily and contentedly, have found themselves against their will made the material for communal agitation. They have the same right as anyone else to decide which if any of the rules of their sect they will keep, and they had found no difficulty in entering the Corporation's employment and complying with the same rules as their fellow employees. For those who took a different and a stricter view there were plenty of other opportunities of employment. It will be the opposite to the equal treatment of all persons within the realm if employers are placed in the position of adjudicating upon the requirements of their employees' religion. The issue in this instance, is not racial or religious discrimination: it is communalism."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"We should do well in the Conservative Party to take extremely seriously the phenomenon of university disorder... The essential ingredient of the success of anarchy in its new form is the enslavement of the majority by a tiny minority... The object of this minority is the destruction of authority, of the institutions of society and of society itself—not, as in the classical revolutionary movements, for the purpose of substituting a different order and better institutions, but in order to destroy for destruction's sake. The great discovery has been how to turn authority, institutions and society against themselves, and to use the majority which accepts and approves them as a battering ram to smash them down. The method is essentially simple; but in its simplicity lies its subtlety and its efficacy. The secret weapon is the assumption that violence and disorder imply grievance. From this it follows that the grievance must be removed in order to stop the violence and disorder. It also follows that the real blame lies not with the violent and disorderly but with those responsible for the assumed grievance, namely with authority and society itself. The burden of accusation and condemnation is thus automatically diverted from the guilty on to the innocent, from the attacker on to the attacked, from the plotter on to his intended victims. The majority of members of the institution under attack, the organs of vocal opinion, and at last the general public itself, are so mesmerised by this technique that they become the instruments of its success. They take up and re-echo the taunts and complaints of the attackers, until the terrified holders of authority, finding themselves apparently surrounded by accusers on all sides, abandon their posts and buy off the aggressors."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"It is an old delusion to suppose that those bent on violence and anarchy can be satisfied with instalments of what is miscalled reform. If reform were the object, they could be: but the object is not reform, the object is destruction. When a concession has been extorted here, it will be followed by another demand there; when one humiliation has been inflicted on the authorities, the means will instantly be sought of inflicting another. There is no quantity of danegeld which buys off anarchy; there is no end to the instalments which will be swallowed and leave the aggressor unsatisfied. Sooner or later, therefore, and sooner better than later, there has to be a halt; and the Conservative party has a peculiar responsibility in this...as the Party which claims a special identification with law and order. So far our record has been unimpressive. We have been content to stand on the touchline and watch the university authorities, in their pitiful inexperience and gaucherie, go down to one defeat after another without so much as a word from us. Worse, we have often played the anarchists' game ourselves by joining in approval of the anarchists' demands. The time is overdue to stand and be heard out loud. We shall not want for echo from the people, who wonder that those who should speak for them have been silent so long."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"Now, at present Britain has no V.A.T., and the questions whether this new tax should be introduced, how it should be levied, and what should be its scope, would be matters of debate in the country and in Parliament. The essence of parliamentary democracy lies in the power to debate and impose taxation: it is the vital principle of the British House of Commons, from which all other aspects of its sovereignty ultimately derive. With Britain in the community, one important element of taxation would be taken automatically, necessarily and permanently out of the hands of the House of Commons...Those matters which sovereign parliaments debate and decide must be debated and decided not by the British House of Commons but in some other place, and by some other body, and debated and decided once for the whole Community...it is a fact that the British Parliament and its paramount authority occupies a position in relation to the British nation which no other elective assembly in Europe possesses. Take parliament out of the history of England and that history itself becomes meaningless. Whole lifetimes of study cannot exhaust the reasons why this fact has come to be, but fact it is, so that the British nation could not imagine itself except with and through its parliament. Consequently the sovereignty of our parliament is something other for us than what your assemblies are for you. What is equally significant, your assemblies, unlike the British Parliament, are the creation of deliberate political acts, and most of recent political acts. The notion that a new sovereign body can be created is therefore as familiar to you as it is repugnant, not to say unimaginable, to us. This deliberate, and recent, creation of sovereign assemblies on the continent is in turn an aspect of the fact that the continent is familiar, and familiar in the recent past, with the creation of nation states themselves. Four of the six members of the Community came into existence as such no more than a century or a century and a half ago – within the memory of two lifetimes."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"So long as the figures 'now superseded' and the academic projections based upon them held sway, it was possible for politicians to shrug their shoulders. With so much of immediate and indisputable importance on their hands, why should they attend to what was forecast for the end of the century, when most of them would be not only out of office but dead and gone? … It was not for them to heed the cries of anguish from those of their own people who already saw their towns being changed, their native places turned into foreign lands, and themselves displaced as if by a systematic colonisation. For these the much vaunted compassion of the parties and politicians was not available: the parties and the politicians preferred to be busy making speeches on race relations; and if any of their number dared to tell them the truth, even less than the whole truth, about what was happening and what would happen here in England, they denounced them as racialist and turned them out of doors. They could feel safe; for they said in their hearts: 'If trouble comes, it will not be in our time; let the next generation see to it!' … The explosive which will blow us asunder is there and the fuse is burning, but the fuse is shorter than had been supposed. The transformation which I referred to earlier as being without even a remote parallel in our history, the occupation of the hearts of this metropolis and of towns and cities across England by a coloured population amounting to millions, this before long will be past denying. It is possible that the people of this country will, with good or ill grace, accept what they did not ask for, did not want and were not told of. My own judgment—it is a judgment which the politician has a duty to form to the best of his ability—I have not feared to give: it is—to use words I used two years and a half ago—that 'the people of England will not endure it'."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace'. The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"[W]hen the empire dissolved...the people of Britain suffered from a kind of vertigo: they could not believe that they were standing upright, and reached out for something to clutch. It seemed axiomatic that economically, as well as politically, they must be part of something bigger, though the deduction was as unfounded as the premise. So some cried: 'Revive the Commonwealth'. And others cried: 'Let's go in with America into a North Atlantic Free Trade Area'. Yet others again cried: 'We have to go into Europe: there's no real alternative'. In a sense they were right: there is no alternative grouping. In a more important sense they were wrong: there is no need for joining anything. A Britain which is ready to exchange goods, services and capital as freely as it can with the rest of the world is neither isolated nor isolationist. It is not, in the sneering phrases of Chamberlain's day, 'Little England'...The Community is not a free trade area, which is what Britain, with a correct instinct, tried vainly to convert it into, or combine it into, in 1957-60. For long afterwards indeed many Britons continued to cherish the delusion that it really was a glorified free trade area and would turn out to be nothing more. On the contrary the Community is, what its name declares, a prospective economic unit. But an economic unit is not defined by economics – there are no natural economic units – it is defined by politics. What we call an economic unit is really a political unit viewed in its economic aspect: the unit is political."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The relevant fact about the history of the British Isles and above all of England is its separateness in a political sense from the history of continental Europe. The English have never belonged to it and have always known that they did not belong. The assertion contains no element of paradox. The Angevin Empire contradicts it as little as the English claim to the throne of France; neither the possession of Gascony nor the inheritance of Hanover made Edward I or George III anything but English sovereigns. When Henry VIII declared that 'this realm of England is an empire (imperium) of itself', he was making not a new claim but a very old one; but he was making it at a very significant point of time. He meant—as Edward I had meant, when he said the same over two hundred years before—that there is an imperium on the continent, but that England is another imperium outside its orbit and is endowed with the plenitude of its own sovereignty. The moment at which Henry VIII repeated this assertion was that of what is misleadingly called 'the reformation'—misleadingly, because it was, and is, essentially a political and not a religious event. The whole subsequent history of Britain and the political character of the British people have taken their colour and trace their unique quality from that moment and that assertion. It was the final decision that no authority, no law, no court outside the realm would be recognised within the realm. When Cardinal Wolsey fell, the last attempt had failed to bring or keep the English nation within the ambit of any external jurisdiction or political power: since then no law has been made for England outside England, and no taxation has been levied in England by or for an authority outside England—or not at least until the proposition that Britain should accede to the Common Market."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The Bill ... does manifest some of the major consequences. It shows first that it is an inherent consequence of accession to the Treaty of Rome that this House and Parliament will lose their legislative supremacy. It will no longer be true that law in this country is made only by or with the authority of Parliament... The second consequence ... is that this House loses its exclusive control—upon which its power and authority has been built over the centuries—over taxation and expenditure. In future, if we become part of the Community, moneys received in taxation from the citizens of this country will be spent otherwise than upon a vote of this House and without the opportunity ... to debate grievance and to call for an account of the way in which those moneys are to be spent. For the first time for centuries it will be true to say that the people of this country are not taxed only upon the authority of the House of Commons. The third consequence which is manifest on the face of the Bill, in Clause 3 among other places, is that the judicial independence of this country has to be given up. In future, if we join the Community, the citizens of this country will not only be subject to laws made elsewhere but the applicability of those laws to them will be adjudicated upon elsewhere; and the law made elsewhere and the adjudication elsewhere will override the law which is made here and the decisions of the courts of this realm."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The House of Commons is at this moment being asked to agree to the renunciation of its own independence and supreme authority—but not the House of Commons by itself. The House of Commons is the personification of the people of Britain: its independence is synonymous with their independence; its supremacy is synonymous with their self-government and freedom. Through the centuries Britain has created the House of Commons and the House of Commons has moulded Britain, until the history of the one and the life of the one cannot be separated from the history and life of the other. In no other nation in the world is there any comparable relationship. Let no one therefore allow himself to suppose that the life-and-death decision of the House of Commons is some private affair of some privileged institution which at intervals swims into his ken and out of it again. It is the life-and-death decision of Britain itself, as a free, independent and self-governing nation. For weeks, for months the battle on the floor of the House of Commons will swing backwards and forwards, through interminable hours of debates and procedures and votes in the division lobbies; and sure enough the enemies and despisers of the House of Commons will represent it all as some esoteric game or charade which means nothing for the outside world. Do not be deceived. With other weapons and in other ways the contention is as surely about the future of Britain's nationhood as were the combats which raged in the skies over southern England in the autumn of 1940. The gladiators are few; their weapons are but words; and yet the fight is everyman's."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"[T]he power to control the supply of money, which is one of the fundamental aspects of sovereignty, has passed from government into other hands; and therefore new institutions must be set up which will in effect exercise some of the major functions of government. They would set the level of public expenditure, and settle fiscal policy, the exercise of taxing and borrowing powers of the state, since these are indisputedly the mechanism by which the money supply is determined. But they would do more than this. They would be supreme over the economic ends and the social structure of society: for by fixing prices and incomes they would have to replace the entire automatic system of the market and supply and demand—be that good or evil—and put in its place a series of value judgments, economic or social, which they themselves would have to make...There is a specific term for this sort of polity. It is, of course, totalitarian, because it must deliberately and consciously determine the totality of the actions and activities of the members of the community; but it is a particular kind of totalitarian regime, one, namely, in which authority is exercised and the decisions are taken by a hierarchy of unions or corporations—to which, indeed, on this theory the effective power has already passed. For this particular kind of totalitarianism the Twentieth Century has a name. That name is "fascist"."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"They have a duty either to say to the country, "We propose to continue with inflation at its present level and to maintain or 'contain' it at that level, because otherwise there would be at least a temporary loss of growth and unemployment", or, alternatively, to say, "So great and intolerable are the consequences, direct and indirect, social, moral and economic, of on-going inflation at a cumulative rate of nearly 10 per cent. per annum, that we intend to bring that rate down steadily, consistently, perceptibly, and...we tell you that the price which we shall have to pay for that will be some reduction in growth and in employment." ... I am prepared to say, as I have done over and over again, that I believe inflation at 10 per cent. per annum cumulative to be an evil far more dangerous, far exceeding in its consequences the cost of the temporary dislocation which is involved in terminating it. I have said that time and again... We either go on at present with the present rate of inflation or else we deal with inflation and incur the temporary cost in terms of output and employment. In the real world there is no third choice. What the Government are doing with their counter-inflation policy is declining to take that decision in the open, declining to come forward and make clear which decision it is that they have taken, and using the counter-inflation policy as a means of pretending that a third course exists when they know that it does not."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"[More than a year ago I] ventured to inquire of the Prime Minister in the House of Commons whether he had taken leave of his senses. In the circumstances it was a solicitous but not unreasonable inquiry. The Government had suddenly embarked upon a course on which their predecessors had shipwrecked; which in Opposition they had consistently opposed and denounced; on which at the general election they had promised not to embark; and which ministers had been unanimously and indignantly repudiating until a few weeks before... The rate of inflation has not been lower during the period of the statutory counter-inflation policy: it has been higher. So official apologists have had to resort to the last refuge of the disconcerted: to claim that things would have been even worse without the policy... The greater evil still of all statutory counter-inflation policies is the antagonism, at once futile and disastrous, which they inevitably set up between the state on one side and the various classes and interests in the community on the other side. The danger of this was frighteningly illuminated by the Prime Minister's outburst last week against the miners, who, whether or not they are wisely led by their trade unions, have neither done nor threatened to do anything which is against the law. Yet the accusation was brought against them that, because the House of Commons had approved a government White Paper and a code which, in terms of law, is binding (if it all) only upon the Price Commission and the Pay Board, therefore the miners are defying Parliament and the people's elected representatives and placing themselves beyond the pale of the constitution. To say this is to blur, indeed to deny, the very distinction on which constitutional liberty rests, the distinction between law and not-law. If possible, more breathtaking still was the Prime Minister's assertion that (in his own words) the responsibility of the Government "expressed in the price and pay code, is not the responsibility we sought; it was a responsibility which Parliament gave us because there is no other way of containing inflation in this country". One cannot but entertain fears for the mental and emotional stability to whom such language can appear rational."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"In 1970 my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and all of us who sit on these benches on the Government side of the House, said to the country "We utterly reject the philosophy of compulsory wage control," or again—"Labour's compulsory wage control was a failure...and we will not repeat it." Why did we say those things so emphatically, over and over again, to the country in 1970? We said them on the basis of what we had argued, experienced, seen and watched over the preceding years. We said them out of a conviction, often stated, that the inevitable result of combining inflation with the attempt to control it by compulsory control of wages was bound to be the most damaging and irresolvable conflict between State and citizens. We said them because...we were convinced in those days that inflation was the result, overwhelmingly, almost exclusively, of actions and policies which were within the power and control of Government. It was because we were convinced that if Government, for their part, would so manage the finances of the nation, if they would so frame the policies within their control, within their hands, there would, indeed, be industrial conflicts, there would be collective bargaining, carried no doubt sometimes to the use of the strike weapon, and there would be the attempt, natural and inevitable, to reassess and reassess again the real relativities between the wages of one industry and another and those of one job and another, but we would not be bringing into the arena of direct conflict between Government and citizen every wage dispute, every bargain, every price and every wage that was fixed. We were convinced that responsibilities would lie where they ought to lie—the responsibility of management and the responsibility of trade union leadership could be exercised where they belonged—if Government would exercise the responsibility which is theirs."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"It is easy to talk about the death penalty in the abstract, before anybody is caught, before terrorists have been sentenced and are in the eye of the public and the world. What, a girl of 17? That is who it might be... So we should find that the instrument with which we thought we had armed ourselves had broken in our hands. It would recoil upon us, because we should discover that a torrent of revulsion prevented us from applying what we had taken up as the supreme weapon of defence. That should be enough to satisfy one that the death penalty would not be a deterrent. But I have said more: I have said that I believe that it would be a positive incitement to terrorism. What could be more desirable for those who are anyway prepared to risk their lives in a cause which they hold honourable—although we cannot imagine how it could be honourable to uphold it by their means—than that, instead of the possibility of imprisonment for a number of years on conviction, they could have martyrdom, the glittering prize of terrorism throughout the history of revolution in Ireland? That would be the great attraction—even if the death penalty were not made the ground or the justification for further terrorism, which many people would consider it to be. So the death penalty would be an incentive rather than a deterrent."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"When we speak of the pride and self-confidence of our nation, the Crown—the Monarchy—is absolutely central; nor do I know how better one would gauge the state of this nation's psychological health, of its national morale, than by its attitude towards its greatest, its unique, institution... Of all the sources of true and proper pride to a British person none is greater than the common possession of the Crown. I use the word "possession" advisedly, in its full and most literal sense. Because our Crown is the product of the history of this nation, because it grows like an oak in the soil of these islands, it is therefore the personal possession of every citizen and subject, however humble, however poor. It is a total misconception...to suppose that there is anything of class, anything which is restrictive or destricted, about the Crown. Whatever may be said of any other institution, the Crown is the common, precious and hereditary jewel of all British subjects and of all the people of this country. To approach that common possession, that symbol and personification, with the attitude, "How ungenerous can we be? How little can we contrive to spend upon it? How much can we clip?"—not of its magnificence, for it has ever been the pride of English greatness not to be magnificent through lavishness, but in more fundamental ways—"How much can we restrict the outward signs and manifestations of what the Crown is to this country?" is a sign that we are still divorced from the pride and self-confidence without which a nation cannot face the world and without which this nation cannot learn to face the world again."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimiliable populations—what Lord Radcliffe once in a memorable phrase called "alien wedges"—in the heartland of the state...The disruption of the homogeneous "we", which forms the essential basis of parliamentary democracy and therefore of our liberties, is now approaching the point at which the political mechanics of a "divided community"...take charge and begin to operate autonomously. Let me illustrate this pathology of a society that is being eaten alive...The two active ingredients are grievance and violence. Where a community is divided, grievance is for practical purposes inexhaustible. When violence is injected—and quite a little will suffice for a start—there begins an escalating competition to discover grievance and to remove it. The materials lie ready to hand in a multiplicity of agencies with a vested interest, more or less benevolent, in the process of discovering grievances and demanding their removal. The spiral is easily maintained in upward movement by the repetitions and escalation of violence. At each stage alienation between the various elements of society is increased, and the constant disappointment that the imagined remedies yield a reverse result leads to growing bitterness and despair. Hand in hand with the exploitation of grievance goes the equally counterproductive process which will no doubt, as usual, be called the "search for a political solution"...Indeed, attention has already been drawn publicly to the potentially critical factor of the so-called immigrant vote in an increasing number of worthwhile constituencies. The result is that the political parties of the indigenous population vie with one another for votes by promising remedy of the grievances which are being uncovered and exploited in the context of actual or threatened violence. Thus the legislature finds itself in effect manipulated by minorities instead of responding to majorities, and is watched by the public at large with a bewildering and frustration, not to say cynicism, of which the experience of legislation hitherto in the field of immigration and race relations afford some pale idea...I need not follow the analysis further in order to demonstrate how parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population. While the institutions and liberties on which British liberty depends are being progressively surrendered to the European superstate, the forces which will sap and destroy them from within are allowed to accumulate unchecked. And all the time we are invited to direct towards Angola or Siberia the anxious attention that the real danger within our power and our borders imperatively demand."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The clause is an example of one of the most prevalent and damaging fallacies in this whole subject—the fallacy of supposing that the consequences that are apprehended from the massive substitution, in various parts of the country, for the indigenous population of a population from overseas are either due to what is called physical deprivation, poverty, and so on, or can be in any way alleviated, avoided or foreclosed by material provision...It is by no means true that the areas of maximum New Commonwealth immigrant entry—the locations of what Lord Radcliffe many years ago called "the alien wedge"—are characteristically or specifically coincident with the areas of greatest poverty and desuetude in our cities. In some cases the two coincide. Sometimes, naturally, this happens in the central and rundown areas—run down because they are central—that because they are central it is in those areas that major immigrant populations are found...Over and over again this easy illusion has been propounded, and as often experience has disposed of it. It is not because people are poor, to the extent that they are poor, and it is not because they live in the streets of the inner cities, in which the indigenous population of this country has lived—gradually improving, and in some cases rapidly improving over generations—that we apprehend what will be the consequence when one-third of some of the major cities and industrial areas of our country is in New Commonwealth occupation. It is because of human differences. It is because of the clash and contrast between two populations which contend for the same territory."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women...In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused...Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not...It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field...Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"What happens then when majorities in the directly elected European Assembly take decisions, or approve policies, or vote budgets which are regarded by the British electorate or by the electorate of some of the mammoth constituencies as highly offensive and prejudicial to their interests? What do the European MPs say to their constituents? They say: “Don't blame me; I had no say, nor did I and my Labour (or Conservative) colleagues, have any say in the framing of these policies”. He will then either add: “Anyhow, I voted against”; or alternatively he will add: “And don't misunderstand if I voted for this along with my German, French, and Italian pals, because if I don't help roll their logs, I shall never get them to roll any of mine”. What these pseudo-MPs will not be able to say is what any MP in a democracy must be able to say, namely, either “I voted against this, and if the majority of my party are elected next time, we will put it right”, or alternatively, “I supported this because it is part of the policy and programme for which a majority in this constituency and in the country voted at the last election and which we shall be proud to defend at the next election”. Direct elections to the European Assembly, so far from introducing democracy and democratic control, will strengthen the arbitrary and bureaucratic nature of the Community by giving a fallacious garb of elective authority to the exercise of supranational powers by institutions and persons who are – in the literal, not the abusive, sense of the word – irresponsible."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"I am one of what must be an increasing number who find the portentous moralisings of A. Solzhenitsyn a bore and an irritation. Scarcely any aspect of life in the countries where he passes his voluntary exile has failed to incur his pessimistic censure. Coming from Russia, where freedom of the press has been not so much unknown as uncomprehended since long before the Revolution, he is shocked to discover that a free press disseminated all kinds of false, partial and invented information and that journalists contradict themselves from one day to the next without shame and without apology. Only a Russian would find all that surprising, or fail to understand that freedom which is not misused is not freedom at all.Like all travellers he misunderstands what he observes. It simply is not true that ‘within the Western countries the press has become more powerful than the legislative power, the executive and the judiciary’. The British electorate regularly disprove this by electing governments in the teeth of the hostility and misrepresentation of virtually the whole of the press. Our modern Munchhausen has, however, found a more remarkable mare’s nest still: he has discovered the ‘false slogan, characteristic of a false era, that everyone is entitled to know everything’. Excited by this discovery he announces a novel and profound moral principle, a new addendum to the catalogue of human rights. ‘People,’ he says, ‘have a right not to know, and it is a more valuable one.’ Not merely morality but theology illuminates the theme: people have, say Solzhenitsyn, ‘the right not to have their divine souls’ burdened with ‘the excessive flow of information’.Just so. Whatever may be the case in Russia, we in the degenerate West can switch off the radio or television, or not buy a newspaper, or not read such parts of it as we do not wish to. I can assure Solzhenitsyn that the method works admirably, ‘right’ or ‘no right’. I know, because I have applied it with complete success to his own speeches and writings."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"It is conventional to refer to the United Nations in hushed tones of respect and awe, as if it were the repository of justice and equity, speaking almost with the voice of God if not yet acting with the power of God. It is no such thing. Despite the fair-seeming terminology of its charter and its declarations, the reality both of the Assembly and of the Security Council is a concourse of self-seeking nations, obeying their own prejudices and pursuing their own interests. They have not changed their individual natures by being aggregated with others in a system of bogus democracy... Does anybody seriously suppose that the members of the United Nations, or of the Security Council, have been actuated in their decisions on the Argentine invasion of the Falklands by a pure desire to see right done and wrong reversed? That was the last thing on their minds. Everyone of them, from the United States to Peru, calculated its own interests and consulted its own ambitions. What moral authority can attach a summation of self-interest and prejudice? I am not saying that nations ought not to pursue their own interests; they ought and, in any case, they will. What I am saying is that those interests are not sanctified by being tumbled into a mixer and shaken up altogether. An assembly of national spokesmen is not magically transmuted into a glorious company of saints and martyrs. Its only redeeming feature is its impotence... The United Nations is a colossal coating of humbug poured, like icing over a birthday cake, over the naked ambitions and hostilities of the nations."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The Prime Minister constantly asserts that the nuclear weapon has kept the peace in Europe for the last 40 years...Let us go back to the middle 1950s or to the end of the 1940s, and let us suppose that nuclear power had never been invented...I assert that in those circumstances there would still not have been a Russian invasion of western Europe. What has prevented that from happening was not the nuclear hypothesis...but the fact that the Soviet Union knew the consequences of such a move, consequences which would have followed whether or not there were 300,000 American troops stationed in Europe. The Soviet Union knew that such an action on its part would have led to a third world war—a long war, bitterly fought, a war which in the end the Soviet Union would have been likely to lose on the same basis and in the same way as the corresponding war was lost by Napoleon, by the Emperor Wilhelm and by Adolf Hitler... For of course a logically irresistible conclusion followed from the creed that our safety depended upon the nuclear capability of the United States and its willingness to commit that capability in certain events. If that was so—and we assured ourselves for 40 years that it was—the guiding principle of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom had to be that, in no circumstances, must it depart from the basic insights of the United States and that any demand placed in the name of defence upon the United Kingdom by the United States was a demand that could not be resisted. Such was the rigorous logic of the nuclear deterrent... It was in obedience to it...that the Prime Minister said, in the context of the use of American bases in Britain to launch an aggressive attack on Libya, that it was "inconceivable" that we could have refused a demand placed upon this country by the United States. The Prime Minister supplied the reason why: she said it was because we depend for our liberty and freedom upon the United States. Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it. A few days ago I was reminded, when reading a new biography of Richard Cobden, that he once addressed a terrible sentence of four words to this House of Commons. He said to hon. Members: "You have been Englishmen." The strength of those words lies in the perfect tense, with the implication that they were so no longer but had within themselves the power to be so again. I believe that we now have the opportunity, with the dissolution of the nightmare of the nuclear theory, for this country once again to have a defence policy that accords with the needs of this country as an island nation, and to have a foreign policy which rests upon a true, undistorted view of the outside world. Above all, we have the opportunity to have a foreign policy that is not dictated from outside to this country, but willed by its people. That day is coming. It may be delayed, but it will come."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The immediate occasion for alarm is the government's announcement that British contractors for supplying armaments to our armed forces must in future share the work with what are called ‘European firms’, meaning factories situated on the mainland of the European continent. I ask one question, to which I believe there is no doubt about the answer. What would have been the fate of Britain in 1940 if production of the Hurricane and the Spitfire had been dependent upon the output of factories in France? That a question so glaringly obvious does not get asked in public or in government illuminates the danger created for this nation by the rolling stream of time which bears away the generation of 1940, the generation, that is to say, of those who experienced as adults Britain's great peril and Britain’s great deliverance. Talk at Bruges or Luxembourg about not surrendering our national sovereignty is all very well. It means less than nothing when the keys to our national defence are being handed over: an island nation which no longer commands the essential means of defending itself by air and sea is no longer sovereign...The safety of this island nation reposes upon two pillars. The first is the impregnability of its homeland to invasion by air or sea. The second is its ability and its will to create over time the military forces by which the last conclusive battle will be decided. Without our own industrial base of military armament production neither of those pillars will stand. No doubt, with the oceans kept open, we can look to buy or borrow from the other continents; but to depend on the continent of Europe for our arms is suicide."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"Like all human institutions, it [the state] too is mortal. An observer watching the behaviour and listening to the language of British politicians since 1972...would have been reasonably entitled to conclude that the British had become disenchanted with the unique form of government which continues to distinguish them from their continental contemporaries and had resolved to abandon parliamentary self-government under an unwritten constitution in order to be embraced by a single state – and that a unitary, not a federal state – comprising western Europe, the Iberian peninsula and Greece and live forever under treaties interpreted by the European Court. I am not the person best qualified to advise you whether that judgement would be premature, because my own obstinate refusal to countenance the abandonment of parliamentary self-government by the United Kingdom has resulted in my living the life of an Ishmael in British politics since 1972. I will therefore do no more than leave you with some cautionary words of a general character. Nations do tend to behave remarkably like themselves and to revert to past habits even after appearing to have departed from them for sometimes lengthy periods. The most reliable indication of a nation's future behaviour is its history. It would be an exaggeration no doubt, but a venial exaggeration, to say that the history of Britain is the history of British parliamentary self-government."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"The reality of the situation is obscured when population is expressed as a percentage proportion taken over the whole of the United Kingdom. The ethnic minority is geographically concentrated, so that areas in which it forms a majority already exists, and these areas are destined inevitably to grow. It is here that the compatibility of such an ethnic minority with the functioning of parliamentary democracy comes into question. Parliamentary democracy depends at all levels upon the valid acceptance of majority decision, by which the nation as a whole is content to be bound because of the continually available prospect that what one majority has decided another majority can subsequently alter. From this point of view, the political homogeneity of the electorate is crucial. What we do not, as yet, know is whether the voting behaviour of our altered population will be able to use the majority vote as a political instrument and not as a means of self-identification, self-assertion and self-enumeration. It may be that the United Kingdom will escape the political consequences of communalism; but communalism and democracy, as the experience of India demonstrates, are incompatible. That is the spectre which the Conservative party's policy of assisted repatriation in the 1960s aimed to banish; but time and events have swept over and passed the already outdated remedies of the 1960s. We are entering unknown territory where the only certainty for the future is the relative increase of the ethnic minority due to the age structure of that population which has been established."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"His current doctrines are an intellectualized version of ideas which have been the common diet in most parts of the body of the Conservative party for the last 25 years, but they have been transformed in the course of exposition and given a wider range of relevance than they had before... They are in fact the expression of a feeling, which is to some extent present in all classes, that the language used by politicians is not the language the body of the people understands and that the distance between politicians and the public is great and growing. Above all they confirm the impression that anyone who speaks a language the public wants to hear will attract the hysterical censure Mr. Powell has attracted from the self-appointed leaders of the 'thinking classes', i.e. the 'great big world of Fleet Street, Whitehall, St. James's Street', etc. ... Nothing done by Mr. Powell has been more important than his demonstration that they can be rejected by a highly articulate thinking politician who attracts hysterical censure precisely because he rubs in the unpalatable truth that a rhetoric maybe offensive to these parts of the 'thinking classes' and yet reflect opinions that are widely shared, deeply held and common to all classes in this country... What Mr. Powell has done is to change the climate of opinion. This is a matter of great importance. Over the last thirty years a morally conservative, hard headed and patriotic electorate has been persuaded to defer to an eccentric element amongst the progressive intelligentsia."

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"In the mid-Seventies he came to Oxford to give a talk about devolution... [A] large audience, perhaps half black and brown, came to heckle and boo their bogeyman. They were very quickly silenced as Powell wove his spell, proving that devolution was a nonsense, but adding that decolonisation had surely taught us that morally we couldn't refuse a vote for independence from a people that wanted it... Finally, someone suggested he couldn't mean it: what if Oxford voted for independence? Would he grant that? He replied that you could reduce any argument to absurdity with an absurd example but yes, if the people wanted it, how could one refuse? And then added, cuttingly, but why talk such nonsense about Oxford? Why not use real examples: what if Bradford, Brixton or Southall, which are really different, vote for independence? The words were spat out with real venom, eyes flashing. Immigration had not previously been mentioned: in the audience heads lurched back, as if a collective slap in the face had been administered. At the end everyone filed out in silence, as if physically beaten. Over dinner, I asked him why he had done it: he had come close to getting a standing ovation and then he had deliberately thrown it all away. “Oh yes,” he said, “I could see I had won them over, so I thought, if you want to accept me, it's got to be the whole package, not just my views on devolution. So I showed them the cloven hoof. I don’t want any easy victories.”"

- Enoch Powell

0 likesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomPolitical leadersPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from Birmingham
"Those kindly graces, those admirable qualities, have endeared her to every class in the community, and are known to all. Perhaps less known was the life of continuous labour which her position as Queen threw upon her. Short as was the interval between the last trembling signature affixed to a public document and the final and perfect rest, it was yet long enough to clog and hamper the wheels of administration; and when I saw the accumulating mass of untouched documents which awaited the attention of the Sovereign, I marvelled at the unostentatious patience which for sixty-three years, through sorrow, through suffering, in moments of weariness, in moments of despondency, had enabled her to carry on without break or pause her share in the government of this great Empire. For her there was no holiday, to her there was no intermission of toil. Domestic sorrow, domestic sickness, made no difference in her labours, and they were continued from the hour at which she became our Sovereign to within a few days—I had almost said a few hours—of her death. It is easy to chronicle the growth of Empire, the course of discovery, the progress of trade, the triumphs of war, all the events that make history interesting or exciting; but who is there that will dare to weigh in the balance the effect which such an example, continued over sixty-three years, has produced on the highest life of her people?"

- Victoria of the United Kingdom

0 likesMonarchs from the United KingdomDiaristsPeople from LondonMonarchs from EnglandAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"Political equality is not merely a folly—it is a chimera. It is idle to discuss whether it ought to exist; for, as a matter of fact, it never does. Whatever may be the written text of a Constitution, the multitude always will have leaders among them, and those leaders not selected by themselves. They may set up the pretence of political equality, if they will, and delude themselves with a belief of its existence. But the only consequences will be, that they will have bad leaders instead of good. Every community has natural leaders, to whom, if they are not misled by the insane passion for equality, they will instinctively defer. Always wealth, in some countries by birth, in all intellectual power and culture, mark out the men whom, in a healthy state of feeling, a community looks to undertake its government. They have the leisure for the task, and can give it the close attention and the preparatory study which it needs. Fortune enables them to do it for the most part gratuitously, so that the struggles of ambition are not defiled by the taint of sordid greed. They occupy a position of sufficient prominence among their neighbours to feel that their course is closely watched, and they belong to a class brought up apart from temptations to the meaner kinds of crime, and therefore it is no praise to them if, in such matters, their moral code stands high. But even if they be at bottom no better than others who have passed though greater vicissitudes of fortune, they have at least this inestimable advantage—that, when higher motives fail, their virtue has all the support which human respect can give. They are the aristocracy of a country in the original and best sense of the word. Whether a few of them are decorated by honorary titles or enjoy hereditary privileges, is a matter of secondary moment. The important point is, that the rulers of the country should be taken from among them, and that with them should be the political preponderance to which they have every right that superior fitness can confer. Unlimited power would be as ill-bestowed upon them as upon any other set of men. They must be checked by constitutional forms and watched by an active public opinion, lest their rightful pre-eminence should degenerate into the domination of a class. But woe to the community that deposes them altogether!"

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

0 likesPrime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandUniversity of Oxford facultyConservative Party (UK) politiciansAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"The great evil, and it was a hard thing to say, was that English officials in India, with many very honourable exceptions, did not regard the lives of the coloured inhabitants with the same feeling of intense sympathy which they would show to those of their own race, colour, and tongue. If that was the case it was not their fault alone. Some blame must be laid upon the society in which they had been brought up, and upon the public opinion in which they had been trained. It became them to remember that from that place, more than from any other in the kingdom, proceeded that influence which formed the public opinion of the age, and more especially that kind of public opinion which governed the action of officials in every part of the Empire. If they would have our officials in distant parts of the Empire, and especially in India, regard the lives of their coloured fellow-subjects with the same sympathy and with the same zealous and quick affection with which they would regard the lives of their fellow-subjects at home, it was the Members of that House who must give the tone and set the example. That sympathy and regard must arise from the zeal and jealousy with which the House watched their conduct and the fate of our Indian fellow-subjects. Until we showed them our thorough earnestness in this matter—until we were careful to correct all abuses and display our own sense that they are as thoroughly our fellow-subjects as those in any other part of the Empire, we could not divest ourselves of all blame if we should find that officials in India did treat with something of coldness and indifference such frightful calamities as that which had so recently happened in that country."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

0 likesPrime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandUniversity of Oxford facultyConservative Party (UK) politiciansAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"Half a century ago, the first feeling of all Englishmen was for England. Now, the sympathies of a powerful party are instinctively given to whatever is against England. It may be Boers or Baboos, or Russians or Affghans, or only French speculators—the treatment these all receive in their controversies with England is the same: whatever else my fail them, they can always count on the sympathies of the political party from whom during the last half century the rulers of England have been mainly chosen. .. . It is striking, though by no means a solitary indication of how low, in the present temper of English politics, our sympathy with our own countrymen has fallen. Of course, we shall be told that a conscience of exalted sensibility, which is the special attribute of the Liberal party, has enabled them to discover, what English statesmen had never discovered before, that the cause to which our countrymen are opposed is generally the just one. ... For ourselves, we are rather disposed to think that patriotism has become in some breasts so very reasonable an emotion, because it is ceasing to be an emotion at all; and that these superior scruples, to which our fathers were insensible, and which always make the balance of justice lean to the side of abandoning either our territory or our countrymen, indicate that the national impulses which used to make Englishmen cling together in face of every external trouble are beginning to disappear."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

0 likesPrime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandUniversity of Oxford facultyConservative Party (UK) politiciansAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"You only have to go on working together as you have hitherto done, not allowing yourselves to be discouraged by any temporary reverses, not believing that any evil day, when it comes, must necessarily be permanent, but trying to convince—what is truth—that in the steadiness and stability of our institutions lies the great hope of industry of the working man (hear, hear)—trying to impress upon him that any adventurous policy or change at home which sets class against class, and fills all men's minds with disquiet and mistrust, is a dangerous thing for industry, and is the most certain poison which trade and commerce can suffer under. (Hear, hear.) If you can bring these facts before the minds of the working men they will observe as time goes on that a policy which appeals to discontent does not produce internal prosperity. (Hear, hear.) They will see that a policy which neglects the Empire of England does not open to us the markets of the world. (Hear, hear.) They will see that the path of national prosperity and national dishonour are not parallel, and they will recognise with this that the party which sustained the old institutions—institutions under which England grew great—which upholds the traditions under which her name has ever been illustrious abroad—that to that party most rightly belongs, and most safely can be confided, the interests of the complicated industry and commerce on which the existence of so many millions of our countrymen depends. (Loud cheers.)"

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"The disease is not in Ireland. The disease is here—in Westminster. If you had pursued—if you would now pursue—any steady, unvarying, and consistent policy with regard to Ireland, you would find that the problems that that country offered to you in respect of government are not greater than the problems of government which have been successively overcome by every Government in the world. There is nothing in them of that extraordinary or extreme character that should set at defiance the resources of civilization. But it is necessary, above all things, that the play of our Party system shall not call into question the foundations upon which our polity rests. It is necessary that men should not be able to speculate on the change of Party to Party in the hope of altering the fundamental laws on which the union of the United Kingdom is based. If you have instability of purpose, if you have a policy shifting from five years to five years with each change in the wheel of political fortune, or the humour of political Parties in this country, you are drifting straight to a ruin which will engulf England and Ireland alike. Your hope is not so much in this or that particular plan or panacea for restoring order, or maintaining law, or reviving the conditions of civilized life in Ireland. Your hope is in this—that Parliament shall school itself to adopt a steady, consistent policy, and maintain it when it is once adopted. A resolution of that kind manfully carried out will restore that prosperity to which Ireland has for so long been a stranger."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"As a rule I think that wherever communities are in close geographical proximity, and are related to each other by an identity or a close similarity of language, one of two things must happen to them. Either they must combine absolutely or they must separate absolutely. (Hear, hear.) I do not believe that there is an instance of any permanent solution, any permanent settlement, involving an imperfect and an incomplete subordination. The reason is very obvious, that the smaller nation becomes the basis of operations for the enemy of the larger nation, whether they are enemies from abroad or at home. ... We have seen this kingdom gradually made up, first by the Heptarchy, then Wales, then Scotland, then Ireland. ... The force of circumstances has dictated to those communities the decree that they shall be one (cheers), and if you glance over the history of Ireland you at once see why they must be one. You see a succession of the enemies of England always using her as their opportunity (hear, hear), first from the Yorkists and Perkin Warbeck, then from the times of the Reformation and Philip II, then to the rebellion because of the Puritan movement in England, then to Louis XIV, and, later on, to the Jacobites. ... It was always the same thing. Was there any period or any nation that desired to fight another at home or abroad, they always selected Ireland as the basis of their operations; and unless your fame is absolutely erased, unless your energies have gone, unless your lamp among nations is put out, you may depend upon it that whatever sentiments are dominant now...you will come in the long run to the determination that consolidation, and consolidation alone, is the remedy for the evils under which Ireland suffers. (Cheers.)"

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"There is no danger which we have to contend with which is so serious as an exaggeration of the power, the useful power, of the interference of the State. It is not that the State may not or ought not to interfere when it can do so with advantage, but that the occasions on which it can so interfere are so lamentably few and the difficulties that lie in its way are so great. But I think that some of us are in danger of an opposite error. What we have to struggle against is the unnecessary interference of the State, and still more when that interference involves any injustice to any people, especially to any minority. All those who defend freedom are bound as their first duty to be the champions of minorities, and the danger of allowing the majority, which holds the power of the State, to interfere at its will is that the interests of the minority will be disregarded and crushed out under the omnipotent force of a popular vote. But that fear ought not to lead us to carry our doctrine further than is just. I have heard it stated — and I confess with some surprise — as an article of Conservative opinion that paternal Government — that is to say, the use of the machinery of Government for the benefit of the people — is a thing in itself detestable and wicked. I am unable to subscribe to that doctrine, either politically or historically. I do not believe it to have been a doctrine of the Conservative party at any time. On the contrary, if you look back, even to the earlier years of the present century, you will find the opposite state of things; you will find the Conservative party struggling to confer benefits — perhaps ignorantly and unwisely, but still sincerely — through the instrumentality of the State, and resisted by a severe doctrinaire resistance from the professors of Liberal opinions. When I am told that it is an essential part of Conservative opinion to resist any such benevolent action on the part of the State, I should expect Bentham to turn in his grave; it was he who first taught the doctrine that the State should never interfere, and any one less like a Conservative than Bentham it would be impossible to conceive... The Conservative party has always leaned — perhaps unduly leaned — to the use of the State, as far as it can properly be used, for the improvement of the physical, moral, and intellectual condition of our people, and I hope that that mission the Conservative party will never renounce, or allow any extravagance on the other side to frighten them from their just assertion of what has always been its true and inherent principles."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"We must learn this rule, which is true alike of rich and poor — that no man and no class of men ever rise to any permanent improvement in their condition of body or of mind except by relying upon their own personal efforts. The wealth with which the rich man is surrounded is constantly tempting him to forget the truth, ad you see in family after family men degenerating from the position of their fathers because they live sluggishly and enjoy what has been placed before them without appealing to their own exertions. The poor man, especially in these days, may have a similar temptation offered to him by legislation, but this same inexorable rule will work. The only true lasting benefit which the statesman can give to the poor man is so to shape matters that the greatest possible opportunity for the exercise of his own moral and intellectual qualities shall be offered to him by the law; and therefore it is that in my opinion nothing that we can do this year, and nothing that we did before, will equal in the benefit that it will confer upon the physical condition, and with the physical will follow the moral too, of the labouring classes in the rural districts, that measure for free education which we passed last year. It will have the effect of bringing education home to many a family which hitherto has not been able to enjoy it, and in that way, by developing the faculties which nature has given to them, it will be a far surer and a far more valuable aid to extricate them from any of the sufferings or hardships to which they may be exposed than the most lavish gifts of mere sustenance that the State could offer."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"[A]ll these successive triumphs of research, Dalton’s, Kirchhoff’s, Mendeléeff’s, greatly as they have added to our store of knowledge, have gone but little way to solve the problem which the elementary atoms have for centuries presented to mankind. What the atom of each element is, whether it is a movement, or a thing, or a vortex, or a point having inertia, whether there is any limit to its divisibility, and, if so, how that limit is imposed, whether the long list of elements is final, or whether any of them have any common origin, all these questions remain surrounded by a darkness as profound as ever. The dream which lured the alchemists to their tedious labours, and which may be said to have called chemistry into being, has assuredly not been realised, but it has not yet been refuted. The boundary of our knowledge in this direction remains where it was many centuries ago. The next discussion... to find unsolved riddles which have hitherto defined the scrutiny of science, would be the question of... the ether. The ether occupies a highly anomalous position in the world of science. It may be described as a half-discovered entity. I dare not use any less pedantic word than entity to designate it, for it would be a great exaggeration of our knowledge if I were to speak of it as a body or even as a substance. When nearly a century ago Young and Fresnel discovered that the motions of an incandescent particle were conveyed to our eyes by undulation, it followed that between our eyes and the particle there must be something to undulate. In order to furnish that something, the notion of the ether was conceived, and for more than two generations the main, if not the only, function of the word ether has been to furnish a nominative case to the verb 'to undulate.' Lately, our conception of this entity has received a notable extension. One of the most brilliant of the services which Professor Maxwell has rendered to science has been the discovery that the figure which expressed the velocity of light also expressed the multiplier required to change the measure of static or passive electricity into that of dynamic or active electricity. The interpretation... is that, as light and the electric impulse move approximately at the same rate through space, it is probable that the undulations which convey them are undulations of the same medium. And as induced electricity penetrates through everything, or nearly everything, it follows that the ether through which its undulations are propagated must pervade all , whether empty or full, whether occupied by opaque matter or transparent matter, or by no matter at all. The attractive experiments by which the late Professor Herz illustrated the electric vibrations of the ether will only be alluded to by me... But the mystery of the ether... remains even more inscrutable than before. Of this all-pervading entity we know absolutely nothing except that it can be made to undulate. ...And even its solitary function of undulating, ether performs in an abnormal fashion which has caused infinite perplexity. All s that we know transmit any blow they have received by waves which undulate backwards and forwards in the path of their own advance. The ether undulates athwart the path of the wave’s advance. The genius of Lord Kelvin has recently discovered... a labile state of equilibrium, in which a fluid that is infinite in its extent may exist, and may undulate in this eccentric fashion without outraging the laws of mathematics. ...[I]t leaves our knowledge of the ether in a very rudimentary condition. It has no known qualities except one, and that quality is in the highest degree anomalous and inscrutable. ...It is not easy to fit in the theory of electrical ether waves with the phenomena of positive and negative electricity, and as to the true significance and cause of those counteracting and complementary forces, to which we give the provisional names of negative and positive, we know about as much now as Franklin knew a century and a half ago."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"You must remember what the concert of Europe is. The concert, or, as I prefer to call it, the inchoate federation of Europe, is a body which acts only when it is unanimous...remember this—that this federation of Europe is the embryo of the only possible structure of Europe which can save civilization from the desolating effects of a disastrous war. (Cheers.) You notice that on all sides the instruments of destruction, the piling up of arms, are becoming larger and larger. The powers of concentration are becoming greater, the instruments of death more active and more numerous, and are improved with every year; and each nation is bound, for its own safety's sake, to take part in this competition. These are the things which are done, so to speak, on the side of war. The one hope that we have to prevent this competition from ending in a terrible effort of mutual destruction which will be fatal to Christian civilization—the one hope we have is that the Powers may gradually be brought together, to act together in a friendly spirit on all questions of difference which may arise, until at last they shall be welded in some international constitution which shall give to the world, as a result of their great strength, a long spell of unfettered and prosperous trade and continued peace."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"Lord Salisbury was a counsellor whose honour was above reproach. Britain had been peculiarly fortunate in securing the services of such men for her governors, and nothing gave greater confidence in the future of her people than that. Lord Salisbury had won the reputation of a great statesman in an age of great statesmen. A generation which knew Gladstone, Bismarck, Disraeli and Gambetta ranked him also amongst its giants. He had rendered the greatest service a ruler could give to his race, for it might be said of him that on more than one occasion he alone had preserved the peace of the world. They all recollected how, when they were on the brink of war with the United States of America, the tranquil dignity of Lord Salisbury's despatch and his wise retreat from a false position saved us from that terrible catastrophe. When later on we had trouble with France, and the order of apoplectic patriots in this country were engaged in lashing themselves and their fellow-countrymen into an unreasoning frenzy which would have made war inevitable, Lord Salisbury's calmness was unmoved, and he never uttered a word which could have stung France into the folly and wickedness of retaliation. When the last years of the 19th century were drenched in British blood it was not Lord Salisbury who was mainly responsible for that tragedy. He had passed away, and with him seemed to have vanished the potency of the great political combination which placed him in power and the dominance of which in the counsels of the nation his great sagacity and stately character so long maintained."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"Salisbury's ideas on international society and politics were just as much influenced as his views on internal questions by his pessimism about human nature and his overriding desire for stability and security. He started from the observation that international relations were something like a Hobbesian state of nature, the nations existing in a condition of virtual anarchy, without a common law. It was this that made it ridiculous and dangerous to follow what he lampooned as "the preaching school of politicians" in wishing to direct the country's foreign policy according to the mild and precise morality that was properly applicable to the conduct of individuals... So-called international law helped to mitigate disputes, but it could not stop aggression... A nation had to look after itself: its policy had to be egoistical, and the statesmen who conducted that policy held a trust to act accordingly, even if this meant pursuing in the interest of the state a course of selfishness which their principles would preclude in private life. Salisbury saw that the central factor in international politics was power, and expressed his vivid contempt for the type of thinking about external relations common among his political opponents, which, lulled by years of apparent insular security, had become so abstract and moralistic that it was doubtful whether it could grapple with the hard problems involved in maintaining England's position in an era when her relative physical force in the world was declining."

- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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"So the development of the galleon enabled the rich and powerful colonial empire of Spain to plot the destruction of Elizabeth’s reign and the restoration of a Catholic English state. In 1582, Spain began construction of a new Armada. In light of Spain’s new military project, and with no imminent Turkish threat to English soil, Elizabeth I made the daring move to send the first English ambassador to Constantinople to bargain with Sultan Murad III of the Ottoman Empire. William Harborne was chosen for the task, having travelled to Constantinople throughout the 1570s with British merchants in the Levant Trading Company. Through her ambassador, Elizabeth and Murad corresponded back and forth in Latin, each concerned with Spanish and Habsburg dominance. Murad was quite beguiling in his treatment of the sovereign of England, referring to Elizabeth as:The pride of women who follow Jesus, the most excellent of the ladies honored among the Messiah’s people, the arbitress of the affairs of the Christian community, who trails the skirts of majesty and gravity, the queen of the realm of Ingiltere, Queen Eliz’ade. Ambassador Harborne, in turn, referred to Murad as “the most august and benign Caesar”—illustrating Elizabeth’s view that England did not perceive the Ottomans as conquerors, while also diplomatically casting Murad as the rightful successor of the Byzantine Empire. Elizabeth’s ultimate goal was to persuade Murad to attack Spain as a diversion, so that England would have time to prepare for Spain’s assault of the English coast. While Elizabeth’s proposed Anglo–Ottoman alliance was never quite realized, trade between England and the Ottoman Empire flourished under the Levant Company."

- Elizabeth I of England

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"Commonwealth schoolchildren are often taught one of the key events in British history with the help of a mnemonic: "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded." Beheaded! In 1536 Henry had his wife Anne Boleyn decapitated on trumped-up charges of adultery and treason because she gave him a son that did not survive, and he had become attracted to one of her ladies-in-waiting. Two wives later he suspected Catherine Howard of adultery and sent her to the ax as well. (Tourists visiting the Tower of London can see the chopping block for themselves.) Henry was clearly the jealous type: he also had an old boyfriend of Catherine’s drawn and quartered, which is to say hanged by the neck, taken down while still alive, disemboweled, castrated, decapitated, and cut into four. The throne passed to Henry’s son Edward, then to Henry’s daughter Mary, and then to another daughter, Elizabeth. “Bloody Mary” did not get her nickname by putting tomato juice in her vodka but by having three hundred religious dissenters burned at the stake. And both sisters kept up the family tradition for how to resolve domestic squabbles: Mary imprisoned Elizabeth and presided over the execution of their cousin, Lady Jane Grey, and Elizabeth executed another cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth also had 123 priests drawn and quartered, and had other enemies tortured with bone-crushing manacles, another attraction on display in the Tower. Today the British royal family is excoriated for shortcomings ranging from rudeness to infidelity. You’d think people would give them credit for not having had a single relative decapitated, nor a single rival drawn and quartered."

- Elizabeth I of England

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"Now the Spirit of Love has this Original. God, as considered in himself in his Holy Being, before any thing is brought forth by him or out of him, is only an eternal Will to all Goodness. This is the one eternal immutable God, that from Eternity to Eternity changeth not, that can be neither more nor less nor any thing else but an eternal Will to all the Goodness that is in himself, and can come from him. The Creation of ever so many Worlds or Systems of Creatures adds nothing to, nor takes any thing from this immutable God. He always was and always will be the same immutable Will to all Goodness. So that as certainly as he is the Creator, so certainly is he the Blesser of every created Thing, and can give nothing but Blessing, Goodness, and Happiness from himself because he has in himself nothing else to give. It is much more possible for the Sun to give forth Darkness, than for God to do, or be, or give forth anything but Blessing and Goodness. Now this is the Ground and Original of the Spirit of Love in the Creature; it is and must be a Will to all Goodness, and you have not the Spirit of Love till you have this Will to all Goodness at all Times and on all Occasions. You may indeed do many Works of Love and delight in them, especially at such Times as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your State or Temper or Occurrences in Life. But the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the Spirit of your Life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. For every Spirit acts with Freedom and Universality according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own Life, or be what it is, no more than you need bid Wrath be wrathful. And therefore when Love is the Spirit of your Life, it will have the Freedom and Universality of a Spirit; it will always live and work in Love, not because of This or That, Here or There, but because the Spirit of Love can only love, wherever it is or goes or whatever is done to it. As the Sparks know no Motion but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the Darkness of the Night or in the Light of the Day, so the Spirit of Love is always in the same Course; it knows no Difference of Time, Place, or Persons, but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful Work, equally blessed from itself. For the Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own Blessing and Happiness because it is the Truth and Reality of God in the Soul, and therefore is in the same Joy of Life and is the same Good to itself, everywhere and on every Occasion."

- William Law

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"We have no spiritual need except for a restoration of the divine nature in us. And if this be true, then nothing can be our salvation except that which brings us into a right relationship with God, making us partakers of the divine nature in such a manner and degree as we need. But to reason about life cannot communicate it to the soul, nor can a religion of rational notions and opinions logically deduced from Scripture words bring the reality of the gospel into our lives. Do we not see sinners of all sorts, and men under the power of every corrupt passion, equally zealous for such a religion? How is it then that Christian leaders spend so much time reasoning about Scripture doctrines, and yet remain so blind to the obvious fact that filling the head with right notions of Christ can never give to the heart the reality of His Spirit and life? For logical reasoning about Scripture words and doctrines will do no more to remove pride, hypocrisy, envy, or malice from the soul of man, than logical reasoning about geometry. The one leaves man as empty of the life of God in Christ as the other. Yet the church is filled with professing Christians whose faith has never gone beyond a conviction that the words of Scripture are true. They believe in the Christ of the Bible, but do not know Him personally. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is sound doctrine to their minds, but their lives are empty of His manifest power either to overcome the power of sin within, or to convert others to Christ. Though many are zealous to preach the gospel, yet instead of bringing men to Christ, they seek to reason them into a trust in their own learned opinions about Scripture doctrines. In contrast to Paul, their gospel is in word only, without the demonstration and power of the Spirit. Nor can they see their need of the Holy Spirit to fill them with Christ, and then to overflow through them in rivers of living water to others, because reason tells them that they are sound in the letter of doctrine."

- William Law

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"God could not make the creature to be great and glorious in itself; this is as impossible, as for God to create beings into a state of independence on himself. "The heavens," saith David, "declare the glory of God"; and no creature, any more than the heavens, can declare any other glory but that of God. And as well might it be said, that the firmament shows forth its own handiwork, as that a holy divine or heavenly creature shows forth its own natural power. But now, if all that is divine, great, glorious, and happy, in the spirits, tempers, operations, and enjoyments of the creature, is only so much of the greatness, glory, majesty, and blessedness of God, dwelling in it, and giving forth various births of his own triune life, light, and love, in and through the manifold forms and capacities of the creature to receive them, then we may infallibly see the true ground and nature of all true religion, and when and how we may be said to fulfill all our religious duty to God. For the creature's true religion, is its rendering to God all that is God's, it is its true continual acknowledging all that which it is, and has, and enjoys, in and from God. This is the one true religion of all intelligent creatures, whether in heaven, or on earth; for as they all have but one and the same relation to God, so though ever so different in their several births, states or offices, they all have but one and the same true religion, or right behavior towards God. Now the one relation, which is the ground of all true religion, and is one and the same between God and all intelligent creatures, is this, it is a total unalterable dependence upon God, an immediate continual receiving of every kind, and degree of goodness, blessing and happiness, that ever was, or can be found in them, from God alone. The highest angel has nothing of its own that it can offer unto God, no more light, love, purity, perfection, and glorious hallelujahs, that spring from itself, or its own powers, than the poorest creature upon earth. Could the angel see a spark of wisdom, goodness, or excellence, as coming from, or belonging to itself, its place in heaven would be lost, as sure as Lucifer lost his. But they are ever abiding flames of pure love, always ascending up to and uniting with God, for this reason, because the wisdom, the power, the glory, the majesty, the love, and goodness of God alone, is all that they see, and feel, and know, either within or without themselves. Songs of praise to their heavenly Father are their ravishing delight, because they see, and know, and feel, that it is the breath and Spirit of their heavenly Father that sings and rejoices in them. Their adoration in spirit and in truth never ceases, because they never cease to acknowledge the ALL of God; the ALL of God in the whole creation. This is the one religion of heaven, and nothing else is the truth of religion on earth."

- William Law

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""Except a man be born again of the Spirit, he cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore the new birth from above, or of the Spirit, is that alone which gives true knowledge and perception of that which is the kingdom of God. The history may relate truths enough about it; but the kingdom of God, being nothing else but the power and presence of God, dwelling and ruling in our souls, this can only manifest itself, and can manifest itself to nothing in man but to the new birth. For everything else in man is deaf and dumb and blind to the kingdom of God; but when that which died in Adam is made alive again by the quickening Spirit from above, this being the birth which came at first from God, and a partaker of the divine nature, this knows, and enjoys the kingdom of God. "I am the way, the truth, and the life," says Christ: this record of scripture is true; but what a delusion, for a man to think that he knows and finds this to be true, and that Christ is all this benefit and blessing to him, because he assents, consents, and contends, it may be, for the truth of those words. This is impossible. The new birth is here again the only power of entrance; everything else knocks at the door in vain: I know you not says Christ to everything, but the new birth. "I am the way, the truth and the life"; this tells us neither more nor less, than if Christ had said, I am the kingdom of God, into which nothing can enter, but that which is born of the Spirit."

- William Law

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"What is the difference between man's own righteousness and man's own light in religion? They are strictly the same thing, do one and the same work, namely, keep up and strengthen every evil, vanity, and corruption of fallen nature. Nothing saves a man from his own righteousness, but that which saves and delivers him from his own light. The Jew that was most of all set against the gospel, and unable to receive it was he that trusted in his own righteousness; this was the rich man, to whom it was as hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. But the Christian, that trusts in his own light, is the very Jew that trusted in his own righteousness; and all that he gets by the gospel, is only that which the Pharisee got by the Law, namely, to be further from entering into the kingdom of God than publicans and harlots. … Nothing but God in man can be a godly life in man. Hence is that of the apostle, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." But you will say, can this be true of the spiritual divine letter of the gospel? Can it kill, or give death? Yes, it kills, when it is rested in; when it is taken for divine power, and supposed to have goodness in itself; for then it kills the Spirit of God in man, quenches his holy fire within us, and is set up instead of it. It gives death, when it is built into systems of strife and contention about words, notions, and opinions, and makes the kingdom of God to consist, not in power, but in words. When it is thus used, then of necessity it kills, because it keeps from that which alone is life and can give life. … All the Law, the prophets, and the gospel are fulfilled, when there is in Christ a new creature, having life in and from him, as really as the branch has its life in and from the vine. And when all scripture is thus understood, and all that either Christ says of himself, or his apostles say of him, are all heard, or read, only as one and the same call to come to Christ, in hunger and thirst to be filled and blessed with his divine nature made living within us; then, and then only, the letter kills not, but as a sure guide leads directly to life. But grammar, logic, and criticism knowing nothing of scripture but its words, bring forth nothing but their own wisdom of words, and a religion of wrangle, hatred, and contention, about the meaning of them. But lamentable as this is, the letter of scripture has been so long the usurped province of school-critics, and learned reasoners making their markets of it, that the difference between literal, notional, and living divine knowledge, is almost quite lost in the Christian world. So that if any awakened souls are here or there found among Christians, who think that more must be known of God, of Christ, and the powers of the world to come, than every scholar can know by reading the letter of scripture, immediately the cry of enthusiasm, whether they be priests, or people, is sent after them. A procedure, which could only have some excuse, if these critics could first prove, that the apostle's text ought to be thus read, "The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.""

- William Law

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"That which the learned Jews did with the outward letter of their Law, that same do learned Christians with the outward letter of their gospel. Why did the Jewish church so furiously and obstinately cry out against Christ, Let him be crucified? It was because their letter-learned ears, their worldly spirit and temple-orthodoxy, would not bear to hear of an inward savior, not bear to hear of being born again of his Spirit, of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, of his dwelling in them, and they in him. To have their Law of ordinances, their temple-pomp sunk into such a fulfilling savior as this, was such enthusiastic jargon to their ears, as forced their sober, rational theology, to call Christ, Beelzebub, his doctrine, blasphemy, and all for the sake of Moses and rabbinic orthodoxy. Need it now be asked, whether the true Christ of the gospel be less blasphemed, less crucified, by that Christian theology which rejects an inward Christ, a savior living and working in the soul, as its inward light and life, generating his own nature and Spirit in it, as its only redemption, whether that which rejects all this as mystic madness be not that very same old Jewish wisdom sprung up in Christian theology, which said of Christ when teaching these very things, "He is mad, why hear ye him?" Our blessed Lord in a parable sets forth the blind Jews, as saying of himself, "We will not have this man to reign OVER us." The sober-minded Christian scholar has none of this Jewish blindness, he only says of Christ, we will not have this man to REIGN IN US, and so keeps clear of such mystic absurdity as St. Paul fell into, when he enthusiastically said, "Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me.""

- William Law

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"Show me a man whose heart has no desire, or prayer in it, but to love God with his whole soul and spirit, and his neighbor as himself, and then you have shown me the man who knows Christ, and is known of him; the best and wisest man in the world, in whom the first paradisaical wisdom and goodness are come to life. Not a single precept in the gospel, but is the precept of his own heart, and the joy of that new-born heavenly love which is the life and light of his soul. In this man, all that came from the old serpent is trod under his feet, not a spark of self, of pride, of wrath, of envy, of covetousness, or worldly wisdom, can have the least abode in him, because that love, which fulfilleth the whole Law and the prophets, that love which is God and Christ, both in angels and men, is the love that gives birth, and life, and growth to everything that is either thought, or word, or action in him. And if he has no share or part with foolish errors, cannot be tossed about with every wind of doctrine, it is because, to be always governed by this love, is the same thing as to be always taught of God. On the other hand, show me a scholar as full of learning, as the Vatican is of books, and he will be just as likely to give all that he has for the gospel-pearl, as he would be, if he was as rich as Croesus. Let no one here imagine, that I am writing against all human literature, arts and sciences, or that I wish the world to be without them. I am no more an enemy to them, than to the common useful labors of life. It is literal learning, verbal contention, and critical strife about the things of God, that I charge with folly and mischief to religion. And in this, I have all learned Christendom, both popish and Protestant on my side. For they both agree in charging each other with a bad and false gospel-state, because of that which their learning, logic, and criticism do for them. Say not then, that it is only the illiterate enthusiast that condemns human learning in the gospel kingdom of God. For when he condemns the blindness and mischief of popish logic and criticism, he has all the learned Protestant world with him; and when he lays the same charge to Protestant learning, he has a much larger kingdom of popish great scholars, logically and learnedly affirming the same thing. So that the private person, charging human learning with so much mischief to the church, is so far from being led by enthusiasm, that he is led by all the church-learning that is in the world."

- William Law

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"The eternal Son of God came into the world, only for the sake of this new birth, to give God the glory of restoring it to all the dead sons of fallen Adam. All the mysteries of this incarnate, suffering, dying Son of God, all the price that he paid for our redemption, all the washings that we have from his all-cleansing blood poured out for us, all the life that we receive from eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, have their infinite value, their high glory, and amazing greatness in this, because nothing less than these supernatural mysteries of a God-man, could raise that new creature out of Adam's death, which could be again a living temple, and deified habitation of the Spirit of God. That this new birth of the Spirit, or the divine life in man, was the truth, the substance, and sole end of his miraculous mysteries, is plainly told us by Christ himself, who at the end of all his process on earth, tells his disciples, what was to be the blessed, and full effect of it, namely, that the Holy Spirit, the comforter (being now fully purchased for them) should after his ascension, come in the stead of a Christ in the flesh. "If I go not away," says he, "the comforter will not come; but if I go away, I will send him unto you, and he shall guide you into all truth." Therefore all that Christ was, did, suffered, dying in the flesh, and ascending into heaven, was for this sole end, to purchase for all his followers a new birth, new life, and new light, in and by the Spirit of God restored to them, and living in them, as their support, comforter, and guide into all truth. And this was his, "LO, I AM WITH YOU ALWAY, EVEN UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD."

- William Law

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"But William knew where to pause. He outraged no national prejudice. He abolished no ancient form. He altered no venerable name. He saw that the existing institutions, possessed of the greatest capabilities of excellence, and that stronger sanctions and clearer definitions were alone required to make the practice as admirable as the theory. Thus he imparted to innovation the dignity and stability of antiquity. He transferred to a happier order of things the associations which had attached the people to their former government. As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, invoked its guardian Gods to leave its walls, and to accept the worship and patronize the cause of the besiegers; this great prince, in attacking a system of oppression, summoned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply seated feelings to which it was indebted for protection. As he avoided violent changes, he also abstained from political persecution. A powerful party had strongly and, in the house of Lords, at first successfully, opposed his elevation to the throne. Many of his ministers and generals were falsely, and some justly accused, of correspondence with his exiled competitor. The world has rarely produced a prince whom such circumstances would not have converted into a vindictive and jealous tyrant.—William did not even resort to a system of exclusion. His conduct displayed a lofty scorn of suspicion which was at once the highest magnanimity and the highest wisdom. He would see nothing.—He would believe nothing.—He fearlessly surrounded his person and his throne with pardoned enemies and calumniated friends, and thus secured the services and conciliated the affection of many whom a less generous policy would have rendered useless or treacherous. By such means was the constitution of England established."

- William III of England

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"I have often thought, with reference to the late War...that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"If there is anything...it is my training, which has given me, whether I can use it or not, a knowledge and a sympathy very difficult for any man to attain who has had an exclusively political training I regard it as of the greatest value to myself that during the formative years of my life, and during the ten and twenty years when I first started work in the world, I worked in close contact with all classes of people in this country, and enjoyed, through no credit to myself, the goodwill which I have inherited from generations that have gone before me and left behind a name for honesty, fair play, right judgment, and kindliness to those with whom they worked. Through that, whether I succeed or not, I believe I have an understanding of the mind of the people of the country which I could have gained in no other way. It is through this that I have that ineradicable belief and faith in our people which sustains me through good times and evil, and it is because of this that I have every confidence that, whatever troubles may come to this country, or in this country at any time, the native strength and virtue of our people will overcome everything. There is only one thing which I feel is worth giving one's whole strength to, and that is the binding together of all classes of our people in an effort to make life in this country better in every sense of the word. That is the main end and object of my life in politics."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"I often wonder if all the people in this country realise the inevitable changes that are coming over the industrial system in England...owing to the peculiar circumstances of my own life, I have seen a great deal of this evolution taking place before my own eyes. I worked for many years in an industrial business, and had under me a large number, or what was then a large number, of men...I was probably working under a system that was already passing. I doubt if its like could have been found in any of the big modern industrial towns of this country, even at that time. It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man on the ground, a place where I was able to talk with the men not only about the troubles in the works, but troubles at home where strikes and lock-outs were unknown. It was a place where the fathers and grandfathers of the men then working there had worked, and where their sons went automatically into the business. It was also a place where nobody ever "got the sack," and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less concerned in efficiency than is this generation, and where a number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the handle of a wheelbarrow, smoking their pipes. Oddly enough, it was not an inefficient community. It was the last survivor of that type of works, and ultimately became swallowed up in one of those great combinations towards which the industries of to-day are tending."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"...one day there came a great strike in the coalfields. It was one of the earlier strikes, and it became a national strike. We tried to carry on as long as we could, but of course it became more and more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after furnace was damped down; the chimneys erased to smoke, and about 1,000 men who had no interest in the dispute that was going on were thrown out of work through no fault of their own, at a time when there was no unemployment benefit. I confess that that event set me thinking very hard. It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men, because I looked upon them as my own family, and it hit me very hard—I would not have mentioned this only it got into the Press two or three years ago—and I made an allowance to them, not a large one, but something, for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt that they were being so unfairly treated. But there was more in it really than that. There was no conscious unfair treatment, of these men by the miners. It simply was that we were gradually passing into a new state of industry, when the small firms and the small industries were being squeezed out. Business was all tending towards great amalgamations on the one side of employers and on the other side of the men...We have to see what wise statesmanship can do to steer the country through this time of evolution, until we can get to the next stage of our industrial civilisation."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"In this great problem which is facing the country in years to come, it may be from one side or the other that disaster may come, but surely it shows that the only progress that can be obtained in this country is by those two bodies of men—so similar in their strength and so similar in their weaknesses—learning to understand each other, and not to fight each other...we are moving forward rapidly from an old state of industry into a newer, and the question is: What is that newer going to be? No man, of course, can say what form evolution is taking. Of this, however, I am quite sure, that whatever form we may see...it has got to be a form of pretty close partnership, however that is going to be arrived at. And it will not be a partnership the terms of which will be laid down, at any rate not yet, in Acts of Parliament, or from this party or that. It has got to be a partnership of men who understand their own work, and it is little help that they can get really either from politicians or from intellectuals. There are few men fitted to judge, to settle and to arrange the problem that distracts the country to-day between employers and employed. There are few men qualified to intervene who have not themselves been right through the mill. I always want to see, at the head of these organisations on both sides, men who have been right through the mill, who themselves know exactly the points where the shoe pinches, who know exactly what can be conceded and what cannot, who can make their reasons plain; and I hope that we shall always find such men trying to steer their respective ships side by side, instead of making for head-on collisions."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"We find ourselves, after these two years in power, in possession of perhaps the greatest majority our party has ever had, and with the general assent of the country. Now, how did we get there? It was not by promising to bring this Bill in; it was because, rightly or wrongly, we succeeding in creating an impression throughout the country that we stood for stable Government and for peace in the country between all classes of the community...We have our majority; we believe in the justice of this Bill which has been brought in to-day, but we are going to withdraw our hand, and we are not going to push our political advantage home at a moment like this. Suspicion which has prevented stability in Europe is the one poison that is preventing stability at home, and we offer the country to-day this: We, at any rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We stand for peace. We stand for the removal of suspicion in the country. We want to create an atmosphere, a new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new age, in which the people can come together. We abandon what we have laid our hands to. We know we may be called cowards for doing it. We know we may be told that we have gone back on our principles. But we believe we know what at this moment the country wants, and we believe it is for us in our strength to do what no other party can do at this moment, and to say that we at any rate stand for peace...Although I know that there are those who work for different ends from most of us in this House, yet there are many in all ranks and all parties who will re-echo my prayer: "Give peace in our time, O Lord.""

- Stanley Baldwin

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"Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike...In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude...of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment...What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"The mystery, the romance, the coincidence of real life far transcends the mystery and the romance and the coincidence of fiction. I would like at the beginning of my remarks to remind hon. Members of something that has always struck me as one of the strangest and most romantic coincidences that have entered into our political life. Far away in time, in the dawn of history, the greatest race of the many races then emerging from prehistoric mists was the great Aryan race. When that race left the country which it occupied in the western part of Central Asia, one great branch moved west, and in the course of their wanderings they founded the cities of Athens and Sparta; they founded Rome; they made Europe, and in the veins of the principal nations of Europe flows the blood of their Aryan forefathers. The speech of the Aryans which they brought with them has spread through out Europe. It has spread to America. It has spread to the Dominions beyond the seas. At the same time, one branch went south, and they crossed the Himalayas. They went into the Punjab and they spread through India, and, as an historic fact, ages ago, there stood side by side in their ancestral land the ancestors of the English people and the ancestors of the Rajputs and of the Brahmins. And now, after aeons have passed, the children of the remotest generations from that ancestry have been brought together by the inscrutable decree of Providence to set themselves to solve the most difficult, the most complicated political problem that has ever been set to any people of the world."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"I want, if I may, to address a few words to the Opposition [Labour Party]...Whatever may be said of this Parliament in years to come and whatever may be said of the right hon. Gentleman's party, I believe that full tribute will be given to him and to his friends. As I and those on these benches who take part in the daily work of the House so well know, the Labour party as a whole have helped to keep the flag of Parliamentary government flying in the world through the difficult periods through which we have passed. They were nearly wiped out at the polls. Coming back with 50 Members, with hardly a man among them with experience of government, many would have thrown their hands in. But from the first day the right hon. Gentleman led his party in this House, they have taken their part as His Majesty's Opposition—and none but those who have been through the mill in opposition know what the day-to-day work is—with no Civil Service behind them, they have equipped themselves for debate after debate and held their own and put their case. I want to say that partly because I think it is due, and partly because I know that they, as I do, stand in their heart of hearts for our Constitution and for our free Parliament, and that has been preserved in the world against all difficulties and against all dangers."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"I put before the whole House my own views with an appalling frankness. From 1933, I and my friends were all very worried about what was happening in Europe. You will remember at that time the Disarmament Conference was sitting in Geneva. You will remember at that time there was probably a stronger pacifist feeling running through this country than at any time since the War. I am speaking of 1933 and 1934...My position as the leader of a great party was not altogether a comfortable one. I asked myself what chance was there...within the next year or two of that feeling being so changed that the country would give a mandate for rearmament? Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain. I think the country itself learned by certain events that took place during the winter of 1934–35 what the perils might be to it. All I did was to take a moment perhaps less unfortunate than another might have been, and we won the election with a large majority...[In 1935] we got from the country—with a large majority—a mandate for doing a thing that no one, 12 months before, would have believed possible."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"With millions of others I had prayed hard at the time of Dunkirk and never did prayer seem to be more speedily answered to the full. And we prayed for France and the next day she surrendered. I thought much, and when I went to bed I lay for a long time vividly awake. And I went over in my mind what had happened, concentrating on the thoughts that you had dwelt on, that prayer to be effective must be in accordance with God's will, and that by far the hardest thing to say from the heart and indeed the last lesson we learn (if we ever do) is to say and mean it, 'Thy will be done.' And I thought what mites we all are and how we can never see God's plan, a plan on such a scale that it must be incomprehensible. And suddenly for what must have been a couple of minutes I seemed to see with extraordinary and vivid clarity and to hear someone speaking to me. The words at the time were clear, but the recollection of them had passed when I seemed to come to, as it were, but the sense remained, and the sense was this. 'You cannot see the plan'; then 'Have you not thought there is a purpose in stripping you one by one of all the human props on which you depend, that you are being left alone in the world? You have now one upon whom to lean and I have chosen you as my instrument to work with my will. Why then are you afraid?' And to prove ourselves worthy of that tremendous task is our job."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"The truth is that Mr. Baldwin is doing a very remarkable work. He is restoring the whole quality and tone of British politics. In abeyance during the war, political life suffered a serious lowering of standard in the insidious and pervasive influence of Mr. Lloyd George. Superb as he was in a crisis, Mr. Lloyd George's purely political methods were tainted. Mr. Baldwin has brought into public life a pleasant savour, freshness and health. It is the fragrance of the fields, the flavour of apple and filbert and hazel hut, all the unpretentious, simple, wholesome, homely but essential qualities, suggestions, traditions of England, that Mr. Baldwin has substituted for the over-charged, heavy-laden decadent atmosphere of post-war days. He has shown the nation...that, in the modern world, there is a place and an essential place for the stedfast, disinterested, self-reliant and modest qualities of the English gentleman... In his shrewd and deep simplicity of character, his patience, his passion for the community and for its welfare, his refusal to treat his fellow-countrymen as enemies, perhaps, too, in an occasional gaucheness, a tendency to expose himself gratuitously to the almost contemptuous criticism of persons of a more complete "trade finish," and, most certainly, in an essential loneliness of spirit, however well hidden under a quizzical and cheerful companionableness, it is Abraham Lincoln whom Mr. Baldwin recalls. And, further, like Lincoln, Mr. Baldwin, it is clear, has that rarest and finest of all the qualities of a leader—the power of liberating and calling in aid the deeper moral motives that lie in the hearts of men."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"[I]t was Stanley Baldwin...who personified the spirit of the age to a greater degree than any other man. So well indeed did he focus the aspirations of his countrymen and reflect them back that the epoch seemed to take its character from him, as the Victorian age had from Queen Victoria... As a man and as prime minister, Baldwin was patient, slow-moving, whimsical, blessed with a fine sense of humour; ruminative; shrewd and wise within his limits. He never drove his colleagues; a kindly man, he was, as he himself admitted, a bad butcher... His kindliness and gentleness also made it impossible for him to ruthlessly attack his political opponents... Baldwin, believing as he did that considerateness was "the central English virtue", hated strife, shrank from conflict, constantly sought to heal division and bitterness, whether in his own cabinets, the country or the world. In this too he personified the deepest feelings of his countrymen. His speeches seldom manifested combative argument; instead they evoked moods; he was a Delius or a Debussy among political speakers. And the favourite mood was one of a sunset calm and nostalgia, in which the British nation, like an old couple in retirement enjoying the peaceful ending of the day, contemplated some sweep of English landscape and hearkened to the distant church bells. Nothing could have been more congenial to the contemporary British temperament than this tranquillity, in which desperate problems or dangers could be put out of mind, and energetic, possibly painful, action shirked or put off; nothing could have been more welcome to his hearers than this evocation of all things kindly, gentle and decent... Baldwin, Victorian that he was, saw politics – even international politics – as he saw the whole of human life, in terms of religion; of, in his own words, "doing secular acts from a spiritual motive". He believed that it "is precisely these values of right and wrong, of good and evil, of honesty and courage, which matter supremely for religion and national life...moral values, eternal in their quality, transient in their form and application, are the foundation of a country's greatness..." ... Such were the rulers and such was the nation to which befell after the Great War the task of preserving the power of England."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"Baldwin did not succeed as "a man of the highest character" until the election of 1924. What his victory then showed was that his function was to tie together the moral, industrial, agrarian, libertarian, Anglican and nonconformist bodies of resistance in a not yet fully demagogic combination of naïveté, decency and understatement... If Baldwin ever wanted to do anything positive with power, December 1923 seems to have cured him. Thereafter at the same time as a rural social order was passing, he invented a mindless rural persona which, through a new image of pipe-smoking simplicity, aimed to lessen the distance from an electorate whose voting practice at last had shown that "at core...the working man [was] sound". He peddled a modest morality which, even if not "the old England of the villages...getting a bit of its own back for once", made a point of distinguishing its own reputation from the reputations attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Rothermere the "lecher", Northcliffe the syphilitic, Derby the pantaloon, Birkenhead the drunk, Beaverbrook the adventurer, Horne the "Scotch cad", commercial traveller and smooth ladies' man, Salvidge the "Tammany boss" with his hand in the till and the moral and political indecency of Lloyd George... There can still be no doubting the intention of the nervous imagination with which the "real pen" in Kipling's family approached the task of governing a nation in which a million men had died and 8½ million women had got the vote since Birkenhead's sword had first been sharpened."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"Stanley Baldwin embodied many of the characteristic qualities of the people of this country. He had an intense love of his country and its traditions and its literature, but, above all, he admired its sanity, steadfastness, courage and leadership during all the upheavals and storms that have beset the world. His greatest attribute was tolerance. He hated quarrels and disputes and was ever concerned to bring about and foster a better understanding and good will between all peoples. ... [H]e was guided throughout by his own sturdy common sense and his passionate devotion to his country. His supreme aim was to maintain the position of Britain in the Commonwealth of Nations—as mediator and friendly arbiter and, above all, as moral leader and guide. He was a master of English, and many of his speeches reached the high level which places good prose on the same lofty plane as good poetry... They were so lofty in ideal and couched in such fine and noble language, that already they have passed into the rich store of English classics. He was the soul of honour; honest, generous and loyal. He was modest, he was shy, but, when once he had extended his friendship to anyone it was an abiding friendship which never faltered, and was always most warm when it was most needed. Those of us who were fortunate in possessing that friendship will always cherish it, and particularly shall we recall his kindliness and his encouragement to those of a younger generation than his own. In paying our tribute to Lord Baldwin we salute a great democrat, a true Englishman and a constant lover of peace and concord."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"If there was one issue above all others about which Stanley Baldwin cared deeply, it was understanding in industry. It was his life ambition to try to make a contribution in this sphere, and I think that he achieved it. Some here will recall...the last speech that Stanley Baldwin ever made in this House. It was on 5th May, 1937. Negotiations in the coalfields were not going well; there was tension which was reflected in a Debate in this House. Stanley Baldwin felt that this was a situation to which he could make his last contribution as a Member of this House, and he did so simply, sincerely and successfully. When I saw Lord Baldwin last, only a few weeks ago, it was of that speech he spoke to me. It was for speeches like these, and actions like these that he would, I am sure, wish to be remembered, and without doubt they played their part in promoting national unity for the ordeal which lay ahead... Stanley Baldwin was a patient and tolerant man of wide human sympathies. He knew his fellow countrymen and found friends among them in every walk of life. Anything in the nature of class consciousness or snobbery was anathema to him. He was incapable of vindictiveness or rancour and rarely showed resentment even at the harshest sayings of his critics. His strength as a Parliamentarian—and it was a formidable strength—lay rather in the reserve and reasonableness with which he would state his case... [H]e was in all things essentially, characteristically English an Englishman who worked in industry and who loved the countryside."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"This administration under Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and that of Mr. Baldwin, which followed a year later, were marked by much industrial strife, culminating in the General Strike of 1926. Baldwin's handling of this critical phase was deft and sure. He sensed unerringly, as he was to do later during the abdication of King Edward VIII, the British people's sentiments and led them without hesitation. In the aftermath of the General Strike, he rejected vengeful acts. No British statesman in this century has done so much to kill class distinctions nor felt them. It was his policy to fuse Disraeli's two nations and his success is no mean monument. If in foreign affairs there were faults of omission, on the home front he practised a positive statesmanship which influenced the future. It was his faith in the British people and his conviction that they should be led in no selfish spirit of class advantage, that drew many of the younger men in his party towards him and held their loyalty. We had seen British soldiers fight and die together, we did not see why the nation should not live together and did not think Socialism necessary to make this possible. Baldwin was the antithesis of the hard-faced men who were alleged to have dominated the Conservative Party immediately after the first world war. In character and purpose he expressed what we wanted to achieve in politics at home."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"Baldwin had made a deep impression, upon all those who heard it, by his broadcast in the previous election. The radio broadcast...was used effectively for the first time in 1924... Baldwin had adopted a method—afterwards perfected by President Roosevelt—of what was to be called "the fireside chat". He was simple, clear, moderate, and seemed to remember the vital point that in a radio speech...the audience is confined to two or three people in their own homes. They want talk, not a speech... At the time of the General Strike his wisdom and sympathy impressed us all, as had his famous speech on the Political Levy Bill the year before... He affected to dislike "intellectuals". But that is a common pose of men of high intellectual qualifications; and Baldwin was certainly much more of a sensitive artist than of a rugged countryman. For he was half Celt... Even to the most superficial observer it was clear that Baldwin operated at his best in a crisis, and this was followed by a need for rest and recuperation. He was highly strung, nervous, and indeed the opposite in almost every way to the "image"...which the party machine built up of him. It was said of Lord Liverpool that the secret of his policy was that he had none. To some extent, this was true of Baldwin also. Protection, "safeguarding", defence, above all European problems, did not excite him unduly. He was not a great administrator. He was an influence, and an influence for good. The fact that he commanded the respect and even affection of the Labour Opposition confirmed our admiration for our leader."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"He ambled along, dilatory always, but instinctively astute. He misled everyone but responded quickly to popular moods. I learnt from close friends of his that fear of war was always a principal motive of his policy, or lack of it... He knew, like Chamberlain after him, that rearmament was the first step to another German war, and there was truth in the accusation made by his Right-Wing critics that he and MacDonald obstructed the increases of British defence that would normally have been considered necessary if Britain was to defend the Empire without powerful allies. Baldwin was never an Imperialist. At the same time, he did nothing to make the Disarmament Conference a reality and everything to destroy the alternative policy of collective security. His fear and hatred of war were perfectly sincere and he ended his famous 'the-bomber-will-always-get-through' speech by an earnest appeal to youth to prevent such a horror... What was the key to Baldwin?...It was the Worcestershire countryside and the works of Mary Webb, a warm-hearted popularizer of country life, not the ideas and values of his cousin, Rudyard Kipling, which appealed to him. In short, he was a 'Little Englander'. His disliked foreigners and believed that England could not survive another war. Big ideas like the League were dangerous, but the British people would fight for their interests if sufficiently hard-pressed. They might have to arm against Hitler, and though he did not much care about the Empire, he thought it treasonable to talk, as many were doing, about returning the colonies to Germany... He drew contrast between the tranquil, old-world life of the countryside...and the dire results of a civilization of mechanical speed, ruthlessly binding every worker to a conveyor belt... Humane, kindly, the outlook of a genial country gentleman, not of Kipling, and not - no, certainly not, of the Federation of British Industries... He had the right qualities of leading a coalition. He acted like a Conservative, spoke like a Liberal and was always in words and actions a true representative of the great British middle-class."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"The central figure is beyond question that of Mr. (now Lord) Baldwin... He was Prime Minister when the German rearmament reached dimensions which clearly necessitated a national effort in response. He shut his eyes to the evidence before him. He procrastinated when the evidence could no longer be ignored. He feared opposition from the electorate, but he neither tested the will of the people by a declaration of policy nor attempted to guide it by informing them of the danger which confronted them. He vacated his office with the nation unprepared—unprepared even to prepare... It was only, however, the fateful period in history which began in January 1933 that revealed most fully these defects, of an intermittent will to action and a disinclination to work at distasteful tasks, and made them a great national disaster. He lulled the growing anxiety of the nation by a pledge of air parity with the nearest Power within striking distance. He did nothing to implement it. In one of the most extraordinary confessions a Prime Minister has ever made he has admitted that he refrained from ever proposing the policy which he thought the safety of the country required because he believed it would be unwelcome to the people—the public whom he had not only not instructed but had led into a fool's paradise. Not absence of vision, nor incapacity to judge the needs of a situation, or even to act when the will was there—but a recurrent lethargy of the will was his undoing—and ours."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"One well-remembered speech was made by Mr. Baldwin...on the 6th March 1925. The occasion was the discussion of a Private Member's Bill dealing with the political funds of the Trade Unions. Mr. Baldwin...strongly deprecated raising this controversial issue when at that time it was most important that nothing should be done to create the suspicion that Parliament was attacking the Trade Unions... He concluded his speech with the words: "Although I know that there are those who work for different ends from most of us in this House, yet there are many in all ranks in all Parties who will re-echo my prayer, 'Give peace in our time, O Lord.'" It was significant that the greatest volume of cheers which followed the conclusion of Mr. Baldwin's speech came not from his own Party but from the Labour benches. I hardly remember a speech which made at the time it was delivered such a deep impression upon the House of Commons. It was a revelation of the real Stanley Baldwin. It showed a sympathy with the poor, and intense desire to promote co-operation between capital and labour. No one could doubt his sincerity and his good intentions. The speech revealed the deep-seated and fundamental differences between the sane and sober Conservatism of Mr. Baldwin and the old Toryism of the great body of his Party. It was a speech which will always be remembered by those who had the privilege of hearing it."

- Stanley Baldwin

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"My right hon. Friend the Member for Epping attacked the Government for basing its whole foreign policy upon disarmament. But that is a policy to which we are all parties—to which every signatory, every upholder, of the Covenant of the League of Nations, is a party... It is a responsibility which we shouldered when the League of Nations began its life. The right hon. Gentleman said: "Your Disarmament Conference is not making much progress it is making things worse, and not better. Why do you not go back to the old practice? Why do you not do as we did before the War—carry on this work by conference and conciliation between embassies through diplomatic channels?" I will give him the answer. The pre-War experiment was not particularly successful. The pre-War experiment was followed by 1914. We do not want to repeat 1914 and, to avoid that repetition, it is surely worth giving this new method a trial... My right hon. Friend warned us not to press France to disarmament. [Mr. Churchill: Unduly.] He was rather an advocate, I think, of an armed France and a disarmed Germany. It is, of course, arguable that the maintenance of such a balance, if it could be called a balance, might continue for a period of years, short or long, but is there anyone who sincerely believes that it is possible to provide a basis for a reconstruction of Europe—to ensure the peace of Europe over any long period of time upon such a foundation as that?"

- Anthony Eden

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"At this hour it is surely not necessary to repeat that it is neither an African dispute, nor an incident in expansionist rivalry between two nations, nor a colonial war, but a vital test of the efficacy of the League and of the loyalty of its members to the Covenant to which they have put their names. We have tried in these post-war years to build up a new order by means of which we hope to spare mankind in the future the scourge of war. We who are members of the League have sought collectively to create a new ideal and a new international order. If we fail, even though that failure be not final, we shall have shattered for a generation, and it may be more, the hopes which mankind has placed in this new endeavour. Who can tell what the consequences of such disappointment may be? If, on the other hand, the League of Nations can on this occasion prove itself able to withstand the strain placed upon it—and I believe it will—then, even though many serious problems will yet surround us, the world will face them fortified in its faith and inspired to fresh endeavour by the victory of its own ideals. For the first time, I believe, in the history of the world, an attempt is being made to operate an international system based not merely upon power but upon certain fixed principles of equity. This is an adventure in which we may all be proud to play our part."

- Anthony Eden

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"I thought that the essential factor we have to remember in deciding on our plans and policy for the future is that in the German character the unquestioned authority of the State is what counts for most. The average German is the instrument of the State to an extent which is incomprehensible to us. He belongs to the State, and the State does not belong to him. I see no signs of that in this country, and I believe that the authority we enjoy in the world to-day is precisely because we represent the complete antithesis of the German State conception. This acceptance of the State, since the days of the Prussians, has made Germans ready to aid any leader who wants to guide them into fields of aggression. With the German, the larger the State the more remote and the more majestic is the authority he is prepared to follow into battle or wherever he is led. Germans believe that it is the destiny of their race to be the dominating Power in Europe; that is far more important to them than either the freedom of the individual or the dignity of any particular man or woman. Unless we are seized of that we do not understand the foundation on which Nazi doctrine was so easily superimposed. It was acceptable to the average German because it expressed in aggressive forms the belief which the average German has had for 200 years or more."

- Anthony Eden

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"What is undeniable is that the Munich analogy has had a strong hold over statesmen and -women ever since and has been applied liberally to justify a whole range of policies. Anthony Eden, the British prime minister who succeeded Churchill, employed the analogy to disastrous effect when he tried to deal with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian dictator in 1936. Like many leaders in what was then called the Third World, Nasser was prepared to take assistance from both sides in the Cold War. He bought arms from Communist Czechoslovakia but also tried to get a loan from the United States to build the Aswan Dam on the Nile. John Foster Dulles, the American secretary of state, was unable to get the loan 'through Congress. In retaliation and to raise the funds he needed, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which up to that point had been owned and managed by the British. Eden's reaction was unequivocal. As British foreign secretary in the 1930s, he had dealt with the dictators. Now he and the world were facing the same thing again. As he wrote in his memoirs, ‘'Success in a number of adventures involving the breaking of agreements in Abyssinia, in the Rhineland, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, in Albania had persuaded Hitler and Mussolini that the democracies had not the will to resist, that they could march with the certitude of success from signpost to signpost along the road which led to world dominion.... As my colleagues and I surveyed the scene in those autumn months of 1936, we were determined that the like should not come again.” But Nasser was no Hitler intent on conquering his neighbours. Rather, he was a nationalist who badly needed resources to develop his own country and stake out a position of leadership in the Middle East. The British action in collusion with the French and the Israelis to seize the Canal Zone was not only badly conceived; it rallied the Egyptians and the wider Arab world to Nasser’s side. Furthermore, it infuriated the Americans who, far from seeing a repeat of the 1930s, worried about the moral impact on other Third World countries."

- Anthony Eden

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"Unlike Chamberlain’s summits, the leaders came to Yalta with detailed briefing books and a body of specialist advisors, including all three foreign ministers, and in many cases they acted on policies already laid down. The deals on prisoners of war, for instance, or Soviet territorial demands in Asia had already been established in outline, while Maisky’s presentation on reparations followed the lines of a report he had drawn up over the winter. At a number of key points, however, the leaders took their own line. Stalin rejected the advice of Beria and others to offer the West more fig leaves on the Polish government. Ignoring his advisors, FDR succumbed to British pressure to accept three Soviet votes in the UN. And Churchill batted aside Eden’s apt questions about why the Western Allies needed to buy Soviet entry into the Far Eastern war. But the British foreign secretary was very effective in obtaining a greater role for postwar France than any of the Big Three, left alone, would have preferred. In September 1938, Halifax had— belatedly—exerted influence in Cabinet, but he never appeared at the conference table. Eden, in contrast, was a real presence at Yalta—vocal if rejected over the Far East, influential over France, and backing up Churchill robustly on Germany. He was far more significant at Yalta than his counterparts, particularly Stettinius. As Eden and Cadogan remarked, Stalin was indeed a skilful negotiator, letting the others do the talking and saving his succinct remarks for the right moment. Nevertheless Churchill’s more bombastic approach should not be underrated: it wore down the other two over France and German reparations. And Roosevelt pushed harder on Poland than the myths might suggest"

- Anthony Eden

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"John Major: What I don't understand, Michael, is why such a complete wimp like me keeps winning everything. Michael Brunson: You've said it, you said precisely that. Major: I suppose Gus will tell me off for saying that, won't you Gus? Brunson: No, no, no … it's a fair point. The trouble is that people are not perceiving you as winning. Major: Oh, I know … why not? Because ... Brunson: Because rotten sods like me, I suppose, don't get the message clear [laughs]. Major: No, no, no. I wasn't going to say that - well partly that, yes, partly because of S-H-one-Ts like you, yes, that's perfectly right. But also because those people who are opposing our European policy have said the way to oppose the Government on the European policy is to attack me personally. The Labour Party started before the last election. It has been picked up and it is just one of these fashionable things that slips into the Parliamentary system and it is an easy way to proceed. Brunson: But I mean you … has been overshadowed … my point is there, not just the fact that you have been overshadowed by Maastricht and people don't ... Major: The real problem is this ... Brunson: But you've also had all the other problems on top - the Mellors, the Mates … and it's like a blanket - you use the phrase 'masking tape' but I mean that's it, isn't it? Major: Even, even, even, as an ex-whip I can't stop people sleeping with other people if they ought not, and various things like that. But the real problem is ... Brunson: I've heard other people in the Cabinet say 'Why the hell didn't he get rid of Mates on Day One?' Mates was a fly, you could have swatted him away. Major: Yeah, well, they did not say that at the time, I have to tell you. And I can tell you what they would have said if I had. They'd have said 'This man was being set up. He was trying to do his job for his constituent. He had done nothing improper, as the Cabinet Secretary told me. It was an act of gross injustice to have got rid of him'. Nobody knew what I knew at the time. But the real problem is that one has a tiny majority. Don't overlook that. I could have all these clever and decisive things that people wanted me to do and I would have split the Conservative Party into smithereens. And you would have said, Aren't you a ham-fisted leader? You've broken up the Conservative Party. Brunson: No, well would you? If people come along and ... Major: Most people in the Cabinet, if you ask them sensibly, would tell you that, yes. Don't underestimate the bitterness of European policy until it is settled - It is settled now. Brunson: Three of them - perhaps we had better not mention open names in this room - perhaps the three of them would have - if you'd done certain things, they would have come along and said, 'Prime Minister, we resign'. So you say 'Fine, you resign'. Major: We all know which three that is. Now think that through. Think it through from my perspective. You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party? Brunson: They create a lot of fuss but you have probably got three damn good ministers in the Cabinet to replace them. Major: Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there? What's the Lyndon Johnson, er, maxim? Brunson: If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow. Major: No, that's not what I had in mind, though it's pretty good."

- John Major

0 likesPrime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandConservative Party (UK) politiciansAutobiographers from the United KingdomAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit. It is a wonderful place – vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it this, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance."

- Charlotte Brontë

0 likesPoets from EnglandNovelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandWomen born in the 19th century
"Have you yet read Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s new work, Letters on the Nature and Development of Man? If you have not, it would be worth your while to do so. Of the impression this book has made on me, I will not now say much. It is the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism I have ever read; the first unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a future life I have ever seen. In judging of such exposition and declaration, one would wish entirely to put aside the sort of instinctive horror they awaken, and to consider them in an impartial spirit and collected mood. This I find difficult to do. The strangest thing is, that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank — to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain — to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do this if he could? Sincerely, for my own part, do I wish to know and find the Truth; but if this be Truth, well may she guard herself with mysteries, and cover herself with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said however, I would not dwell on what I thought; rather, I wish to hear what some other person thinks,--someone whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have time — not otherwise."

- Charlotte Brontë

0 likesPoets from EnglandNovelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandWomen born in the 19th century
"The theatre was full — crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death."

- Charlotte Brontë

0 likesPoets from EnglandNovelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandWomen born in the 19th century
"I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award.""

- Richard Cobden

0 likesBusinesspeople from EnglandPacifistsRight-libertariansAnglicans from the United KingdomMembers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
"I cannot give a stronger proof of the perils which I think surrounds us, than to say that I shall feel it my duty to stop the wheels of Government if I can, in a way which can only be justified by an extraordinary crisis...I do not mean to threaten outbreaks—that the starving masses will come and pull down your mansions; but I say that you are drifting on to confusion without rudder or compass. It is my firm belief that within six months we shall have populous districts in the north in a state of social dissolution. You may talk of repressing the people by the military, but what military force would be equal to such an emergency? ...I do not believe that the people will break out unless they are absolutely deprived of food; if you are not prepared with a remedy, they will be justified in taking food for themselves and their families...Is it not important for Members for manufacturing districts on both sides to consider what they are about? We are going down to our several residences to face this miserable state of things, and selfishness, and a mere instinctive love of life ought to make us cautious. Others may visit the continent, or take shelter in rural districts, but the peril will ere long reach them even there. Will you, then, do what we require, or will you compel us to do it ourselves? This is the question you must answer."

- Richard Cobden

0 likesBusinesspeople from EnglandPacifistsRight-libertariansAnglicans from the United KingdomMembers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
"I cannot believe that the gentry of England will be made mere drumheads to be sounded upon by a Prime Minister to give forth unmeaning and empty sounds, and to have no articulate voice of their own. No! You are the gentry of England who represent the counties. You are the aristocracy of England. Your fathers led our fathers: you may lead us if you will go the right way. But, although you have retained your influence with this country longer than any other aristocracy, it has not been by opposing popular opinion, or by setting yourselves against the spirit of the age. In other days, when the battle and the hunting-fields were the tests of manly vigour, why, your fathers were first and foremost there. The aristocracy of England were not like the noblesse of France, the mere minions of a court; nor were they like the hidalgoes of Madrid, who dwindled into pigmies. You have been Englishmen. You have not shown a want of courage and firmness when any call has been made upon you. This is a new era. It is the age of improvement, it is the age of social advancement, not the age for war or for feudal sports. You live in a mercantile age, when the whole wealth of the world is poured into your lap. You cannot have the advantages of commercial rents and feudal privileges; but you may be what you always have been, if you will identify yourselves with the spirit of the age. The English people look to the gentry and aristocracy of their country as their leaders. I, who am not one of you, have no hesitation in telling you, that there is a deep-rooted, an hereditary prejudice, if I may so call it, in your favour in this country. But you never got it, and you will not keep it, by obstructing the spirit of the age."

- Richard Cobden

0 likesBusinesspeople from EnglandPacifistsRight-libertariansAnglicans from the United KingdomMembers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
"We are on the eve of great changes...We have set an example to the world in all ages; we have given them the representative system. The very rules and regulations of this House have been taken as the model for every representative assembly throughout the whole civilised world; and having besides given them the example of a free press and civil and religious freedom, and every institution that belongs to freedom and civilisation, we are now about giving a still greater example; we are going to set the example of making industry free—to set the example of giving the whole world every advantage of clime, and latitude, and situation, relying ourselves on the freedom of our industry. Yes, we are going to teach the world that other lesson. Don't think there is anything selfish in this, or anything at all discordant with Christian principles. I can prove that we advocate nothing but what is agreeable to the highest behests of Christianity. To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest. What is the meaning of the maxim? It means that you take the article which you have in the greatest abundance, and with it obtain from others that of which they have the most to spare; so giving to mankind the means of enjoying the fullest abundance of earth's goods, and in doing so, carrying out to the fullest extent the Christian doctrine of 'Doing to all men as ye would they should do unto you'."

- Richard Cobden

0 likesBusinesspeople from EnglandPacifistsRight-libertariansAnglicans from the United KingdomMembers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
"Here is an empire in which is the only relic of the oldest civilization of the world—one which, 2,700 years ago, according to some authorities, had a system of primary education—which had its system of logic before the time of Aristotle, and its code of morals before that of Socrates. Here is a country which has had its uninterrupted traditions and histories for so long a period—that supplied silks and other articles of luxury to the Romans 2,000 years ago! They are the very soul of commerce in the East, and one of the wealthiest nations in the world. They are the most industrious people in Asia, having acquired the name of the ants of the East...You find them not as barbarians at home, where they cultivate all the arts and sciences, and where they have carried all, except one, to a point of perfection but little below our own—but that one is war. You have there a people who have carried agriculture to a state of horticulture, and whose great cities rival in population those of the Western world. Now, there must be something in such a people deserving of respect. If in speaking of them we stigmatize them as barbarians, and threaten them with force because we say they are inaccessible to reason, it must be because we do not understand them; because their ways are not our ways, nor our ways theirs. Now, is not so venerable an empire as that deserving of some sympathy—at least of some justice—at the hands of conservative England?"

- Richard Cobden

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"I am not one to advocate the reducing of our navy in any degree below that proportion to the French navy which the exigencies of our service require; and, mind what I say, here is just what the French Government would admit as freely as you would. England has four times, at least, the amount of mercantile tonnage to protect at sea that France has, and that surely gives us a legitimate pretension to have a larger navy than France. Besides, this country is an island; we cannot communicate with any part of the world except by sea. France, on the other hand, has a frontier upon land, by which she can communicate with the whole world. We have, I think, unfortunately for ourselves, about a hundred times the amount of territory beyond the seas to protect, as colonies and dependencies, that France has. France has also twice or three times as large an army as England had. All these things give us a right to have a navy somewhat in the proportion to the French navy which we find to have existed if we look back over the past century. Nobody has disputed it. I would be the last person who would ever advocate any undue change in this proportion. On the contrary—I have said it in the House of Commons, and I repeat it to you—if the French Government showed a sinister design to increase their navy to an equality with ours; then, after every explanation to prevent such an absurd waste, I should vote 100 millions sterling rather than allow that navy to be increased to a level with ours—because I should say that any attempt of that sort without any legitimate grounds, would argue some sinister design upon this country."

- Richard Cobden

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"The motive which inspired those who composed the assemblage was twofold. They wished to show their admiration of, and their gratitude towards, a great Englishman whose sympathetic heart, wisdom, intuition, courage, and praise-worthy eloquence wrought for them a great deliverance in the days of their fathers. They also wished to declare their adherence to the doctrines which he taught, and their determination that the power of those doctrines should not, God helping them, be impaired. What they owed to him and to themselves was to make it clear in the sight of all men that they meant to hold fast to the heritage which he, perhaps more than any other individual, won for them; and that the fruits of the battle which he waged against tremendous odds should not be lightly wrested from them. They were not there to acclaim Cobden as an inspired prophet, but they saw in him a great citizen, a great statesman, a great patriot, and a great and popular leader... Cobden spent his life in pulling down those artificial restrictions and obstructions which at the present time rash and reckless men were seeking to set up again—obstructions not merely to commerce, but also to peace and good will, and mutual understanding; yes, and obstructions to liberty and good government at home. Those who expressed astonishment that the intelligent workman did not look askance at the manufacturer, Cobden, had overlooked the fact that he gave the people cheap food and abundant employment, and did far more—that he exploded the economic basis of class government and class subjection."

- Richard Cobden

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"Cobden's international ideas were based on patriotism and peace, the harmony of classes, reform by constitutional methods, goodwill among men and nations. Cobden...believed in individual liberty and enterprise, in free markets, freedom of opinion and freedom of trade. [His] whole creed was anathema to Karl Marx. He had no sense of patriotism or love of country. He urged what he called "the proletariat" in all countries to overthrow society by a violent revolution, to destroy the middle classes and all employers of labour, whom he denounced as capitalists and slave drivers. He demanded the confiscation of private property and a new dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Just as Cobden interpreted and practised the precepts of Adam Smith, so Lenin interpreted and practised the precepts of Karl Marx. These two great men though dead yet speak. They stand out before the civilised world as protagonists of two systems of political economy, political thought and human society... [W]hen this war is over, we in Britain will certainly have to choose whether our Press and Parliament are to be free, whether we are to be a conscript nation, whether private property and savings are to be secured or confiscated, whether we are to be imprisoned without trial; whether we are again to enjoy the right of buying and selling where and how we please—in short whether were are to be ruled as slaves by the bureaucracy of a Police State or as free men by our chosen representatives. This conflict will be symbolised and personified by Richard Cobden and Karl Marx."

- Richard Cobden

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"I am totally at a loss to understand on what principle of "unnatural selection" you propose to elect Bismarck, of all God's creatures under the sun, a member of the Cobden Club. In the name of common-sense let me ask, what is the raison d'etre of this club? I joined it under the impression that the object of the association was to collect together all such persons as were considered likely to illustrate by their faith and works the particular principles which Cobden had fought for all his life. Now, of these principles, most undoubtedly, the main or pivotable one was that the international relations of mankind should be ruled by mutual love and good-will, arbitration, and the interchange of cotton goods and other good offices, and not by the ultima ratio of the stronger biceps and the newest breechloader. Whatever good Bismarck may have wrought in his generation to himself, his country and mankind, it is certain that he represents, par excellence, the exactly contrary view, and that, to such an extent, that when our great-grandchildren have to get up the history of the nineteenth century, they will to a certainty find Cobden labelled as the representative of the one doctrine—exchange of cotton goods and Christian love internationalism—and Bismarck as the representative of the opposite doctrine—exchange of hard knocks and blood and iron internationalism."

- Richard Cobden

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"So the Corn Laws were repealed, and, as every one knows, all Cobden's predictions were falsified. He was not one to be daunted by the failure of his hopes. Like most Radicals, he lived in a fool's paradise where facts are of no account, and where, if principles prove fallacious, it is not the fault of the optimist who frames them, but of some vile conspirator against the common good. For many years Cobden had declared that repeal would increase the wages of the labouring class; nor was he abashed when he witnessed their speedy fall. It was enough for him to point out that the cost of living had decreased a little more than wages, and he was wholly indifferent to the fact that this argumentative jugglery was what he had been denouncing in his speeches for ten years. And he had a remedy ready. He told the landlords that they must abolish battue-shooting, and, to confront the depression of agriculture, which he had said would never be depressed, he urged the labourers "to set gins and snares upon their allotments and in their gardens to catch all the hares and rabbits they could, and when they caught them, to be sure to put them in their own pots and eat them themselves." This is a sad descent from the dreams of eternal peace, the visions of disbanded armies and of swords beaten into ploughshares, which were wont to decorate the agitator's harangues. The demagogue who once saw in the principle of Free Trade "that which will act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe" was three years later forced to substitute for his multi-coloured visions a humble policy of gins, snares, and boiled rabbits."

- Richard Cobden

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"Unfortunately, that image also concealed a more ambiguous reality. As with so many rulers before him, the new king's good qualities had a dark side. Charles's sense of royal dignity often struck his subjects as mere aloofness; indeed, it cannot be said that he was often generous or possessed of a common touch. Perhaps his punctiliousness compensated for insecurity: over his short stature, his stutter, and his general awkwardness in dealing with people. Unlike his voluble father, Charles was a shy and reticent man who, nevertheless, rarely took advice. He would make a decision or issue an order as a matter of royal prerogative, without consultation, then expect unquestioning obedience, no matter how apparently absurd the demand. He felt no need to explain himself to his parliaments or his people. As a result, his enemies were often able to put their own "spin" on his motives. His authoritarianism was the product of an inflexible mind which saw dissent as disloyalty, retreat as a sign of weakness. That is, unlike James, Charles was very nearly incapabe of compromise or even understanding opposing viewpoints. His court may have been more decorous than his father's, but it was also more narrow. Buckingham was allowed no rival in distributing patronage and politicians out of royal favor received clear signals that they were not welcome. This left the court isolated from opinion in the rest of the country."

- Charles I of England

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"Refusing to recognize the court's authority, Charles stood or sat impassively and disdainfully, but with great dignity, as the prosecution sought to make its case. The spectacle must have been impressive: the largest medieval hall in England packed to the rafters with spectators. At its south end, on several tiers of red velvet benches sat the commissioners: assorted army officers, MPs, and gentlemen, presided over by a heretofore obscure judge, John Bradshaw (1602-59). Before them sat an array of lawyers and clerks, all in black. At the north end and in the upper galleries, crowds of spectators, held back by wooden rails and soldiers in their red coats. On the other side of a hastily constructed wooden partition, in a makeshift dock in the middle of the hall, the magnetic object of all eyes, a solitary figure in black, but for the brilliant blue and silver of the Star and Garter- the king. Given his refusal to make or plead a case, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. King Charles was found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors against the people of England. On January 27 he was condemned to death by beheading. At this point he demanded to speak, but Parliament was not about to let him do so now. Instead, 59 commissioners signed the most notorious death warrant in English history. Years later, upon losing the first English Civil War, Charles I had stated "that if I cannot live as a king, I shall die like a gentleman." He now set about to do precisely that."

- Charles I of England

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"The night before his execution, the king burned his papers and saw his youngest children for the last time. The next morning, January 30, 1649, he rose and, after asking about the weather outside, put on an extra shirt for the walk across St. James' Park to the scaffold: ever concerned with the dignity of his appearance, Charles did not want to create an impression of fear by shivering. He was escorted by armed guard through the park to the Banqueting House at Whitehall- one of those expensive building projects of his father's which had so alienated the English taxpayer. One wonders what he thought as he walked through the hall under its magnificent ceiling- a depiction of his father's apotheosis in heaven by Peter Paul Rubens- and thus the sort of expensive art project which had proved controversial in his own ill-fated reign. At the end of his walk was an open window facing west; outside it a scaffold draped in black, at the center of which was the block. Beyond and below stood a crowd of ordinary Londoners, held back by solders. The king emerged into the gray light of the January day and asked to speak, but, dogged by his weak voice and bad luck to the last, he was inaudible. He then turned to his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Juxon (1582-1663), and remarked that the executioner sent him "from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown." Turning to the block, he knelt down, said a brief prayer, and in signal worked out with the henchman beforehand, stretched out his hands. The axe fell and, as was customary, the executioner raise the late king's head for all to see. It is said that at this sight, which normally elicited cheers, the crowd uttered a deep groan."

- Charles I of England

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"The question then arose- What was the king to do? His friends, even the most sanguine, deemed his cause irretrievably lost. Without money, his supporters ruined by the sacrifices they had already made, his garrisons compelled to plunder as their only means of support, and the country consequently universally disaffected towards the royal cause, it was impossible that the king could carry on the contest any longer. What then was he to do? He had now tried almost all possible courses. He had endeavoured to govern with a parliament, and had failed. He had striven to do so without a parliament: in that also he had failed. Again, he had been induced to call a parliament by which he had been driven into concessions, but they were made grudgingly, in bad faith, and with the clear intention of being resumed as soon as possible: in this course he had also failed. Lastly, he had appealed to the final arbiter of national disputes, and again the result had been adverse to his hopes. His subjects, esteemed the most loyal people in Europe, had met him, front to front, in the open field. His choicest troops, commanded by some of the bravest of the English nobility, had been beaten in many successive engagements, and, finally, had been cut to pieces and utterly destroyed. What now remained for him to do? Peace, upon the best terms that could be obtained, was the ardent longing of every one. The staunchest Cavaliers saw that submission was a bitter but unavoidable necessity. The victorious party must have its way. The cause had been decided in their favor. The losers must submit."

- Charles I of England

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"He believed that the machine of government could not act without him; that if he could only keep the public affairs long enough in the condition of dead-lock to which they were reduced, his enemies would be wearied, or would be forced by the people, into yielding to his terms. His mind was as full as ever of the most exalted notions of the sacred and indefeasible character of his royal authority. All who opposed him were, in his estimation, wicked rebel whom God would judge. It was his place to govern, and that of his people to submit. His sins of misgovernment never occurred to him. Regret that for many years his course of action had been totally wanting in the kingly virtues of justice and fair dealing never entered his mind. It never troubled him that he had sought to govern in defiance of his own concessions, in opposition to the even then acknowledged principles of the constitution, and in breach of his coronation oath. The only things which grieved him were his concessions to the popular fury which himself had roused. While such was Charles' state of mind, peace was out of the question. On the side of parliament, it was clearly seen that when a king sets up his standard against his people, he must conquer or submit; and that if, having failed to conquer, he refuses to submit, he must be deposed. To have yielded to him on the ultimate points of the contest, would have been to have relinquished the fruits of the warfare in which parliament had been victorious. What then was to be done? Simply to follow him through a succession of messages and answers, until it became apparent to the people that the country must be governed without him. That was the course for parliament, but what remained for the king? Nothing but to fall back upon his old course of intrigue."

- Charles I of England

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"Without much talent for intrigue, or even much dexterity in its practice, Charles had great fondness for being engaged in it. In all difficulties it was his resource, and at the time with which we are dealing he was fanatically sanguine that some one or other of his little subtle stratagems would ultimately succeed. We are accustomed to associate the notion of fanaticism with the opposite party only. They concluded that the cause of the parliament was righteous and favored by God because it was successful. Every one sees this to have been a dangerous judging of the ways of Providence from partial results. We can all join in condemning conclusions so presumptuous and so illogical. But the same reasoning was equally rife at Oxford as at Westminster. Charles attributed his want of success in the war to God's anger against him for his concurrence in the death of Stafford. He confidently anticipated the approach of a time when he should have drained the cup of vengeance. Mercy would then, he presumed, take the place of justice, and the storm of heavenly wrath, transferred from him, would fall heavily on the heads of his enemies. To help on the ends of Providence, to expedite, as he supposed, the coming of that happy day, and to gain time until it should dawn, were the objects of the many intrigues in which he was involved during the year 1646."

- Charles I of England

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"Thus goaded, Charles, accompanied by three or four hundred swordsmen- "Cavaliers" we may now call them- went down to the House of Commons. It was January 4, 1642. Never before had a king set foot in the Chamber. When his officers knocked at the door and it was known that he had come in person members of all parties looked upon each other in amazement. His followers beset the doors. All rose at his entry. The Speaker, William Lenthall, quitted his chair and knelt before him. The King, seating himself in the chair, after professing his goodwill to the House, demanded the surrender of indicted Members- Pym, Hampden, Holles, Hazelrigg, and Strode. But a treacherous message from a lady of the Queen's Bedchamber had given Pym a timely warning. The accused Members had already embarked at Westminster steps and were safe amid the train bands and magistrates of the City. Speaker Lenthall could give no information. "I have only eyes to see and ears to hear as the House may direct," he pleaded. The King, already conscious of his mistake, cast his eyes around the quivering assembly. "I see that the birds are flown," he said lamely, and after some civil reassurances he departed at the head of his disappointed, growling adherents. But as he left the Chamber a low, long murmur of "Privilege" pursued him. To this day the Members for the City take their places on the Treasury bench at the opening of a session, in perpetual acknowledgement of the services rendered by the City in protecting the Five."

- Charles I of England

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"What the King said to me the 29th January 1648. being the last time I had the happinesse to see Him. He told me, He was glad I was come, and although He had not time to say much, yet somewhat He had to say to me, which he had not to another, or leave in writing, because He feared their Crueltie was such, as that they would not have permitted Him to write to me. He wished me not to grieve and torment myself for Him, for that would be a glorious death that He should die, it being for the Laws and Liberties of this Land, and for maintaining the true Protestant Religion. He bid me read Bishop Andrews's Sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Politie, and Bishop Laud's Book against Fisher, which would ground me against Poperie. He told me, He had forgiven all His Enemies, and hoped God would forgive them also; and commanded Us, and all the rest of my Brothers & Sisters, to forgive them... Further, He commanded Us all to forgive those people, but never to trust them; for they had been most false to Him, and to those that gave them power, and He feared also to their own souls; And desired me not to grieve for Him, for He should die a Martyr; And that He doubted not but the Lord would settle His Throne upon his Son, and that We should be all happier, then We could have expected to have been, if He had lived: With many other things, which at present I cannot remember."

- Charles I of England

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"He had received from nature a far better understanding, a far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's political theories, and was much more disposed than his father to carry them into practice. He was, like his father, a zealous episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had never been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist much better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles had some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote and spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His taste in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified, though not gracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of little moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but also on principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most esteemed that between him and his subjects there could be nothing of the nature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which he made, there was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge."

- Charles I of England

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"At the same time it became more evident than ever that the King could not be trusted. The vices of Charles had grown upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties and perplexities generally bring out in the strongest light. Cunning is the natural defence of the weak. A prince therefore, who is habitually a deceiver when at the height of power, is not likely to learn frankness in the midst of embarrassments and distresses. Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never was a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly recognised the Houses at Westminster as a legal Parliament, and, at the same time, made a private minute in council declaring the recognition null. He publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against his people: he privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Loraine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists: at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employ every Papist that would serve. He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive at Popery: he privately assured his wife, that he intended to tolerate Popery in England; and he authorised Lord Glamorgan to promise that Popery should be established in Ireland. Then he attempted to clear himself at his agent's expense. Glamorgan received, in the royal handwriting, reprimands intended to be read by others, and eulogies which were to be seen only by himself. To such an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted the King's whole nature, that his most devoted friends could not refrain from complaining to each other, with bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics."

- Charles I of England

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"In no long time it became manifest that those political and religious zealots, to whom this deed Charles's execution] is to be ascribed, had committed, not only a crime, but an error. They had given to a prince, hitherto known to his people chiefly by his faults, an opportunity of displaying, on a great theatre, before the eyes of all nations and all ages, some qualities which irresistibly call forth the admiration and love of mankind, the high spirit of a gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of a penitent Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their revenge that the very man whose life had been a series of attacks on the liberties of England now seemed to die a martyr in the cause of those liberties. No demagogue ever produced such an impression on the public mind as the captive King, who, retaining in that extremity all his regal dignity, and confronting death with dauntless courage, gave utterance to the feelings of his oppressed people, manfully refused to plead before a court unknown to the law, appealed from military violence to the principles of the constitution, asked by what right the House of Commons had been purged of its most respectable members and the House of Lords deprived of its legislative functions, and told his weeping hearers that he was defending, not only his own cause, but theirs. His long misgovernment, his innumerable perfidies, were forgotten. His memory was, in the minds of the great majority of his subjects, associated with those free institutions which he had, during many years, laboured to destroy: for those free institutions had perished with him, and, amidst the mournful silence of a community kept down by arms, had been defended by his voice alone. From that day began a reaction in favour of monarchy and of the exiled house, a reaction which never ceased till the throne had again been set up in all its old dignity."

- Charles I of England

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"In committing himself to Arminianism, Charles destroyed the painstaking labour James had put into making a cosmetic unity between the kingdoms. He committed himself to that interpretation of the English religious settlement which had least in common with the kirk of Scotland... The primum mobile of the British crisis, chronologically and probably logically as well, was the conflict between Charles and the Scottish Covenanters. This was a real clash of ideas as well as of interests. It enshrined visions of the church, and of authority, so far apart that no real compromise was ever likely to be possible between them. It was this conflict which was the vortex into which the other kingdoms were drawn. This is not to say that Charles was faced by a united Scotland: it has been one of the major findings of this book that that was not the case: all kingdoms, like all English counties, and even most English villages, were divided. Yet it was clearly in Scotland that the Calvinist-Presbyterian ideas to which Charles was most deeply allergic had taken the deepest root. It was the Scots who resorted to arms first, and who did so with the least compunction. It was Charles's determination to suppress them when he was physically unable to do so which caused his authority to collapse, and troubled the English waters enough to encourage the Scots to fish in them."

- Charles I of England

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"It is said, that the minutest Errors are not to be neglected in Mathematics: that the Fluxions are...not proportional to the finite Increments though ever so small; but only to. . . nascent Increments. . . And. . . there be other Fluxions, which Fluxions of Fluxions are called second Fluxions. And the Fluxions of these sec- ond Fluxions are called third Fluxions: and so on, fourth, fifth, sixth, &c. ad in- finitum. Now as our Sense is strained and puzzled with the perception of Objects extremely minute, even so the Imagination, which Faculty derives from Sense, is very much strained and puzzled to frame clear Ideas of the least Particles of time, or the least Increments generated therein. . And it seems. . to. . . exceed, if I mistake not, all Humane Understanding. The further the Mind analyseth and pursueth these fugitive Ideas, the more it is lost and bewildered; the Objects, at first fleeting and minute, soon vanishing out of sight. Certainly in any Sense a second or third Fluxion seems an obscure Mystery. The incipient Celerity of an incipient Celerity, the nascent Augment of a nascent Augment, i.e. of a thing which hath no Magnitude: ‘Take it in which light you please, the clear Conception of it will, if I mistake not, be found impossible. . And if a second Fluxion be inconceivable, what are we to think of third, fourth, fifth Fluxions, and so onward without end? ... They suppose finite Quantities to consist of Parts infinitely little... Now to conceive a Quantity infinitely small, that is, infinitely less than any sensible or imaginable Quantity, or any the least finite Magnitude, is, I confess, above my Capacity. But to conceive a Part of such infinitely small Quantity, that shall be still infinitely less than it, and consequently though multiply’d infinitely shall never equal the minutest finite Quantity, is, I suspect, an infinite Difficulty to any Man whatsoever; and will be allowed such by those who candidly say what they think; provided they really think and reflect, and do not take things upon trust."

- George Berkeley

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"Let me end this chapter by suggesting that religion has done something for science. The latter came to full flower in its modern form in seventeenth-century Europe. Have you ever wondered why that's so? After all the ancient Greeks were pretty clever and the Chinese achieved a sophisticated culture well before we Europeans did, yet they did not hit on science as we now understand it. Quite a lot of people have thought that the missing ingredient was provided by the Christian religion. Of course, it's impossible to prove that so - we can't rerun history without Christianity and see what happens - but there's a respectable case worth considering. It runs like this. The way Christians think about creation (and the same is true for Jews and Muslims) has four significant consequences. The first is that we expect the world to be orderly because its Creator is rational and consistent, yet God is also free to create a universe whichever way God chooses. Therefore, we can't figure it out just by thinking what the order of nature ought to be; we'll have to take a look and see. In other words, observation and experiment are indispensable. That's the bit the Greeks missed. They thought you could do it all just by cogitating. Third, because the world is God's creation, it's worthy of study. That, perhaps, was a point that the Chinese missed as they concentrated their attention on the world of humanity at the expense of the world of nature. Fourth, because the creation is not itself divine, we can prod it and investigate it without impiety. Put all these features together, and you have the intellectual setting in which science can get going. It's certainly a historical fact that most of the pioneers of modern science were religious men. They may have had their difficulties with the Church (like Galileo) or been of an orthodox cast of mind (like Newton), but religion was important for them. They used to like to say that God had written two books for our instruction, the book of scripture and the book of nature. I think we need to try to decipher both books if we're to understand what's really happening."

- John Polkinghorne

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"Over the evolution of the public school Dr Thomas Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby from 1827 until his death in 1841, exercised a decisive influence. Arnold himself expressed in his own stormy personality all the moral obsessions and emotional fervour of early Victorian evangelicalism. Arnold's Rugby was the most important and influential of the schools that served as prototypes for the numerous new public schools that opened between 1840 and 1900 to cater for the swelling middle classes. Arnold more than any other individual gave late Victorian English education both its concern with moral conduct and its distinctive mark of romanticism. Religion for Arnold, as for the rest of his generation, meant "...what the Gospel teaches us to mean by it, it is nothing less than a system directing and influencing our conduct, principles and feelings..." It followed that the first purpose of education was to inculcate Christian morality. "It is not necessary", he wrote, "that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." Christian morality was thus very much more important than, for example, scientific knowledge... Arnold went so far as to resign from the governing body of the new London University because religion was not to be a compulsory examination subject: "... An University that conceived of education as not involving in it principles of moral truths would be an evil.""

- Thomas Arnold

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"That all things be done to the glory of God, the blessed Apostle (it is true) ex∣horteth. The glory of God is the admirable excellency of that Vertue Divine, which being made manifest, causeth Men and Angels to extol his greatness, and in regard thereof to fear him. By being glorified, it is not meant, that he doth receive any augmentation of glory at our hands; but his Name we glorifie, when we testifie our acknowledgement of his glory. Which albeit we most effectually do by the vertue of obedience; nevertheless it may be perhaps a Question, Whether S. Paul did mean that we sin as oft as ever we go about any thing, without an express intent and purpose to obey God therein. He saith of himself, I do in all things please all men, seeking not mine own commodity, but rather the good of many, that they may be saved. Shall it hereupon be thought, that St. Paul did not move either hand or foot, but with express intent even thereby to further the common salvation of men? We move, we sleep, we take the cup at the hand of our friend, a number of things we oftentimes do, only to satisfie some natural desire, without present, express and actual reference unto any Commandment of God. Unto his glory even these things are done which we naturally perform, and not only that which morally and spiritually we do. For by every effect proceeding from the most concealed instincts of Nature, his power is made manifest."

- Richard Hooker

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"Because we maintain that in Scripture we are taught all things necessary unto salvation; hereupon very childishly it is by some demanded, what Scripture can teach us the sacred authority of the Scripture, upon the knowledge whereof our whole faith and salvation dependeth? As though there were any kind of science in the world which leadeth men into knowledge without presupposing a number of things already known. No science doth make known the first principles whereon it buildeth, but they are always either taken as plain and manifest in themselves, or as proved and granted already, some former knowledge having made them evident. Scripture teacheth all supernatural revealed truth, without the knowledge whereof salvation cannot be attained. The main principle whereupon our belief of all things therein contained dependeth, is, that the Scriptures are the oracles of God himself. This in itself we cannot say is evident. For then all men that hear it would acknowledge it in heart, as they do when they hear that "every whole is more than any part of that whole," because this in itself is evident. The other we know that all do not acknowledge when they hear it. There must be therefore some former knowledge presupposed which doth herein assure the hearts of all believers. Scripture teacheth us that saving truth which God hath discovered unto the world by revelation, and it presumeth us taught other wise that itself is divine and sacred."

- Richard Hooker

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"The foundation document, in Anglican perception, had been provided by Richard Hooker... Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the first and greatest apologia for Anglicanism, was published in instalments (1594, 1597, 1648, 1662); the political Book VIII countered the hostile thesis that "unto no civil prince or governor there may be given such power of ecclesiastical dominion as by the laws of the land belongeth unto the supreme regent thereof". It proceeded from the assumption that "there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England" (ch. 1.2). This, indeed, constituted the political aspect of the Anglican via media... Political involvement in the life of the Church could not validly be described as Erastianism, it was argued. The monarch was anointed and clothed in priestly vestments at his coronation; Parliament was a lay synod. Both were part of the Church, not separate and secular agencies subordinating the Church to their control. But Hooker's doctrine contained a fatal flaw: it was ambiguous about the title of the "chief Governor" on whom the whole system depended, and even appeared to recognise conquest and de facto power. Providence, though heavily emphasised, might point in more than one direction."

- Richard Hooker

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"It would have to be considered from the Imperial point of view whether the system of reciprocal tariffs would really bind the mother country more closely with her colonies than was now the case...how Great Britain might have annually to submit to the pressure of various colonies who were discontented with the tariff as then modified and wanted it modified still further. If they considered Great Britain as a target at which all these proposals for modification and rectification would be addressed, he thought it would occur to their Chamber that it would not altogether add to the harmony of those relations to have these shifting tariffs existing between Great Britain and her colonies. (Cheers)...He thought we should have some form of direct representation from the colonies to guide us and advise us with regard to this question of tariffs...Under a system of free trade every branch of industry did not prosper. He was interested in the landed industry (hear), and he did not know that the land industry had prospered particularly under free trade...he thought it could not be denied that under a system of free trade large tracts of country had been turned out of cultivation, that our own food supply had been diminished, and that the population which had been reared in the rural districts had ceased to be reared in those districts...he was not a person who believed that free trade was part of the Sermon on the Mount, and that we ought to receive it in all its rigidity as a divinely-appointed dispensation."

- Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

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"It is by self-reliance, humanly speaking, by the independence which has been the motive and impelling force of our race, that the Scots have thriven in India and in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and even in England, where at different times they were banned. As things are we in Scotland do not take much or even ask much from the State, but the State invites us every day to lean upon it. I seem hear the wheedling and alluring whisper, "Sound you may be; we bid you be a cripple. Do you see? Be blind. Do you hear? Be deaf. Do you walk? Be not venturesome; here is a crutch for one arm. When you get accustomed to it you will soon want another, the sooner the better." The strongest man, if encouraged, may soon accustom himself to the methods of an invalid; he may train himself to totter or to be fed with a spoon. The ancient sculptors represent Hercules leaning on his club; our modern Hercules would have his club elongated and duplicated and resting under his arms. (Laughter.) The lesson of our Scottish teaching was "Level up"; the cry of modern civilization is "Level down; let the Government have a finger in every pie," probing, propping, disturbing. ("Hear, hear," and laughter.) Every day the area for initiative is being narrowed, every day the standing ground for self-reliance is being undermined, every day the public infringes, with the best intentions, no doubt, on the individual. The nation is being taken into custody by the State. Perhaps the current cannot now be stemmed; agitation or protest may be alike unavailing; the world rolls on, it may be part of its destiny, a necessary phase in its long evolution, a stage in its blind, toilsome progress to an invisible goal. I neither affirm nor deny. All in the long run is doubtless for the best; but, speaking as a Scotsman to Scotsmen, I plead for our historical character, for the maintenance of those sterling national qualities which have meant so much to Scotland in the past. (Cheers.)"

- Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

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"...it is a revolution without any mandate from the people. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, it is in the first place a revolution in fiscal methods...this Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is that it is a new Liberalism and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these. (Cheers.) Who was the greatest, not merely the greatest Liberal, but the greatest financier that this country has ever known? (A voice, "Gladstone.") I mean Mr. Gladstone. (Cheers.) With Sir Robert Peel—he, I think, occupied a position even higher than Sir Robert Peel—for boldness of imagination and scope of financing Mr. Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our time. (Cheers.) Now, we have in the Cabinet at this moment several colleagues, several ex-colleagues of mine, who served in the Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone...and I ask them, without a moment's fear or hesitation as to the answer that would follow if they gave it from their conscience, with what feelings would they approach Mr. Gladstone, were he Prime Minister and still living, with such a Budget as this? Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive; but, centenarian as he would be, I venture to say that he would make short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with the measure, and they would soon find themselves on the stairs and not in the room. (Laughter and cheers.) In his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as a humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms. They were twin-sisters. How does the Budget stand the test of Liberalism so understood and of Liberty as we have always comprehended it? This Budget seems to establish an inquisition, unknown previously in Great Britain, and a tyranny, I venture to say, unknown to mankind...I think my friends are moving on the path that leads to Socialism. How far they are advanced on that path I will not say, but on that path I, at any rate, cannot follow them an inch. (Loud cheers.) Any form of protection is an evil, but Socialism is the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of prosperity, of the monarchy, of Empire. (Loud cheers.)"

- Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

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"Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes, by restraining them of their liberty, mutilating their bodies, and, at last, putting an end to their lives (which we suppose to be the whole of their existence), for our pleasure or conveniency. The reasons alleged in vindication of this practice, are the following: that the several species of brutes being created to prey upon one another, affords a kind of analogy to prove that the human species were intended to feed upon them; that, if let alone, they would overrun the earth, and exclude mankind from the occupation of it; that they are requited for what they suffer at our hands, by our care and protection. Upon which reasons I would observe, that the analogy contended for is extremely lame; since brutes have no power to support life by any other means, and since we have; for the whole human species might subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and roots, as many tribes of Hindoos actually do. The two other reasons may be valid reasons, as far as they go; for, no doubt, if man had been supported entirely by vegetable food, a great part of those animals which die to furnish his table, would never have lived: but they by no means justify our right over the lives of brutes to the extent in which we exercise it. What danger is there, for instance, of fish interfering with us, in the occupation of their element? or what do we contribute to their support or preservation?"

- William Paley

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"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer that for anything I knew to the contrary it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had given, that for anything I knew the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone; why is it not admissible in that second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, namely, that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive — what we could not discover in the stone — that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g., that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed in any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. This mechanism being observed … the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker — that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of making one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was performed; all this being no more than what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture."

- William Paley

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"It is at any rate evident, that a large and ample province remains for the exercise of Providence, without its being naturally perceptible by us; because obscurity, when applied to the interruption of laws, bears a necessary proportion to the imperfection of our knowledge when applied to the laws themselves, or rather to the effects which these laws, under their various and incalculable combinations, would of their own accord produce. And if it be said, that the doctrine of Divine Providence, by reason of the ambiguity under which its exertions present themselves, can be attended with no practical influenceupon our conduct; that, although we believe ever so firmly that there is a Providence, we must prepare, and provide, and act, as if there were none; I answer, that this is admitted: and that we further allege, that so to prepare, and so to provide, is consistent with the most perfect assurance of the reality of a Providence; and not only so, but that it is probably one advantage of the present state of our information, that our provisions and preparations are not disturbed by it. Or if it be still asked, Of what use at all then is the doctrine, if it neither alter our measures nor regulate our conduct? I answer again, that it is of the greatest use, but that it is a doctrine of sentiment and piety, not (immediately at least) of action or conduct; that it applies to the consolation of men's minds, to their devotions, to the excitement of gratitude, the support of patience, the keeping alive and the strengthening of every motive for endeavouring to please our Maker; and that these are great uses."

- William Paley

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"It is a step to have it proved, that there must be something in the world more than what we see. It is a further step to know, that, amongst the invisible things of nature, there must be an intelligent mind, concerned in its production, order, and support. These points being assured to us by Natural Theology, we may well leave to Revelation the disclosure of many particulars, which our researches cannot reach, respecting either the nature of this Being as the original cause of all things, or his character and designs as a moral governor ; and not only so, but the more full confirmation of other particulars, of which, though they do not lie altogether beyond our reasonings and our probabilities, the certainty is by no means equal to the importance. The true theist will be the first to listen to any credible communication of Divine knowledge. Nothing which he has learned from Natural Theology, will diminish his desire of further instruction, or his disposition to receive it with humility and thankfulness. He wishes for light: he rejoices in light. His inward veneration of this great Being, will incline him to attend with the utmost seriousness, not only to all that can be discovered concerning him by researches into nature, but to all that is taught by a revelation, which gives reasonable proof of having proceeded from him."

- William Paley

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"The result of this comparison is to suggest the probability that the polity developed by the German races on British soil is the purest product of their primitive instinct. With the exception of the Gothic Bible of Ulfilas, the Anglo-Saxon remains are the earliest specimens of Germanic language as well as literature, and the development of modern English from the Anglo-Saxon is a fact of science as well as of history. The institutions of the Saxons of Germany long after the conquest of Britain were the most perfect exponent of the system which Tacitus saw and described in the Germania; and the polity of their kinsmen in England, though it may be not older in its monuments than the Lex Salica, is more entirely free from Roman influences. In England the common germs were developed and ripened with the smallest intermixture of foreign elements. Not only were all the successive invasions of Britain, which from the eighth to the eleventh century diversify the history of the island, conducted by nations of common extraction, but, with the exception of ecclesiastical influence, no foreign interference that was not German in origin was admitted at all. Language, law, custom and religion preserve their original conformation and colouring. The German element is the paternal element in our system, natural and political."

- William Stubbs

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"What are we to say of the Constitutional History? Perhaps I have just one advantage over most of its readers. I did not read it because I was set to read it, or because I was to be examined in it, or because I had to teach history or law. I found it in a London club, and read it because it was interesting. On the other hand it was so interesting, and I was so little prepared to criticise or discriminate, that perhaps I fell more completely under its domination than those who have passed through schools of history are likely to fall. Still, making an effort towards objectivity, must we not admire in the first instance the immense scope of the book—a history of institutions which begins with the Germans of Caesar and Tacitus and does not end until a Tudor is on the throne? Then the enormous mass of material that is being used, and the ease with which this immense weight is moved and controlled... While the institutions grow and decay under our eyes we are never allowed to forget that this process of evolution and dissolution consists of the acts of human beings, and that acts done by nameable men, by kings and statesmen and reformers, memorable acts done at assignable points. In time and space, are the concrete forms in which the invisible forces and tendencies are displayed. When compared with other books bearing a like title Stubbs's Constitutional History is marvellously concrete."

- William Stubbs

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"You judge the whole question of persecution more rigorously than I do. Society is an organism, and its laws are an expression of the conditions which it considers necessary for its own preservation. When men were hanged in England for sheep stealing, it was because people thought that sheep stealing was a crime, and ought to be severely put down. We still think it a crime, but we think it can be checked more effectually by less stringent punishments. Nowadays people are not agreed about what heresy is: they do not think it a menace to society, hence they do not ask for its punishment; but the men who conscientiously thought heresy a crime may be accused of an intellectual mistake, not necessarily of a moral crime. The immediate results of the Reformation were not to favour free thought; and the error of Calvin, who knew that ecclesiastical unity was abolished, was a far greater one than that of Innocent III., who struggled to maintain it. I am hopelessly tempted to admit degrees of criminality, otherwise history becomes a dreary record of wickedness. I go so far with you that it supplies me with few heroes, and records few good actions; but the actors were men like myself, sorely tempted by the possession of power, trammelled by holding a representative position (none more trammelled than popes), and in the sixteenth century especially, looking at everything in a very abstract way. I suppose statesmen rarely regard questions in the concrete. I can rarely follow the actions of contemporary statesmen with much moral satisfaction. In the past I find myself regarding them with pity: who am I that I should condemn them? Surely they knew not what they did."

- Mandell Creighton

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"Tenderness and sympathy were indeed prominent features of Bradford’s character. Fuller remarks: “It is a demonstration to me that he was of a sweet temper, because Parsons, who will hardly afford a good word to a Protestant, saith “that he seemed to be of a more soft and mild nature than many of his fellow." Indeed he was a most holy and mortified man, who secretly in his closet would so weep for his sins, one would have thought he would never have smiled again; and then, appearing in public, he would be so harmlessly pleasant, one would think he had never wept before.” The familiar story, that, on seeing evil-doers taken to the place of execution, he was wont to exclaim, “But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford," is a universal tradition, which has overcome the lapse of time. And Venning, writingin 1653, desirous to show that, “by the sight of others' sins, men may learn to bewail their own sinfulness and heart of corruption,” instances the case of Bradford, who, “when he saw any drunk or heard any swear, &c., would railingly complain, 'Lord, I have a drunken head; Lord, I have a swearing heart!'” His personal appearance and daily habits are graphically described by Foxe. “He was, of person, a tall man, slender, spare of body, somewhat a faint sanguine colour, with an auburn beard“). He slept not commonly above four hours a night; and in his bed, till sleep came, his book went not out of his hand. ...His painful diligence, reading, and prayer, I might almost account it his whole life. He did not eat above one meal a day, which was but very little when he took it; and his continual study was upon his knees. In the midst of dinner he used oftentimes to muse with himself, having his hat over his eyes, from whence came commonly plenty of tears, dropping on his trencher. Very gentle he was to man and child.... His chief recreation was, in no gaming or other pastime, but only in honest company and comely talk, wherein he would spend a little leisure after dinner at the board, and so to prayer and his book again. He counted that hour not wellspent, wherein he did not some good, either with his pen, study, or exhortation to others.”"

- John Bradford

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"The rapid establishment of Christianity must therefore have been from the conviction which those who embraced it, had of its "Truth and power unto salvation." Christianity at first spread itself amongst the most enlightened nations of the earth - in those places where human learning was in its greatest perfection; and, by the force of the evidence which attended it, amongst such men it gained an establishment. It has been justly observed, that "it happened very providentially to the honour of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were t their height, and when there were men who made it the business of their lives to search after truth and lift the several opinions of the philosophers and wise men, concerning the duty, the end, and chief happiness of reasonable creatures." Both the learned and the ignorant alike embraced its doctrines; the learned were not likely to be deceived in the proofs which were offered; and the same cause undoubtedly operated to produce the effect upon each. But an immediate conversion of the bulk of mankind, can arise only from some proofs of a ddivine authority offering themselves immediately to the senses; the preaching of any new doctrine, if lest to operate only by its own force, would go but a very little way towards the immediate conversion of the gnorant, who have no principle of action but what arises from habit, and whose powers of reasoning are insufficient to correct their errors. When Mahomet was required by his followers to work a miracle for their conviction, he always declined it; he was too cautious to trust to an experiment, the success of which was scarcely whithin the bounds of probablity; he amused his followers with prtended visions, which with the aid afterwards of the civil and military powr; and as the accomplishment of that event was by a few obscure persons, who founded their pretentions upon authority from heaven, we are next to consider, what kind of proofs of their divine commission they offered to the world; and whether they themselves could have been deceived, or mankind could have been deludded by them."

- Samuel Vince

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"A very eminent writer has observed, that "the conversion of the Gentile world, whether we consider the difficulties attending it, the opposition made to it, the wonderful work wrought to accomplish it, or the happy effects and consequences of it, may be considered as a more illustrious evidence of God's power, than even our Saviour's miracles of casting out devils, healing the sick, and raising the dead." Indeed, a miracle said to have been wrought without any attending circumstances to justify such an exertion of divine power, could not easily be rendered credible ; and our author's argument proves no more. If it were related, that about 1700 years ago, a man was raised from the dead, without its answering any other end than that of restoring him to life, Iconfess that no degree of evidence could induce me tobelieve it; but if the moral government of God appeared in that event, and there were circumstances attending it which could not be accounted for by any human means, the fact becomes credible. When two extraordinary events are thus connected, the proof of one established the truth of the other. Our author has reasoned upon the fact as standing alone, in which case it would not be easy to disprove some of his reasoning; but the fact should be considered in a moral view - as connected with the establishment of a pure religion, and it then becomes credible. In the proof of any circumstance, we must consider every principle which tends to establish it; whereas our author, by considering the case of a man said to have been raised from the dead, simpli in a physical point of view, without any reference to a moral end, endavours to show that it cannot be rendered credible; and, from such principles, we may admit his conclusions without affecting the credibility of Christianity. The general principle on which he establishes his argument, is not the great foundation upon which the evidence of Christianity rests. He says, "Notestimony can be sufficient to establish a miracle, unless it be of such a kind, that the falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endavours to prove." Now this reasoning, at furthest, can only be admitted in those cases where the fact has nothing but testimony to establish it. But the proofs of Christianity do not rest simply upon the testimony of its first promulgators, and that of those who were affterwards the instruments of communicating it; but they rest principally upon the acknowledged and very extraordinary affects which were produced by the preaching of a few unlearned, obscure persons, who taught "Christ crucified;" and it is upon these indisuptable matters of ffact which we reason; and when the effects are totally unaccountable upon any principle which we can collect from the operation of human means, we must either admit miracles, or admit an effect without an adequate cause. Also, when the proof of any position depends upon arguments drawn from various sources, all concutring to establish its turh, to select some one circumstance, and atrempt to show that that alone is not sufficient to render the fact credible, and thence infer that it is not ture, is a conclusion not to be admitted. But it is thus that our author has endavoured to destroy the credibiliry of Christianity, the evidences of which depend upon a great variety of circumstances and facts which are indisputably true, all cooperating to confirm its truth; but an examination of these falls not whithin the plan here proposed. He rests all his arguments upon the extraordinary nature of the fact, considered alone by itself; for a common fact, with the same evidence, would immediately be admitted. I have endavoured to show, that the extraordinary nature, as much as the mosst common events are necessary to fulfill the usual dispensations of Providence, and therefore the Deity was then direted by the same motive as in a more ordinary case, that of affording us such assitance as our moral condition renders necessary. In the establishment of a pur religion, the proof of its divine origin may require some very extraordinary circumstances which may never afterwards be requisite, and accordingly we find that they have not happened. Here is therefore a perfect concistencty in the operation of the Deity, in his moral government, and not a violation of the laws of nature: Secondly, the fact is immediately connected with others which are indisputably true, and which, without the supossition of the truth of that fact, would be, at least, equally miraculous. Thus I conceive the reasoning of our author to be totally inconclusive; and the argumentss which have been employed to prove the fallacy of his conclusions, appear at the same time, fully to justify our belief in, and prove the moral certainty of, our holy religion."

- Samuel Vince

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"The United Kingdom, with which the United States has a "special relationship," is no exception. After multiple terrorist attacks rocked Britain in 2017, the president scolded the Brits for failing to rein in extremism. "Another attack in London by a loser terrorist," he tweeted after a train bombing in September 2017. "These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!" Prime Minister Theresa May bristled at the accusation, telling reporters, "I never think it's helpful for anybody to speculate about what is an ongoing conversation." In the months to come, her team would become infuriated with our administration, as President Trump criticized May's handling of Britain's exit from the European Union. When confidential internal messages leaked detailing the British ambassador's critiques of the Trump administration (including the apt observation that the president is "unpredictable" and his White House "dysfunctional") the president proceeded to validate all of the ambassador's concerns with an intemperate overreaction. Rather than showing restraint, he punched down, tweeting that the ambassador was "a very stupid guy," "wacky," and a "pompous fool." For no strategic purpose, other than spitefulness, he also took parting shots at May, who was then stepping down as prime minister, calling her policies a disaster. "What a mess she and her representatives have created," the president said in July 2019, specifically honing in on Brexit. "I have told her how it should be done, but she decided to go another way... The good news for the wonderful United Kingdom is that they will soon have a new Prime Minister.""

- Theresa May

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"My Instrument being fixed, I immediately began to observe such Stars as I judged most proper to give me light into the Cause of the Motion... There was Variety enough of small ones; and not less than twelve, that I could observe through all the Seasons of the Year; they being bright enough to be seen in the Day-time, when nearest the Sun. I had not been long observing, before I perceived, that the Notion we had before entertained of the Stars being farthest North and South, when the Sun was about the Equinoxes, was only true of those that were near the solstitial Colure: And after I had continued my Observations a few Months, I discovered what I then apprehended to be a general Law, observed by all the Stars, viz. That each of them became stationary, or was farthest North or South, when they passed over my Zenith at six of the Clock, either in the Morning or Evening. I perceived likewise, that whatever Situation the Stars were in with respect to the cardinal Points of the Ecliptick, the apparent Motion of every one tended the same Way, when they passed my Instrument about the same Hour of the Day or Night; for they all moved Southward, while they passed in the Day, and Northward in the Night; so that each was farthest North, when it came about Six of the Clock in the Evening, and farthest South when it came about Six in the Morning."

- James Bradley

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"If we suppose the distance of the fixed stars from the sun to be so great that the diameter of the earth's orbit viewed from them would not subtend a sensible angle, or which amounts to the same, that their annual is quite insensible; it will then follow that a line drawn from the earth in any part of its orbit to a fixed star, will always, as to sense, make the same angle with the plane of the ecliptic, and the place of the star, as seen from the earth, would be the same as seen from the sun placed in the focus of the ellipsis described by the earth in its annual revolution, which place may therefore be called its true or real place. But if we further suppose that the velocity of the earth in its orbit bears any sensible proportion to the velocity with which light is propagated, it will thence follow that the fixed stars (though removed too far off to be subject to a parallax on account of distance) will nevertheless be liable to an aberration, or a kind of parallax, on account of the relative velocity between light and the earth in its annual motion. For if we conceive, as before, the true place of any star to be that in which it would appear viewed from the sun, the visible place to a spectator moving along with the earth, will be always different from its true, the star perpetually appearing out of its true place more or less, according as the velocity of the earth in its orbit is greater or less; so that when the earth is in its perihelion, the star will appear farthest distant from its true place, and nearest to it when the earth is in its aphelion; and the apparent distance in the former case will be to that in the latter in the reciprocal proportion of the distances of the earth in its perihelion and its aphelion. When the earth is in any other part of its orbit, its velocity being always in the reciprocal proportion of the perpendicular let fall from the sun to the tangent of the ellipse at that point where the earth is, or in the direct proportion of the perpendicular let fall upon the same tangent from the other focus, it thence follows that the apparent distance of a star from its true place, will be always as the perpendicular let fall from the upper focus upon the tangent of the ellipse. And hence it will be found likewise, that (supposing a plane passing through the star parallel to the earth's orbit) the locus or visible place of the star on that plane will always be in the circumference of a circle, its true place being in that diameter of it which is parallel to the shorter axis of the earth's orbit, in a point that divides that diameter into two parts, bearing the same proportion to each other, as the greatest and least distances of the earth from the sun."

- James Bradley

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"Hitherto we have considered the apparent motion of the star about its true place, as made only in a plane parallel to the ecliptic, in which case it appears to describe a circle in that plane; but since, when we judge of the place and motion of a star, we conceive it to be in the surface of a sphere, whose centre is our eye, 'twill be necessary to reduce the motion in that plane to what it would really appear on the surface of such a sphere, or (which will be equivalent) to what it would appear on a plane touching such a sphere in the star's true place. Now in the present case, where we conceive the eye at an indefinite distance, this will be done by letting fall perpendiculars from each point of the circle on such a plane, which from the nature of the orthographic projection will form an ellipsis, whose greater axis will be equal to the diameter of that circle, and the lesser axis to the greater as the sine of the star's latitude to the radius, for this latter plane being perpendicular to a line drawn from the centre of the sphere through the star's true place, which line is inclined to the ecliptic in an angle equal to the star's latitude; the touching plane will be inclined to the plane of the ecliptic in an angle equal to the complement of the latitude. But it is a known proposition in the orthographic projection of the sphere, that any circle inclined to the plane of the projection, to which lines drawn from the eye, supposed at an infinite distance, are at right angles, is projected into an ellipsis, having its longer axis equal to its diameter, and its shorter to twice the cosine of the inclination to the plane of the projection, half the longer axis or diameter being the radius. Such an ellipse will be formed in our present case..."

- James Bradley

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"[Vol. LIV, Anno 1764] XLVIII. Concise Rules for Computing the Effects of Refraction and Parallax in Varying the Apparent Distance of the Moon from the Sun or a Star; also an Easy Rule of Approximation for Computing the Distance of the Moon from a Star, the Longitudes and Latitudes of both being given. By the Rev. , A.M. F.R.S. p. 263. The following rules, excepting one, are the same which Mr. M. before communicated to the R.S., but without demonstration, in a letter from St. Helena, containing the results of his observations of the distance of the moon from the sun and fixed stars, taken in his voyage thither, for finding the longitude of the ship from time to time; since printed in vol. lii. of the Phil. Trans. The two rules for the correction of refraction and parallax, he had also communicated to the public in his British Mariner's Guide to the discovery of longitude from like observations of the moon; and added in the preface a rule for computing a second but smaller correction of parallax, necessary on account of a small imperfection lying in the first rule derived from the fluxions of a spherical triangle. To the rules he has here subjoined their demonstrations. With respect to the usefulness of these rules, he entertains hopes that they will appear more simple and easy than any yet proposed; for the same purpose, the last rule, for computing the distance of the moon from a star, though only an approximation, being so very exact seems particularly adapted for the construction of a nautical , containing the distances of the moon from the sun and proper fixed stars, ready calculated for the purpose of finding the longitude from observations of the moon at sea; an assistance which, in an age abounding with so many able computers, mariners need not doubt they will be provided with, as soon as they manifest a proper disposition to make use of it. A RULE. To compute the contraction of the apparent distance of any two heavenly bodies by refraction; the zenith distances of both, and their distance from each other being given nearly. Add together the tangents of half the sum, and half the difference of the zenith distances; their sum, abating 10 from the index, is the tangent of arc the first. To the tangent of arc the first, just found, add the co-tangent of half the distance of the stars; the sum, abating 10 from the index, is the tangent of arc the second. Then add together the tangent of double the first arc, the co-secant of double the second arch, and the constant logarithm of 114″ or 2.0569: the sum, abating 20 from the index, is the logarithm of the number of seconds required, by which the distance of the stars is contracted by refraction: which therefore added to the observed distance gives the true distance cleared from the effect of refraction. This rule is founded on an hypothesis, that the refraction in altitude is as the tangent of the zenith distance: and the refraction at the altitude of 45 degrees being 57″, according to Dr. Bradley's observations, therefore the refraction at any altitude, calling the radius unity, is 57″ × tangent of the zenith distance. This rule is exact enough for the purpose of the calculation of the longitude from observations of the distance of the moon from stars at sea as low down as the altitude of 10°, for there the error is only 10″ from the truth. But if the altitude of the moon or star be less than 10°, the rule may be still made to answer sufficiently, by only first correcting the observed zenith distances by subtracting from them 3 times the refraction corresponding to them, taken out of any common table of refraction, and making the computation with the zenith distances thus corrected. This correction depends on Dr. Bradley's rule for refraction, which he found to answer, in a manner exactly, from the zenith quite down to the horizon, namely that the refraction is = 57″ × tangent of the apparent zenith distance lessened by 3 times the corresponding refraction taken out of any common table."

- James Bradley

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"It had been long observed that the position of the fixed stars were subject to some variations, which in no sort corresponded with the apparent motion of a degree in seventy-two years, which gives the precission of the equinoxes. The late abbe Picard had remarked these variations in the pole star in 1671, but he did not attempt either to reduce them to any settled rule, or to account for them. Dr. Bradley not only verified Picard's observations, but discovered many other variations which had never before been thought of; he found that some stars appeared to have, in the space of about a year, a variation of longitude backward and forward, but without any variation of latitude, that others, varied in latitude, but not in longitude, and others, by far the greater number, appeared to describe, in the space of a year, a small ellipsis, of different degrees of elongation. The period of a year, in which all these motions, so different from each other, were performed, seemed to prove, that they had a connection with the revolution of the earth in its orbit; but the difficulty was to discover in what manner the stars were apparently influenced by that revolution; this was attempted for some time by Mr. Bradley, but without success; at last, however, his sagacity and his diligence surmounted all difficulties, and he found the cause of these seemingly capricious appearances in the successive motion of light co-operating with the motion of the earth round the sun."

- James Bradley

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"Light had long been supposed to move with a velocity physically infinite, but the late M. Roemer of the Royal Academy of Paris discovered the contrary... But however natural this theory might be, and however well it might be supported, it was then thought too bold, and poor Roemer did not live to see it adopted. It has, however, been since universally a agreed, that the motion of light is successive; and upon this successive motion of light, Mr. Bradley built his explanation of the irregular variations which he had observed in the stars, and which he called their aberation. His theory was this: Let us suppose a series of very small particles, united into a thread, to fall in direction perpendicular to the horizon; and let several of these threads of particles fall at the same time, in he same direction, so as to be parallel to each other, in the same manner as drops of rain in a dead calm. Let us then suppose a tube to be placed in this rain, in a vertical position, and it is manifest that the drop of water which enters the aperture at the upper end of it, will issue at the aperture below, without touching the inside of the tube. But if the tube be moved parallel to itself, though still kept in a position parallel to the direction of the water, it is clear, that this motion of the tube will cause the drop that enters it to touch one of its sides, before it gets to the bottom; and that this contact will happen sooner, in proportion as the motion of the drops is slow, compared with the motion of the tube; and it is easy to demonstrate, that if the motion of the tube, and that of the rain are equal, the drop which falls in the center of the upper aperture of the tube, will come in contact with the inside of the tube, when it has passed down the tube the distance of half its diameter; and, consequently, that the line of its direction will make an angle of five and forty degrees with the axis of the tube: It follows, therefore, that, to prevent the drops of water from touching the inside of the tube, notwithstanding its motion, the tube must be inclined in an angle of five and forty degrees, on the side towards which it moves; and that, if this inclination should be successively made round in the circumference of a circle, the tube would describe round the vertical line, drawn from the centre of its base, a curve, the angle of which would be ninety degrees. But what has been said, with respect to an inclination of the tube necessary to make the drop pass through it... depends upon the proportion between the motion of the tube, and the motion of the drop; and, in proportion as the motion of the drop is greater than that of the tube, the less the tube must be inclined: so that, if the motion of the drop be supposed to be infinite, no inclination at all of the tube would be necessary... In order to apply this theory to the aberration of the fixed stars, we must substitute for the drops of water, uniting into a thread, the rays of light that come from those stars; and, for the tube, which we have supposed to be first at rest, and then in motion, that of the telescope used to determine the position of the stars, which is carried round with the Earth, in its revolution about the Sun; and we must suppose, that the velocity of the ray of light, having a finite relation to the velocity of the Earth's motion, the tube ought to change its inclination, in proportion as that motion changes its direction; whence it follows, that each star must have a series of different positions; or, which is the same thing, an apparent motion in the heavens, which causes it to describe, in the space of a year, ellipses more or less elongated according to its position. From the calculations of this gentleman it follows, that the velocity of light, as fixed by the aberrations of the stars, is the fame with what M Roëmer supposed it to be, and exactly quadrates with the retardation of the eclipses of the first satellite of Jupiter. A new proof of the truth of his hypothesis, if any new proof had been necessary."

- James Bradley

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"Three years after this discovery, by which Mr. Bradley acquired very great reputation, he was appointed Lecturer in Astronomy and Physic, at the Museum at Oxford. He pursued his studies with equal application and delight; and in the course of his observations... he discovered that the inclination of the Earth's axis, upon the plane of the , was not always the same, but that it varied backwards and forwards some seconds, and that the period of these variations was nine years. This period seemed altogether unaccountable, as it could not be supposed to have any thing in common with the revolution of the Earth, which is performed in one year. Mr. Bradley, however, discovered the cause of this phenomenon in the Newtonian system of attraction. The first principle of that system is known to be, that all bodies mutually attract each other in the direct ratio of their masses, and in the inverse ratio of the squares of their distances. From this mutual attraction, combined with motion in a right line, Newton deduces the figure of the orbits of the planets, and particularly that of the Earth. If this orbit was a circle, and if the terrestrial globe was a perfect sphere, the attraction of the Sun would have no other effect than to keep it in its orbit, and would cause no irregularity in the position of its axis; but neither is the Earth's orbit a circle, nor its body a sphere; for the Earth is sensibly protuberant towards the equator, and its orbit is an ellipsis, which has the Sun in its focus. When the position of the Earth is such, that the plane of its equator passes thro' the centre of the Sun, the attractive power of the Sun acts only so as to draw the Earth towards it, still parallel to itself, and without changing the position of its axis, and this happens at the equinoxes. In proportion as the Earth recedes from those points, the Sun also goes out of the plane of the equator, and approaches that of one or other of the tropics; the semidiameter of the Earth, which is then exposed to the Sun, being no longer equal, the equator is more powerfully attracted than the rest of the globe, which causes some alteration in its position, and its inclination upon the plane of the ecliptic; and as that part of the orbit, which is comprized between the autumnal and vernal equinox, is less than that which is comprized between the vernal and the autumnal, it follows, that the irregularity caused by the Sun, during his passage through the northern signs, is not entirely compensated by that which he causes during his passage through the southern signs; and that the parallelism of the terrestrial axis, and its inclination with the ecliptic, will be a little changed. But though the irregularity is now accounted for, we are still at a loss for the cause of its happening in a period of nine years. This difficulty, however, will immediately disappear."

- James Bradley

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"P. xxxiii. The time, within which the cause of aberration occurred to Bradley, is still further narrowed by the following extracts from the minutes of 1728, Nov 14: "Dr. Halley took occasion to speak concerning the late improvements in astronomy made from the new discovery of an annual motion of the fixed stars. ...his colleague, the Rev. Mr. Bradley, resolved to fix up another and more accurate instrument... and after fifteen months almost daily observations on fifteen different stars, has at length discovered not only the laws of the motions, but also the true and manifest cause of them." The instrument having been set up at Wansted on the 17th Aug. 1727, the fifteen months would only have been expiring, and from the expressions which are used, it is clear that the completion of the discovery was then quite recent. Halley, at the end of his report, "desired that a proper notice might be taken of this new discovery of Mr. Bradley, to prevent any other person from laying claim to it before he had sufficient time to prepare and adjust his observations and reflexions on this subject for the public." After the communication was finished, Halley concludes his report by saying, that Bradley was sufficiently convinced of his having discovered the true cause of the phenomena, since he was "able to foretell at any time, the situation of a star being given, how much the variation of it will amount unto, and that with so much exactness, that there does not remain any sensible part unaccounted for, which can be supposed to arise from parallax.—The President proposed that thanks might be returned to Mr. Bradley for the great care and pains which he has taken in his application to this subject, and likewise that it would be proper to advise Mr. Bradley, and hasten him to the publication of his thoughts, as soon as conveniently may be.""

- James Bradley

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"He set too low a value on his own works, and always feared lest any thing might lower his reputation. His love of accuracy, likewise, acted as an impediment: those who take the most comprehensive views have the clearest knowledge of what may be deficient: he could see the improvements which were desirable, and while he had not yet attained them: he was unwilling to send out any thing to the public in a state which he considered to be imperfect. There was also another circumstance which operated against his publishing to any great extent: he certainly composed with difficulty; his writings are full of erasures; and after repeated transcriptions, his language was not always the happiest in its construction or arrangement. He was not remiss in noting what occurred to him, and making memoranda, where the words, which first occurred to him, were sufficient to register his thoughts, and recall them at any future time to his remembrance: but to dwell on the expressions which he should use, and to employ himself in polishing them for publication, seem to have been a task of irksome difficulty to him. No one writes well, who has not studied and practised it; and no one is inclined to acquire the habit, who does not enjoy some degree of facility in the execution of his purpose. It is not therefore astonishing that the voluminous historian of astronomy should have found that "Bradley n'avait presque rien publiée [Bradley had almost published nothing]." Besides the tables of Jupiter's satellites and a few others of no great extent, all that he could be found to have himself given to the world is comprised in seventy-two pages of the present volume. But when every thing is considered, we have no reason for regret; if he had written more for the press, he must have done less for our information;—the facts which he established, and the discoveries which he made, are of an intrinsic and inestimable value, beyond all comparison with any dissertations, in which he might have enlarged upon them."

- James Bradley

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"The iron quadrant of Graham continued to be attached to the eastern face of the wall erected for its support in 1725, and was employed both by Halley and Bradley in observing the celestial bodies which passed the meridian to the south of the . Bradley however was desirous of extending the plan of his observations and... presented a memorial to the Government in the year 1740, soliciting another quadrant, by means of which the stars that passed the meridian to the north of the zenith might be observed. The Government... at once acceded... and in the following year the observatory was furnished with a magnificent brass quadrant of eight feet radius constructed by Bird, who now took the place of Graham, as the most skilful divider of instruments in his day. ...these were finally subdivided by the micrometer screw to every 1″. The Government at the same time furnished the observatory with a new transit telescope by Bird, eight feet long, besides an excellent clock by Shelton...They also purchased of Bradley the famous zenith sector with which he discovered the phenomena of aberration and nutation, and appropriated it to the use of the observatory. This noble instrument was designed by Bradley to be henceforward employed in determining the errors of collimation of the quadrants, by making observations with it when its face was turned alternately east and west."

- James Bradley

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"As soon as Bradley had established these fundamental points he removed the brass quadrant from the western face of the meridian wall, and permanently attached it to the eastern face, where it was afterwards employed in observing the stars that passed the meridian to the south of the zenith. At the same time the iron quadrant was removed from the eastern face of the wall, and, after being re-divided by Bird, was attached to the western face, for the purpose of making observations with the telescope turned towards the north. Bradley now commenced the series of admirable observations which have formed the groundwork of so much valuable research to future enquirers, and which would have assured to him an immortal reputation, even independently of those great discoveries with which his name is inseparably associated. The sun, moon, and principal stars, and the planets when situate in favourable positions, were regularly observed with the transit instrument and the mural quadrants. Moreover, a multitude of small stars, chiefly those of Flamsteed's catalogue were included in the plan of observation. From the year 1750 may be dated the commencement of a series of observations which in point of accuracy may bear a comparison with those of modern times. Henceforward the records of Greenwich Observatory embody a collection of materials, which have almost exclusively formed the groundwork of every investigation undertaken in modern times, for the purpose of improving the solar, lunar, or planetary tables."

- James Bradley

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"And at Greenwich Mason first learned to know Mayer's Tables of the Moon. ...Bradley first reported on Mayer's Tables on February 10, 1756, and finally on April 14, 1760. With the assistance of Charles Mason, Bradley had compared positions of the Moon as predicted in the Tables with positions as observed at Greenwich. Eleven hundred comparisons led to the comment: So far as it will depend upon the lunar tables the true longitude of a ship at sea may in all cases be found within about half a degree and generally much nearer. It remained to be examined within what limits the errors arising from observations actually taken at sea could be contained. This test was carried out for Bradley by Captain Campbell, of H.M.S. Royal George, on cruises near Ushant in 1758 and 1759. A sextant was made especially for the trials by John Bird, instrument maker for Greenwich Observatory. Bradley's final comment reads: However great the difficulties of finding the longitude by this method seem to be, they are not insuperable, or such as ought to deter those whom it most nearly concerns from attempting to remove them. James Bradley was now nearing the end of his days. His hand was faltering. Nevil Maskelyne and Charles Mason received the torch he had carried. They made the development of the method of lunar distances for finding the longitude at sea a major concern of the rest of their lives."

- James Bradley

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"Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself."

- Olaudah Equiano

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"Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? [...] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you."

- Olaudah Equiano

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"It is not also taught you in Scripture, that you should desire St. Rock to preserve you from the pestilence, to pray to St. Barbarra to defend you from thunder or gun-shot, to offer St. Loy an horse of wax, a pig to St. Anthony, a candle to St, Sithine. But I should be too long, if I were to rehearse unto you all the superstitions that have grown out of the invocation and praying to saints departed, wherewith men have been seduced, and God's honour given to creatures. This was also no small abuse that we called the images by the names of the things, whom they did represent. For we were won't to say, "This is St. Ann's altar ;"-"My father is gone a pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham;"-" In our church St. James standeth on the right hand of the high altar." These speeches we were wont to use, although they be not to be commended. For St. Austin in the exposition of the 113th Psalm affirmeth, that they who do call such images, as the carpenter hath made, do change the truth of God into a lie. It is not also taught you in all Scripture. Thus, good children, I have declared how we were wont to abuse images, not that hereby I condemn your fathers, who were men of great devotion, and had an earnest love towards God, although their zeal in all points was not ruled and governed by true knowledge, but they were seduced and blinded partly by the common ignorance that reigned in their time, partly by the covetousness of their teachers, who abused the simplicity of the unlearned people to the maintenance of their own lucre and glory. But this be profitable, for if they had, either Christ would have taught it or the Holy Ghost would have revealed it unto the Apostles, which they did not. And if they did, the Apostles were very negligent that would not make some mention of it, and speak some good word for images, seeing that they speak so many against them. And by this means Anti-christ and his holy Papists had more knowledge or fervent zeal to give s godly things ad profitable for us, than had the very holy saints of Christ, yea more than Christ himself and the Holy Ghost. Now forasmuch, good children, as images be neither necessary nor profitable in our churches and temples, nor were not used at the beginning in Christ's nor the Apostles' time, nor many years after, and that at length they were brought in by bishops of Rome, maugre emperors' teeth; and seeing also, that they be very slanderous to Christ's religion, for by them the name of God is blasphemed among the infidels, Turks, and Jews, which because of our images do call Christian religion, idolatry and worshiping of images: and for as much also, as they have been so wonderfully abused within this realm to the high contumely and dishonor of God, and have been great cause of blindness and of much contention among the King's Majesty's loving subjects and are like so to be still, if they should remain: and chiefly seeing God's word speaketh so much against them, you may hereby right well consider what great causes and ground the King's Majesty had to take them away within his realm, following here in the example of the godly King Hezekias, who brake down the brazen serpent, when he saw it worshiped, and was therefore praised of God, notwithstanding at the first the same was made and set up by God's commandment, and was not only a remembrance of God's benefits, before received, but also a figure of Christ to come. And not only Hezekias, but also Manasses, and Jehosaphat, and Josias, the best kings that were of the Jews, did pull down images in the time of their reign."

- Thomas Cranmer

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"Now the nature of man being ever prone to idolatry from the beginning of the world, and the Papists being ready by all means and policy to defend and extol the mass, for their estimation and profit; and the people being superstitiously enamored and doted upon the mass (because they take it for a present remedy against all manners of evils); and part of the princes being blinded by papistical doctrine part loving quietness, and loth to offend their clergy and subjects, and all being captives and subjects to the antichrist of Rome; the state of the world remaining in this case, it is no wonder that abuses grew and increased in the church, that superstition with idolatry were taken for godliness and true religion, and that many things were brought in without the authority of Christ as purgatory, the oblation and sacrificing of Christ by the priest alone; the application and appointing of the same to such persons as the priests would sing or say mass for, and to such abuses, as they could devise; to deliver some from purgatory, and some from hell (if they were not there finally by God determined to abide, as they termed the matter); to hallow and preserve them that went to Jerusalem, to Rome, to St. James in Compostella, and to other places in pilgrimage; for a preservative against tempest and thunder, against perils and dangers of the sea, fora remedy against murrain of cattle, against pensiveness of the heart, and against all manner of affliction and tribulation"

- Thomas Cranmer

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"As for that in which he is quite mistaken, it is his inference, which is this: "That I should therefore consider carefully, whether it be not more Christian, and less brain-sick, to think that the pope, being S. Peter's successor, with a General Council, should be judge of controversies, &c., and that the pastoral judgment of him should be accounted infallible, rather than to make every man that can read the Scripture interpreter of Scripture, decider of controversies, controller of General Councils, and judge of his judges: or to have no judge at all of controversies of faith, but permit every man to believe as he list; as if there were no infallible certainty of faith to be expected on earth; which were, instead of one saving faith, to induce a Babylonical confusion of so many faiths as fancies, or no true Christian faith at all. From which evils, sweet Jesus, deliver us!" I have considered of this very carefully; but this inference supposes that which I never granted, nor any Protestant that I yet know—namely, that if I deny the pope to be judge of controversies, I must by and by either leave this supreme judicature in the hands and power of every private man, that can but read the Scripture, or else allow no judge at all, and so let in all manner of confusion. No, God forbid that I should grant either: for I have expressly declared, "That the Scripture, interpreted by the Primitive Church, and a lawful and free General Council determining according to these, is judge of controversies: and that no private man whatsoever is or can be judge of these.""

- William Laud

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"He had excellent parts, which had been improved by parliamentary and diplomatic experience; but the infirmities of his temper detracted much from the effective strength of his abilities. Negotiator and courtier as he was, he never learnt the art of governing or of concealing his emotions. When prosperous, he was insolent and boastful; when he sustained a check, his undisguised mortification doubled the triumph of his enemies: very slight provocations sufficed to kindle his anger; and when he was angry he said bitter things which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, but which others remembered many years. His quickness and penetration would have made him a consummate man of business but for his selfsufficiency and impatience. His writings prove that he had many of the qualities of an orator: but his irritability prevented him from doing himself justice in debate: for nothing was easier than to goad him into a passion; and, from the moment when he went into a passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far inferior to him in capacity. Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation, he was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He had consequently a great body of personal adherents. The clergy especially looked on him as their own man, and extended to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood in some need, for he drank deep, and when was in a rage—and he very often was in a rage—he swore like a porter."

- Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester

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"The following is the teaching of the Hanafi school of Sunnis on the subject of Jihad, as given in the Hidayah, vol. Ii. P. 140:-- "The sacred injunction concerning war is sufficiently observed when it is carried on by any one party or tribe of Muslims, and it is then no longer of any force with respect to the rest. It is established as a divine ordinance, by the word of God, who said in the Qur’an, ‘Slay the infidels,’ and also by a saying of the Prophet, ‘War is permanently established until the Day of Judgment’ (meaning the ordinance respecting war). The observance, however, in the degree above mentioned, suffices, because war is not a positive injunction, as it is in its nature murderous and destructive, and is enjoined only for the purpose of advancing the true faith or repelling evil from the servants of God; and when this end is answered by any single tribe or party of Muslims making war, the obligation is no longer binding upon the rest, in the same manner as in the prayers for the dead-(if, however, no one Muslim were to make war, the whole of the Muslim, would incur the criminality of neglecting it) – and also because if the injunction were positive, the whole of the Muslims must consequently engage in war, in which case the materials for war (such as horses, armour, and so forth) could not be procured. Thus it appears that the observance of war as aforesaid suffices, except where there is a general summons (that is, where the infidels invade a Muslim territory, and the Imam for the time being issues a general proclamation requiring all persons to go forth to fight), for in this case war becomes a positive injunction with respect to the whole of the inhabitants, whether men or women, and whether the Imam be a just or an unjust person; and if the people of that territory be unable to repulse the infidels, then war becomes a positive injunction with respect to all in that neighbourhood; and if these also do not suffice it, then comes a positive injunction with respect to the next neighbours; and in same manner with respect to all the Muslims from east to west. The destruction of the sword is incurred by infidels, although they be not the first aggressors, as appears from various passages in the traditions which are generally received to this effect."

- Thomas Hughes (priest)

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""It is not incumbent upon infants to make war, as they are objects of compassion; neither is it incumbent upon slaves or women, as the rights of the master, or of the husband, have precedence; nor is it so upon the blind, the maimed, or the decrepid, as such are incapable. If, however, the infidels make an attack upon a city or territory, in this case the repulsion of them is incumbent upon all Muslims, insomuch that a wife may go forth without consent of her husband, and a slave without the leave of his master, because war then becomes a positive injunction; and possession, either by bondage or by marriage, cannot come in competition with a positive injunction, as in prayer (for instance) or fasting. This is supposing a general summons; for without that it is not lawful for a woman or slave to go forth to make war without the consent of the husband or master, as there is in this case no necessity for their assistance, since others suffice, and hence no reason exists for destroying the right of the husband or master on that account. If there be any fund in the public treasury, so long as the fund lasts any extraordinary exaction for the support of the warriors is abominable, because such exaction resembles a hire for that which is a service of God as much as prayer or fasting, and, hire being forbidden in these instances, so is it in that which resembles them. In this case, moreover, there is no occasion for any extraordinary exactions, since the funds of the public treasury are prepared to answer all emergencies of the Muslims, such as war, and so forth. If, however, there be no funds in the public treasury, in this case the Imam need not hesitate to levy contributions for the better support of the warriors, because in levying a contribution the greater evil (namely, the destruction of the person) is repelled, and the contribution is the smaller evil, and the imposition of a smaller evil to remedy a greater is of no consequence. A confirmation of this is found in what is related of the Prophet, that he took various articles of armour, and so forth, from Safwan and ‘Umar; in the same manner also he took property from married men, and bestowed it upon the unmarried, in order to encourage them and enable them to go forth to fight with cheerfulness; and he also used to take the horses from those who remained at home, and bestowed them upon those who went forth to fight on foot. When the Muslims enter the enemy’s country and besiege the cities or strongholds of the infidels, it is necessary to invite them to embrace the faith, because Ibn ‘Abbas relates of the Prophet that he never destroyed any without previously inviting them to embrace the faith. If, therefore, they embrace the faith, it is unnecessary to war with them, because that which was the design of the war is then obtained without war. The Prophet, moreover, has said we are directed to make war upon men only until such time as they shall confess, ‘There is no God but one God.’ But when they repeat this creed, their persons and properties are in protection (aman). If they do accept the call to the faith, they must then be called upon to pay jizyah, or capitation tax, because the Prophet directed the commanders of his armies so to do, and also because by submitting to this tax war is forbidden and terminated upon the authority of the Qur’an. (This call to pay capitation tax, however, respects only those from whom the capitation tax is acceptable, or, as to apostates and the idolaters of Arabia, to call upon them to pay the tax is useless, since nothing is accepted from them but embracing the faith, as it is thus commanded in the Qur’an). If those who are called upon to pay capitation tax consent to do so, they then become entitled to the same protection and subject to the same rules as Muslims because ‘Ali had declared infidels agree to a capitation tax only in order to render their blood the same as Muslims’ blood, and their property the same as Muslims’ property. also quoted in Bostom, A. G. M. D., & Bostom, A. G. (2010). The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims. Amherst: Prometheus."

- Thomas Hughes (priest)

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"It is no objection to shooting arrows or other missiles against the infidels that there may chance to be among them a Muslim in the way either of bondage or of traffic, because the shooting of arrows and so forth among the infidels remedies a general evil in the repulsion thereof from the whole body of Muslims, whereas the slaying of a Muslim slave or a trader is only a particular evil, and to repel a general evil a particular evil must be adopted, and also because it seldom happens that the strongholds of the infidels are destitute of Muslims, since it is most probable that there are Muslims residing in them, either in the way of bondage or of traffic, and hence, if the use of missile weapons were prohibited on account of these Muslims, war would be obstructed. If the infidels in time of battle should make shields of Muslim children, or of Muslims, who are prisoners in their hands, yet there is no need on that account to refrain from the use of missile weapons, for the reason already mentioned. It is requisite, however, that the Muslims in using such weapons aim at the infidels, and not at the children or the Muslim captives, because, as it is impossible in shooting to distinguish precisely between them and the infidels, the person who discharges the weapon must make this distinction in his intention and design by aiming at the infidels, and not at the others, since this much is practicable, and the distinction must be made as far as is practicable."

- Thomas Hughes (priest)

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from England
""If the Imam make peace with aliens, or with any particular tribe or body of them, and perceive it to be eligible for the Muslims, there need be no hesitation, because it is said in the Qur’an: ‘If the infidels be inclined to peace do ye likewise consent thereto,’ and also because the Prophet in the year of the punishment of Eubea, made a peace between the Muslims and the people of Mecca for the space of ten years; peace, moreover is war in effect where the interest of the Muslims requires it, since the design of war is the removal of evil, and this is obtained by means of peace: contrary to where peace is not to the interest of the Muslims, for it is not in that case lawful, as this would be abandoning war both apparently and in effect. It is here, however, proper to observe that it is not absolutely necessary to restrict a peace to the term above recorded (namely, ten years), because the end for which peace is made may be sometimes more effectually obtained by extending it to a longer term. If the Imam make peace with the aliens for a single term (namely, ten years), and afterwards perceive that it is most advantageous for the Muslim’s interest to break it, he may in that case lawfully renew the war after giving them due notice, because, upon a change of the circumstances which rendered peace advisable, the breach of peace is war, and the observance of it a desertion of war, both in appearance and also in effect, and war is an ordinance of God, and the forsaking of it is not becoming (to Muslims). It is to be observed that giving due notice to the enemy is in this case indispensably requisite in such a manner that treachery may not be induced, since this is forbidden. It is also requisite that such a delay be made in renewing the war with them, as may allow intelligence of the peace being broken off to be universally received among them, and for this such a time suffices as may admit of the king or chief of the enemy communicating the same to the different parts of their dominion, since by such a delay the charge of treachery is avoided.".."If the infidels act with perfidy in a peace, it is in such case lawful for the Imam to attack them without any previous notice, since the breach of treaty in this instance originates with them, whence there is no occasion to commence the war on the part of the Muslims by giving them notice. It would be otherwise, however, if only a small party of them were to violate the treaty by entering the Muslim territory and there committing robberies upon the Muslims, since this does not amount to a breach of treaty. If, moreover, this party be in force so as to be capable of opposition, and openly fight with the Muslims, this is a breach of treaty with respect to that party only, but not with respect to the rest of their nation or tribe, because, as this party have violated the treaty without any permission from their prince, the rest are not answerable for their act; whereas if they made their attack by permission of their prince, the breach of treaty would be regarded as by the whole, all being virtually implicated in it."

- Thomas Hughes (priest)

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from England
"If the Imam make peace with the aliens in return for property, there is no scruple; because since peace may be lawfully made without any such gratification it is also lawful in return for a gratification. This, however, is only where the Muslims stand in need of the property thus to be acquired; for if they be not in necessity, making peace for property is not lawful, since peace is a desertion of war both in appearance and in effect. It is to be observed that if the Imam receive this property by sending a messenger and making peace without the Muslim troops entering the enemy’s territory, the object of disbursement of it is the same as that of jizyah or capitation-tax; that is, it is to be expended upon the warriors and not upon the poor. If, however, the property be taken after the Muslims have invaded the enemy in this case it is as plunder, one-fifth going to the Imam and the remainder to be divided among the troops, as the property has in fact been taken by force in this instance. It is incumbent on the Imam to keep peace with apostates, and not to make war upon them, in order that they may have time to consider their situation, since it is to be hoped that they may again return to the faith. It is, therefore, lawful to delay fighting with them in a hope that they may again embrace Islam; but it is not lawful to take property from them. If, however, the Imam should take property from them, it is not incumbent upon him to return it, as such property is not in protection. If infidels harass the Muslims, and offer them peace in return for property, the Imam must not accede thereto as this would be a degradation of the Muslim honour, and disgrace would be attached to all the parties concerned in it; this, therefore, is not lawful except where destruction is to be apprehended, in which case the purchasing a peace with property is lawful, because it is a duty to repel destruction in every possible mode."

- Thomas Hughes (priest)

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from England
"The merits and faults of Burnet's most familiar book are the merits and faults of the man himself. It is vivid, energetic, and picturesque. It is never dull, and it is never tired. It carries the reader along its stream of words with as little resistance as Burnet's audience opposed to his sermons. And the ease of its style is matched by an ease of fancy. Burnet was a gossip in an age of gossips. He had the same curiosity, the same love of the trivial, as obsessed Aubrey and Anthony à Wood. He did not disdain to record the tricks of manner and speech which differentiate one man from another, and which graver historians omit. For instance, he tells us that Lauderdale's "tongue was too big for his mouth, which made him bedew all he talked to"; that Shaftesbury "depended much on what a drunken physician had predicted"; that Orrery "pretended to wit, but it was very luscious"; that Buckingham "has no manner of literature, and all he knows is in chemistry." So much may be set down to his credit. On the other hand, his book is, like himself, garrulous, reckless, and undisciplined. He still preaches to the personages of his History as he preached to them, if he might, when he and they were alive. Withal he was a finished eavesdropper, who combined the keen scent for news with the tireless indiscretion of the modern reporter; and it may be said that there is no side of his own various character that is not illustrated in the History of My Own Time."

- Gilbert Burnet

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomAnglican bishopsFellows of the Royal SocietyPeople from EdinburghHistorians from Scotland
"When we endeavour to ascertain what the Mohammedans have left to the Hindus of their ancient buildings in Benares, we are startled at the result of our investigations. Although the city is bestrewn with temples in every direction, in some places ve1y thickly, yet it would be difficult, I believe, to find twenty temples, in all Benares, of the age of Aurungzeb, or from 1658 to 1707. The same unequal proportion of old temples, as compared with new, is visible throughout the whole of Northern India. Moreover, the diminutive size of nearly all the temples that exist is another powerful testimony to the stringency of the Mohammedan rule. It seems clear, that, for the most part, the emperors forbade the Hindus to build spacious temples, and suffered them to erect only small structures, of the size of cages, for their idols, and these of no pretensions to beauty.... If there is one circumstance respecting the Mohammedan period which Hindus remember better than another, it is the insulting pride of the Musulmans, the outrages which they perpetrated upon their religious convictions, and the extensive spoliation of their temples and shrines. It is right that Europeans should clearly understand, that this spirit of Mohammedanism is unchangeable, and that, if, by any mischance, India should again come into the possession of men and this creed, all the churches and colleges, and all the Mission institutions, would not be worth a week's purchase."

- M. A. Sherring

0 likesMissionariesIndologistsHistorians from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"[T]he greatest British historian to emerge on the academic scene since the First World War: Sir Lewis Namier. Namier was a true conservative – not a typical English conservative who when scratched turns out to be 75 per cent a liberal, but a conservative such as we have not seen among British historians for more than a hundred years... Like Acton's liberalism, Namier's conservatism derived both strength and profundity from being rooted in a continental background. Unlike Fisher or Toynbee, Namier had no roots in the nineteenth-century liberalism, and suffered from no nostalgic regrets for it... He worked in two chosen fields, and the choice of both was significant. In English history he went back to the last period in which the ruling class had been able to engage in the rational pursuit of position and power in an orderly and mainly static society. Somebody has accused Namier of taking mind out of history. It is not perhaps a very fortunate phrase, but one can see the point which the critic was trying to make. Politics at the accession of George III were still immune from the fanaticism of ideas, and of that passionate belief in progress, which was to break on the world with the French revolution and usher in the century of triumphant liberalism. No ideas, no revolution, no liberalism: Namier chose to give us a brilliant portrait of an age still safe – though not to remain safe for long – from all these dangers."

- Lewis Namier

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomHistorians from the United KingdomDiplomats of the United KingdomZionists
"The dominant figure in contemporary English historiography is (I need hardly say it) the Polish Jew Lewis Bernstein Namier. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, but, as a militant Zionist, he remained outside British intellectual society until the publication of his book The Structure of English Politics at the Accession of George III (1929) gave him almost at once a unique position of authority, and transformed him, to his own surprise perhaps, into the model for the younger generation of English historians. In substance Namier applied to English history continental sociological methods of examining the ruling class, and he added to this a special knowledge of the situation in modern and contemporary Central Europe – which he was to show even more clearly in subsequent essays and research. Yet in his extraordinary ability as a minute and rigorous researcher and in the simplicity of his guiding principles he satisfied his English readers steeped in a historiographic tradition that had been formed under the influence of the first German historicism. Namier has instigated the most complex collective undertaking of contemporary English historians, the history of the English Parliament: and his example has influenced historians as different as J. A. Neale [sic]...and A. J. P. Taylor... It is impossible to separate from Namier's work R. Syme's studies in Roman history (The Roman Revolution, 1939)... Namier has been criticised by H. Butterfield in an attempt to re-establish a religious perspective which is Methodist in origin (Christianity and History, 1949 etc.); but if the credit for the reawakening of interest in the history of historiography is due to Butterfield, his specific criticism of Namier's books has not found favour."

- Lewis Namier

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomHistorians from the United KingdomDiplomats of the United KingdomZionists
"Namier himself treated it as virtually an axiom about all political behaviour that the actors engage in it solely out of a desire to acquire and exercise political power. It follows that their professed principles, or rather their "party names and cant", as Namier characteristically preferred to put it in The Structure of Politics, form no guide at all to the "underlying realities" of politics. They are invoked merely to ensure that the "unconscious promptings" and "inscrutable components" of personal ambition and the quest for domination which actually drive men into politics are "invested ex post facto with the appearance of logic and rationality". It follows that all such "abstract ideals" must be mere epiphenomena, which play no independent role in determining any courses of political action, and which not only can but ought to be bypassed if we are to give realistic explanations of political behaviour. As Namier himself put it in his essay on "Human Nature in Politics", "what matters most is the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality". And, as several recent commentators on his work have stressed, it was his express hope in studying eighteenth-century politics (and a large part of the attraction which the subject held for him) to be able to show that "considerations of principle or even of policy had only limited relevance" in this period, that "what mattered in politics" at this time "was not attachment to principle but the struggle for office", and in general that "political ideas" are "rarely in themselves the determinants of human action"."

- Lewis Namier

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomHistorians from the United KingdomDiplomats of the United KingdomZionists
"All in all, we may say that Nonconformity served as a gathering ground of the various influences (religious, political, and economic) which produced the Liberal or Manchester philosophy of the nineteenth century—a philosophy which not only inspired a party, but determined in no small measure the general life and aspect of Victorian England. "Way for individual enterprise"—this was its teaching; and backed by the manufacturing and commercial classes, which had always been the stronghold of Nonconformity, its teaching triumphed. The reluctant Peel, a Conservative and a Churchman, bowed to its logic; the subtle mind of Gladstone, nurtured in the same tenets as Peel, came under its influence and became its chosen apostle. The England which presented itself to the Continent—the England which the Continent still sees (though it is passing or passed)—was the England of this tradition: not the England of Church and King, the "land" and loyalty, but the England of chapel and counting-house, the factory and self-help. The philosophy of England which travelled abroad was the philosophy of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer; and both, whatever their religious views, were deeply imbued with the Nonconformist tradition. Spencer, as he writes in his autobiography, sprang from a family "essentially dissenting"; and his Nonconformist instincts and early training left an abiding mark, which appears in his opposition to any scheme of State education, and in the title and whole argument of The Man versus the State."

- Ernest Barker

0 likesFellows of the British AcademyHistorians from EnglandPolitical scientists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomUniversity of Oxford faculty
"If any learned man of all our adversaries, or if all the learned men that be alive, be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old catholic doctor, or father, or out of any old general council, or out of the holy scriptures of God, or any one example of the primitive church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved that there was any private mass in the whole world at that time, for the space of six hundred years after Christ; Or that there was then any communion ministered unto the people under one kind; Or that the people had their common prayers then in a strange tongue that they understood not; Or that the bishop of Rome was then called an universal bishop, or the head of the universal church; Or that the people was then taught to believe that Christ's body is really, substantially, corporally, carnally, or naturally, in the sacrament... Or that whosoever had said the sacrament is a figure, a pledge, a token, or a remembrance of Christ's body, had therefore been judged for an heretic; Or that it was lawful then to have thirty, twenty, fifteen, ten, or five masses said in one church, in one day; Or that images were then set up in the churches, to the intent the people might worship them; Or that the lay people was then forbidden to read the word of God in their own tongue—if any man alive were able to prove any of these articles by any one clear or plain clause or sentence, either of the scriptures, or of the old doctors, or of any old general council, or by any example of the primitive church; I promised then that I would give over and subscribe unto him."

- John Jewel

0 likesAnglican bishopsUniversity of Oxford alumniChristian apologistsTheologians from EnglandAnglicans from the United Kingdom
"For the ungodly talie and ymagin thus amonge themselves (but not right:) The tyme of oure life is but short and tedious, and when a man is once gone, he hath nomore joye ner pleasure, nether knowe we eny man that turneth agayne from death: for we are borne of naught, and we shal be herafter as though we had never bene. For oure breth is as a smoke in oure nostrels, and the wordes as a sparck to move oure herte. As for oure body, it shalbe very asshes that are quenched, and oure soule shal vanish as the soft ayre. Oure life shall passe awaye as the trace of a cloude, and come to naught as the myst that is dryven awaye with the beames of the Sonne, and put downe with the heate therof. Oure name also shalbe forgotten by litle and litle, and no man shal have oure workes in remembraunce.For oure tyme is a very shadow that passeth awaye, and after oure ende there is no returnynge, for it is fast sealed, so that no man commeth agayne. Come on therfore, let us enjoye the pleasures that there are, and let us soone use the creature like as in youth. We wil fyll oure selves with good wyne and oyntment, there shal no floure of the tyme go by us. We wil crowne oure selves with roses afore they be wythered. There shal be no fayre medowe, but oure lust shal go thorow it. Let every one of you be partaker of oure volupteousnes. Let us leave some token of oure pleasure in every place, for that is oure porcion, els gett we nothinge. ...Soch thinges do the ungodly ymagin, and go astraye, for their owne wickednes hath blynded them. As for the misteries of God, they understonde them not : they nether hope for the rewarde of righteousnesse, ner regarde the worshipe that holy soules shall have. For God created man to be undestroied, yee after the ymage of his awne licknesse made he him. Neverthelesse thorow envye of the devell came death in to the worlde, and they that holde of his syde, do as he doth.But the soules of the righteous are in the hande of God, and the payne of death shal not touch them. In the sight of the unwyse they appeare to dye, and their ende is taken for very destruccion. The waye of the righteous is judged to be utter destruccion, but they are in rest. And though they suffre payne before men, yet is their hope full of immortalite."

- Myles Coverdale

0 likesUniversity of Cambridge alumniTheologians from EnglandAnglican bishopsAnglicans from the United KingdomTranslators from England
"…. I conveyed to Mahatma Gandhi certain ideas which were burning in my mind for some time to know his opinion. I asked Mahatma ji as to what help I should extend to stop the communal splits and differences that happened in Malabar and restore peace and tranquility there. This question brightened his face very much. He said that he was worried and constantly thinking about his failiure in duty by not visiting Malabar and expressing his regrets, even under threat of arrest and imprisonment, in view of the ban put by the government against his entering Malabar. He also said that he will have a lot peace of mind and greatly relieved if I visited the place forthwith, personally. It was then that I could realize the limitless affection he had for the Moplahs of Malabar. Though the Moplahs had committed very heinous crimes, he instilled in me a feeling of love eradicating the hatred caused by the atrocities. Every word he spoke displayed the deep love he kept in his mind. Had the government permitted him to travel to the rebellion affected areas in the early stages itself, he would have entered those spots completely unarmed and helpless. If the Moplahs by their ignorance and unaware of the qualities of this great soul, made any attempt on his life, he would have accepted such death valiantly and with a smiling face, quite confident of the fact that his blood would have served to instill peace and tolerance in the minds of the Moplahs. On the other hand if they did understand him correctly, he would have been successful in making them lay down their arms and embrace the Hindus as their brothers as well as removing the hatred in the minds of Hindus and accepting the Muslim s as their own brothers."

- Charles Freer Andrews

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomPolitical activistsSocial activistsMissionaries
"When I reached Malabar what I saw were all terrible scenes. I was convinced that forced conversions were not a concoted story and there were evidences of the terrible things the insurgents did for that. I saw with my eyes the clear evidences of a forced conversion of a Hindu youth. All his virility was lost and remained and appeared like a living corpse. Many things more were witnessed by me. I am not detailing them all here. Among all that I also saw four Muslim women and children who had become insane due to fear. I also saw a woman injured with a bayonet charge and a child with mutilated limbs. The love kindled by Mahatma Gandhi in my heart attracted me towards them. With the help of two Congress workers I could understand the extent of their sorrows. I went back to appraise Mahatma Gandhi of the facts I collected from Malabar. I met him while he was at Bardoli and conveyed him all the facts. I will never forget the expressions of love and sadness that reflected on his face when he heard the news.( Might be that after hearing this only Gandhiji wrote in Young India condemning Moplah rebellion) Since it was a Monday and Gandhiji used to observe a vow of silence on that day, He couldn’t say anything to me. But his facial expressions conveyed clearly what was in his mind. I went back to Malabar again. Later on due to other preoccupations I could not return to Malabar again. Some prominent Muslim s had written me a few days back that the witch hunting by Malabar Police continues unabated even now and the Muslim youth consider death better option than continuing living in the present situation.”"

- Charles Freer Andrews

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomPolitical activistsSocial activistsMissionaries
"Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed, Whence camest to dazzle our eyes? With thy bosom bespangled and banded With the hues of the seas and the skies; Is thy home European or Asian, O mystical monster marine? Part molluscous and partly crustacean, Betwixt and between.Wast thou born to the sound of sea trumpets? Hast thou eaten and drunk to excess Of the sponges—thy muffins and crumpets, Of the seaweed—thy mustard and cress? Wast thou nurtured in caverns of coral, Remote from reproof or restraint? Art thou innocent, art thou immoral, Sinburnian or Saint?Lithe limbs, curling free, as a creeper That creeps in a desolate place, To enroll and envelop the sleeper In a silent and stealthy embrace, Cruel beak craning forward to bite us, Our juices to drain and to drink, Or to whelm us in waves of Cocytus, Indelible ink!O breast, that ’twere rapture to writhe on! O arms ’twere delicious to feel Clinging close with the crush of the Python, When she maketh her murderous meal! In thy eight-fold embraces enfolden, Let our empty existence escape, Give us death that is glorious and golden, Crushed all out of shape!Ah! thy red lips, lascivious and luscious, With death in their amorous kiss, Cling round us, and clasp us, and crush us, With bitings of agonised bliss; We are sick with the poison of pleasure, Dispense us the potion of pain; Ope thy mouth to its uttermost measure And bite us again!"

- Arthur Clement Hilton

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomPoets from England
"The fatal consequences are that Peel, by betraying the precise and specific principle upon which he was brought into office, has ruined the character of public men, and dissolved, by dividing, the great landed interest—the only solid foundation on which any Government can be formed in this country. I care comparatively little about his actual corn law experiment; it will fail, and England will right herself from this fraudulent humbug; but while that process is going on, we shall be running all the risks, if not suffering the actual infliction, of a revolution. On the principle on which we have truckled to the League, how are we to resist the attack on the Irish Church—the Irish Union—both much worse cases (in that view) than the Corn Laws. How to maintain primogeniture, the Bishops, the House of Lords, the Crown? Sir Robert Peel has put these into more peril than Cobbett, or Cobden, or O'Connell, or they altogether could have done, and his personal influence has carried away individuals; he has broken up the old interests, divided the great families, and commenced just such a revolution as the Noailles and Montmorencies did in 1789. Look at father and son, and brother and brother, and uncle and nephew—thrown into personal hostility in half the counties of England, and all for what?—to propitiate Richard Cobden."

- John Wilson Croker

0 likesAnglicans from the United KingdomMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomFellows of the Royal SocietyPoliticians from IrelandAuthors from Ireland
"Now that broad cool verandah of Captain Brentwood's, with its deep recesses of shadow, was a place not to be lightly spoken of. Any man once getting footing there, and leaving it, except on compulsion, would show himself of weak mind. Any man once comfortably settled there in an easy chair, who fetched anything for himself when he could get any one else to fetch it for him, would show himself, in my opinion, a man of weak mind. One thing only was wanted to make it perfect, and that was niggers. To the winds with "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and "Dred" after it, in a hot wind! What can an active-minded, self-helpful lady like Mrs. Stowe, freezing up there in Connecticut, obliged to do something to keep herself warm,—what can she, I ask, know about the requirements of a southern gentleman when the thermometer stands at 125 degrees in the shade? Pish! Does she know the exertion required for cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind? No! Does she know the amount of perspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of Bass in January? Does she know the physical prostration which is caused by breaking up two lumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? No, she doesn't, or she would cry out for niggers with the best of us! When the thermometer gets over 100 degrees in the shade, all men would have slaves if they were allowed. An Anglo-Saxon conscience will not, save in rare instances, bear a higher average heat than 95 degrees."

- Henry Kingsley

0 likesNovelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomEnglish emigrants to colonial Australia
"Oh, but the sabres bit deep that autumn afternoon! There were women in Minsk, in Moglef, in Tohernigof, in Jitenier, in Polemva, whose husbands were Hussars—and women in Taganrog, in Tcherkask, in Aarepta, which lies under the pleasant slate mountains, whose husbands and sons were Cossacks—who were made widows that day. For that day's work there was weeping in reed-thatched hovels of the Don, and the mud-built shanties of the Dnieper. For the 17th Lancers, the Scots-Greys, the 1st Royals, and the 6th Enniskillens—"these terrible beef-fed islanders" (to use the words of the Northern Bee)—were upon them; and Volnyia and Hampshire, Renfrewshire and Grodno, Podolia and Fermanagh, were mixed together in one common ruin. Still, they say, the Princess Petrovitch, on certain days, leaves her carriage, and walks a mile through the snow barefoot, into Alexandroski, in memory of her light-haired handsome young son, whom Hornby slew at Balaclava. And I myself know the place where Lady Allerton makes her pilgrimage for those two merry boys of hers who lie out on the Crimean hill. Alas! not side by side. Up and down, in all weathers, along a certain gravel walk, where the chalk brook, having flooded the park with its dammed-up waters, comes foaming and spouting over a cascade, and hurries past the smooth-mown lawns of the pleasance. In the very place where she stood when the second letter came. And there, they say, she will walk at times, until her beauty and her strength are gone, and her limbs refuse to carry her."

- Henry Kingsley

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"What is now required is a carefully and scientifically edited Dictionary or Gazetteer of the Castes, and Tribes, and social distinctions of British India, arranged alphabetically under the leading name, but carefully giving all the synonyms, and alternative names, carefully transliterated in the Roman Character, and given also in the local Indian Character. It is an idle war to fight against Caste, which exists in the atmosphere of India. The English is but an additional Caste to the previously existing catalogue. There are also many compensating advantages. All secret societies of a dangerous political character are impossible in a population, which is honeycombed with deep, though innocent, fissures: the panchayet of the Caste is a welcome and powerful ally to a just Ruler: the old Roman proverb applies, Divide et impera. Difference of Religion and language, great as they are, are scarcely so operative as difference of Caste. Then, again, the necessity of a general poor law to relieve the indigent is obviated by the existence of Caste. The respectability of a community is maintained by the enforcement of wise Caste-rules: they are felt, though not written, by Europeans in their own country. The English Government has steadily ignored Caste, as far as the administration of public affairs is concerned, but respected the private rights of every class of its subjects, and the Civil Courts will give a remedy for any wanton outrage of the feelings of the meanest of its subjects; while, on the other hand, any attempt to monopolize the use of wells, or other places of public convenience, or to place any section of the community under a ban, causing injury to person or property, is sternly repressed. I am glad to hear that there is a prospect of an Ethnological Survey of British India."

- Robert Needham Cust

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"A man who has made a tolerable progress in humanity, will adopt, and ever bear in mind, the principle of increasing, as far as lies within his power, the quantity of pleasure in the world, and diminishing that of pain: he will establish this to himself as a constant and inviolable rule of action, and in carrying it into practice he will not overlook one created thing that is endowed with faculties capable of perceiving pleasure and pain. He will reflect on who it was that gave these faculties and remember that they were not given to be sported with. He will not esteem the meanest of animals beneath the notice of his humanity because, in the meanest of them, the wisdom and power of the all-benevolent Being are displayed. This is the Being without whom not a single sparrow shall fall to the ground and whose bounty feeds the young ravens that call upon him. His sensibility will be tremblingly alive to the sensations of all animated nature, and he will feel for everything that is capable of feeling: he will look upon pity, kindness, and mercy toward his own species as the weightier matters of humanity, but at the same time, he will consider the humane treatment of animals as more than the tithe of the anise and cummin of it. He will scrupulously do his duty in the former, and in the latter, he will not leave it undone."

- Thomas Young (writer and theologian)

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