Chancellors of the Exchequer

"I do not wish...to call myself any Thing but an Independent Whig. Which in words is hardly a distinction, as every one alike pretends to it."

"Most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust and diabolical."

"What I have now offered is meant merely for the sake of my country, for the simple question is: will you change your Ministers and keep the Empire, or keep your Ministers and lose the Kingdom?"

"That beautiful frame of government which had made us the envy and admiration of mankind, in which the people were entitled to hold so distinguished a share, was so far dwindled and departed from its original purity, that the representatives ceased, in a great degree, to be connected with the people. It was the essence of the constitution, that the people had a share in the government by the means of representation; and its excellency and permanency was calculated to consist in this representation, having been designed to be equal, easy, practicable, and complete. When it ceased to be so; when the representative ceased to have connection with the constituent, and was either dependent on the Crown or the aristocracy; there was a defect in the frame of representation, and it was not innovation, but recovery of constitution, to repair it."

"I feel, Sir, at this instant, how much I had been animated in my childhood by a recital of England's victories:—I was taught, Sir, by one whose memory I shall ever revere, that at the close of a war, far different indeed from this, she had dictated the terms of peace to submissive nations. This, in which I place something more than a common interest, was the memorable aera of England's glory. But that aera is past...the visions of her power and pre-eminence are passed away... Let us examine what is left, with a manly and determined courage... Let us feel our calamities—let us bear them too, like men."

"I will repeat then, Sir, that it is not this treaty, it is the Earl of Shelburne alone whom the movers of this question are desirous to wound. This is the object which has raised this storm of faction; this is the aim of the unnatural coalition to which I have alluded. If, however, the baneful alliance is not already formed, if this ill-omened marriage is not already solemnized, I know a just and lawful impediment, and, in the name of the public safety, I here forbid the banns."

"You may take from me, Sir, the privileges and emoluments of place, but you cannot, and you shall not, take from me those habitual and warm regards for the prosperity of Great Britain which constitute the honour, the happiness, the pride of my life, and which, I trust, death alone can extinguish."

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

"I came up no backstairs... Little did I think to be ever charged in this House with being the tool and abettor of secret influence. The novelty of the imputation only renders it so much the more contemptible. This is the only answer I shall ever deign to make on the subject, and I wish the House to bear it in their mind, and judge of my future conduct by my present declaration: the integrity of my own heart, and the probity of all my public, as well as my private principles, shall always be my sources of action."

"Considering the treaty in its political view, he should not hesitate to contend against the too-frequently advanced doctrine, that France was, and must be, the unalterable enemy of Britain. His mind revolted from this position as monstrous and impossible. To suppose that any nation could be unalterably the enemy of another, was weak and childish. It had neither its foundation in the experience of nations, nor in the history of man. It was a libel on the constitution of political societies, and supposed the existence of diabolical malice in the original frame of man."

"William Pitt: Never fear, Mr. Burke: depend on it we shall go on as we are, until the day of judgment. Edmund Burke: Very likely, Sir. It is the day of no judgment that I am afraid of."

"We must not count with certainty on a continuance of our present prosperity during such an interval [15 years]; but unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than we may at the present moment."

"What is it which has produced, in the last hundred years, so rapid an advance, beyond what can be traced in any other period of our history? What but that, during that time, under the mild and just government of the illustrious Princes of the family now on the throne, a general calm has prevailed through the country, beyond what was ever before experienced; and we have also enjoyed, in greater purity and perfection, the benefit of those original principles of our constitution, which were ascertained and established by the memorable events that closed the century preceding? This is the great and governing cause, the operation of which has given scope to all the other circumstances which I have enumerated. It is this union of liberty with law, which, by raising a barrier equally firm against the encroachments of power, and the violence of popular commotion, affords to property its just security, produces the exertion of genius and labour, the extent solidity of credit, the circulation and increase of capital; which forms and upholds the national character, and sets in motion all the springs which actuate the great mass of the community through all its various descriptions."

"Let us remember, that the love of the constitution, though it acts as a sort of natural instinct in the hearts of Englishmen, is strengthened by reason and reflection, and every day confirmed by experience; that it is a constitution which we do not merely admire from traditional reverence, which we do not flatter from prejudice or habit, but which we cherish and value, because we know that it practically secures the tranquillity and welfare both of individuals and of the public, and provides, beyond any other frame of government which has ever existed, for the real and useful ends which form at once the only true foundation and only rational object of all political societies."

"[W]e have become rich in a variety of acquirements, favoured above measure in the gifts of Providence, unrivalled in commerce, pre-eminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we are in the possession of peace, of happiness, and of liberty; we are under the guidance of a mild and beneficent religion; and we are protected by impartial laws, and the purest administration of justice: we are living under a system of government which our own happy experience leads us to pronounce the best and wisest which has ever yet been framed; a system which has become the admiration of the world."

"It is in this view, Sir,—it is an atonement for our long and cruel injustice towards Africa, that the measure proposed by my honourable friend most forcibly recommends itself to my mind. The great and happy change to be expected in the state of her inhabitants, is, of all the various and important benefits of the abolition, in my estimation, incomparably the most extensive and important. I shall vote, Sir, against the adjournment; and I shall also oppose to the utmost every proposition, which in any way may tend either to prevent, or even to postpone for an hour, the total abolition of the slave-trade: a measure which, on all the various grounds which I have stated, we are bound, by the most pressing and indispensable duty, to adopt."

"We learn with concern, that not only a spirit of tumult and disorder has shown itself in acts of insurrection, which required the interposition of a military force in support of the civil magistrate, but that the industry employed to excite discontent has appeared to proceed from a design to attempt, in concert with persons in foreign countries, the destruction of our happy constitution, and the subversion of all order of government."

"We owe our present happiness and prosperity, which has never been equalled in the annals of mankind, to a mixture of monarchical government. We feel and know we are happy under that form of government. We consider it as our first duty to maintain and reverence the British constitution, which, for wise and just reasons of lasting and internal policy, attaches inviolability to the sacred person of the Sovereign, though, at the same time, by the responsibility it has annexed to government, by the check of a wise system of laws, and by a mixture of aristocratic and democratical power in the frame of legislation, it has equally exempted itself from the danger arising from the exercise of absolute power on the one hand, and the still more dangerous contagion of popular licentiousness on the other. The equity of our laws, and the freedom of our political system, have been the envy of every surrounding nation. In this country no man, in consequence of his riches or rank, is so high as to be above the reach of the laws, and no individual is so poor or inconsiderable as not to be within their protection. It is the boast of the law of England, that it affords equal security and protection to the high and the low, to the rich and the poor."

"They have explained what that liberty is which they wish to give to every nation; and if they will not accept of it voluntarily, they compel them. They take every opportunity to destroy every institution that is most sacred and most valuable in every nation where their armies have made their appearance; and under the name of liberty, they have resolved to make every country in substance, if not in form, a province dependent on themselves, through the despotism of jacobin societies. This has given a more fatal blow to the liberties of mankind, than any they have suffered, even from the boldest attempts of the most aspiring monarch. We see, therefore, that France has trampled under foot all laws, human and divine. She has at last avowed the most insatiable ambition, and greatest contempt for the law of nations, which all independent states have hitherto professed most religiously to observe; and unless she is stopped in her career, all Europe must soon learn their ideas of justice—law of nations—models of government—and principles of liberty from the mouth of the French cannon."

"England will never consent that France shall arrogate the power of annulling at her pleasure, and under the pretence of a natural right of which she makes herself the only judge, the political system of Europe, established by solemn treaties, and guaranteed by the consent of all the powers. Such a violation of rights as France has been guilty of, it would be difficult to find in the history of the world. The conduct of that nation is in the highest degree arbitrary, capricious, and founded upon no one principle of reason or justice."

"He had already given it as his opinion, that if there was no other alternative than either to make war or depart from our principles, rather than recede from our principles a war was preferable to a peace; because a peace, purchased upon such terms, must be uncertain, precarious, and liable to be continually interrupted by the repetition of fresh injuries and insults. War was preferable to such a peace, because it was a shorter and a surer way to that end which the house had undoubtedly in view as its ultimate object—a secure and lasting peace. What sort of peace must that be in which there was no security? Peace he regarded as desirable only so far as it was secure. If...you entertain a sense of the many blessings which you enjoy, if you value the continuance and safety of that commerce which is a source of so much opulence, if you wish to preserve and render permanent that high state of prosperity by which this country has for some years past been so eminently distinguished, you hazard all these advantages more, and are more likely to forfeit them, by submitting to a precarious and disgraceful peace, than by a timely and vigorous interposition of your arms. By tameness and delay you suffer that evil which might now be checked, to gain ground, and which, when it becomes indispensable to oppose, may perhaps be found irresistible."

"How little progress these principles had made in this country they might be sufficiently convinced by that spirit, which had displayed itself, of attachment to the constitution, and those expressions of a firm determination to support it, which had appeared from every quarter. If, indeed, they mean to attack us, because we do not like French principles, then would this indeed be that sort of war which had so often been alleged and deprecated on the other side of the house—a war against opinions. If they mean to attack us because we love our constitution, then indeed it would be a war of extirpation; for not till the spirit of Englishmen was exterminated, would their attachment to the constitution be destroyed, and their generous efforts be slackened in its defence."

"They clearly shewed their enmity to that constitution, by taking every opportunity to separate the King of England from the nation, and by addressing the people as distinct from the government. Upon the point of their fraternity he did not wish to say much: he had no desire for their affection. To the people they offered fraternity, while they would rob them of that constitution by which they are protected, and deprive them of the numerous blessings which they enjoy under its influence. In this case, their fraternal embraces resembled those of certain animals who embrace only to destroy."

"The system of the present governors [of France] has its root in the same unqualified rights of man, the same principles of liberty and equality—principles, by which they flatter the people with the possession of the theoretical rights of man, all of which they vitiate and violate in practice. The mild principles of our government are a standing reproach to theirs, which are as intolerant as the rankest popish bigotry. Their pride and ambition lead them not so much to conquer, as to carry desolation and destruction into all the governments of Europe."

"But having, in fact, no disposition for peace, and led away by false and aspiring notions of aggrandizement, the government of France offered us such terms as they knew could not possibly be complied with. Did they know the spirit, temper, and character of this country, when they presumed to make such arrogant proposals? These proposals I will leave to the silent sense impressed by them in the breast of every Englishman. I am, thank God! addressing myself to Britons, who are acquainted with the presumption of the enemy, and who, conscious of their resources, impelled by their native spirit, and valuing the national character, will prefer the chances and alternatives of war to such unjust, unequal, and humiliating conditions."

"The natural defence of this kingdom, in case of invasion, is certainly its naval force. This presents a formidable barrier, in whatever point the enemy may direct their attack. In this department, however, little now remains to be done, our fleet at this moment being more respectable and more formidable than ever it was at any other period in the history of the country."

"The attachment and loyalty of the people of this country, I trust, has experienced no diminution. It lives, and is cherished by that constitution which...still remains entire. Under the protection and support which it derives from the acts passed by the last parliament, the constitution inspires the steady affection of the people, and is still felt to be worth defending with every drop of our blood. The voice of the country proclaims that it continues to deserve and to receive their support. Fortified by laws in perfect unison with its principles and with its practice, and fitted to the emergencies by which they were occasioned, it still possesses that just esteem and admiration of the people which will induce them faithfully to defend it against the designs of domestic foes, and the attempts of their foreign enemies."

"I trust also that we shall not be disappointed in our expectation of the spirit of the public collectively or individually; that they will not be wanting in their exertions in such a crisis; that they will be animated, collectively and individually, with a spirit that will give energy and effect to their exertions; that every man who boasts, and is worthy of the name of an Englishman, will stand forth in the metropolis, and in every part of the kingdom, to maintain the authority of the laws, and enforce obedience to them, to oppose and counteract the machinations of the disaffected, and to preserve a due principle of submission to legal authority. I trust that all the inhabitants of the kingdom will unite in one common defence against internal enemies, to maintain the general security of the kingdom, by providing for the local security of each particular district; that we shall all remember, that by so doing we shall give the fullest scope to his Majesty's forces against foreign enemies, and also the fullest scope to the known valour and unshaken fidelity of the military force of the kingdom against those who shall endeavour to disturb its internal tranquillity. Such are the principles which I feel, and upon which I shall act for myself, and such are the principles, and will be the conduct, I hope, of every man in this house and out of it; such are the sentiments that are implanted in us all; such the feelings that are inherent in the breast of every Englishman."

"I verily believe, in the present state of Europe, that if we are not wanting to ourselves, if, by the blessing of Providence, our perseverance, and our resources, should enable us to make peace with France upon terms in which we taint not our character, in which we do not abandon the sources of our wealth, the means of our strength, the defence of what we already possess; if we maintain our equal pretensions, and assert that rank which we are entitled to hold among nations—the moment peace can be obtained on such terms, be the form of government in France what it may, peace is desirable, peace is then anxiously to be sought. But unless it is attained on such terms, there is no extremity of war, there is no extremity of honourable contest, that is not preferable to the name and pretence of peace, which must be in reality a disgraceful capitulation, a base, an abject surrender of every thing that constitutes the pride, the safety, and happiness of England."

"[I]f we look to the whole complexion of this transaction, the duplicity, the arrogance, and violence which has appeared in the course of the negociation, if we take from thence our opinion of its general result, we shall be justified in our conclusion, not that the people of France, not that the whole government of France, but that that part of the government which had too much influence, and has now the whole ascendancy, never was sincere; was determined to accept of no terms but such as would make it neither durable nor safe, such as could only be accepted by this country by a surrender of all its interests, and by a sacrifice of every pretension, to the character of a great, a powerful, or an independent nation."

"[Y]ou have it stated in the subsequent declaration of France itself, that it is not against your commerce, that it is not against your wealth, it is not against your possessions in the east, or colonies in the west, it is not against even the source of your maritime greatness, it is not against any of the appendages of your empire, but against the very essence of your liberty, against the foundation of your independence, against the citadel of your happiness, against your constitution itself, that their hostilities are directed. They have themselves announced and proclaimed the proposition, that what they mean to bring with their invading army is the genius of their liberty: I desire no other word to express the subversion of the British constitution,—and the substitution of the most malignant and fatal contrast—and the annihilation of British liberty, and the obliteration of every thing that has rendered you a great, a flourishing, and a happy people. This is what is at issue; for this are we to declare ourselves in a manner that deprecates the rage which our enemy will not dissemble, and which will be little moved by our entreaty. Under such circumstances are we ashamed or afraid to declare, in a firm and manly tone, our resolution to defend ourselves, or to speak the language of truth with the energy that belongs to Englishmen united in such a cause?"

"[I]f we love that degree of national power which is necessary for the independence of the country, and its safety; if we regard domestic tranquillity, if we look at individual enjoyment, from the highest to the meanest among us, there is not a man, whose stake is so great in the country, that he ought to hesitate a moment in sacrificing any portion of it to oppose the violence of the enemy; nor is there, I trust, a man in this happy and free nation, whose stake is so small, that would not be ready to sacrifice his life in the same cause... There may be danger, but on the one side there is danger accompanied with honour; on the other side, there is danger with indelible shame and disgrace; upon such an alternative, Englishmen will not hesitate."

"[T]here is one great resource, which I trust will never abandon us, and which has shone forth in the English character, by which we have preserved our existence and fame, as a nation, which I trust we shall be determined never to abandon under any extremity, but shall join hand and heart in the solemn pledge that is proposed to us, and declare to his Majesty, that we know great exertions are wanting, that we are prepared to make them, and at all events determined to stand or fall by the laws, liberties, and religion of our country."

"Certainly much depends upon the posture in which you converse of peace. What is the real foundation of the strength of a nation? Spirit, security, and conscious pride, that cannot stoop to dishonour. It comprehends a character that will neither offer nor receive an insult. Give me peace consistently with that principle, and I will not call it a peace "nominal or delusive;" and there is no man who will go farther than I will to obtain it. To any thing dishonourable I will never submit; nor will this country ever submit to it, I trust. There can be no man who has an English heart within his bosom who can wish it; or can wish that you may, by an untimely diminution of your strength, expose yourselves to the renewal, with aggravated insults, of those evils which we have already had too much reason to deplore."

"[W]e must also do justice to the wisdom, energy, and determination of the parliament who have furnished the means, and the power, by which all the rest was sustained and accomplished. Through them all the departments of his Majesty's government had the means of employing the force whose achievements have been so brilliant; through the wisdom of parliament the resources of the country have been called forth, and its spirit embodied in a manner unexampled in its history. By their firmness, magnanimity, and devotion to the cause, not merely of our own individual safety, but of the cause of mankind in general, we have been enabled to stand forth the saviours of the earth. No difficulties have stood in our way; no sacrifices have been thought too great for us to make; a common feeling of danger has produced a common spirit of exertion, and we have cheerfully come forward with a surrender of a part of our property as a salvage, not merely for recovering ourselves, but for the general recovery of mankind. We have presented a phenomenon in the character of nations."

"I feel in common with every gentleman who hears me, the proud situation in which we have been placed, and the importance it has given us in the scale of nations. The rank that we now hold, I trust, we shall continue to cherish, and that, pursuing the same glorious course, we shall all of us feel it to be a source of pride and consolation that we are the subjects of the king of Great Britain."

"We are not in arms against the opinions of the closet, nor the speculations of the school. We are at war with armed opinions; we are at war with those opinions which the sword of audacious, unprincipled, and impious innovation seeks to propagate amidst the ruins of empires, the demolition of the altars of all religion, the destruction of every venerable, and good, and liberal institution, under whatever form of polity they have been raised."

"We will not leave the monster to prowl the world unopposed, He must cease to annoy the abode of peaceful men. If he retire into the cell, whether of solitude or repentance, thither we will not pursue him; but we cannot leave him on the throne of power."

"[W]hat was required of us by France was, not merely that we should acquiesce in her retaining the Netherlands, but that, as a preliminary to all treaty, and before entering upon the discussion of terms, we should recognise the principle, that whatever France, in time of war, had annexed to the republic, must remain inseparable for ever, and could not become the subject of negociation. I say, that, in refusing such a preliminary, we were only resisting the claim of France, to arrogate to itself the power of controlling, by its own separate and municipal acts, the rights and interests of other countries, and moulding, at its discretion, a new and general code of the law of nations."

"Look then at the fate of Switzerland, at the circumstances which led to its destruction, add this instance to the catalogue of aggression against all Europe, and then tell me, whether the system I have described has not been prosecuted with an unrelenting spirit, which cannot be subdued in adversity, which cannot be appeased in prosperity, which neither solemn professions, nor the general law of nations, nor the obligation of treaties (whether previous to the revolution or subsequent to it), could restrain from the subversion of every state into which, either by force or fraud, their arms could penetrate. Then tell me, whether the disasters of Europe are to be charged upon the provocation of this country and its allies, or on the inherent principle of the French revolution, of which the natural result produced so much misery and carnage in France, and carried desolation and terror over so large a portion of the world."

"The all-searching eye of the French revolution looks to every part of Europe, and every quarter of the world, in which can be found an object either of acquisition or plunder. Nothing is too great for the temerity of its ambition, nothing too small or insignificant for the grasp of its rapacity."

"What then was the nature of this system? Was it any thing but what I have stated it to be? an insatiable love of agrandizement, an implacable spirit of destruction directed against all the civil and religious institutions of every country. This is the first moving and acting spirit of the French revolution; this is the spirit which animated it at its birth, and this is the spirit which will not desert it till the moment of its dissolution, "which grew with its growth, which strengthened with its strength," but which has not abated under its misfortunes, nor declined in its decay; it has been invariably the same in every period, operating more or less, according as accident or circumstances might assist it; but it has been inherent in the revolution in all its stages."

"Thus qualified, thus armed for destruction, the genius of the French revolution marched forth, the terror and dismay of the world. Every nation has in its turn been the witness, many have been the victims of its principles, and it is left for us to decide, whether we will compromise with such a danger, while we have yet resources to supply the sinews of war, while the heart and spirit of the country is yet unbroken, and while we have the means of calling forth and supporting a powerful co-operation in Europe."

"If we carry our views out of France, and look at the dreadful catalogue of all the breaches of treaty, all the acts of perfidy at which I have only glanced, and which are precisely commensurate with the number of treaties which the republic have made (for I have sought in vain for any one which it has made and which it has not broken); if we trace the history of them all from the beginning of the revolution to the present time, or if we select those which have been accompanied by the most atrocious cruelty, and marked the most strongly with the characteristic features of the revolution, the name of Buonaparte will be found allied to more of them than that of any other that can be handed down in the history of the crimes and miseries of the last ten years. His name will be recorded with the horrors committed in Italy, in the memorable campaign of 1796 and 1797, in the Milanese, in Genoa, in Modena, in Tuscany, in Rome, and in Venice."

"[O]n what grounds are we to be convinced that he [Napoleon] has an interest in concluding and observing a solid and permanent pacification? Under all the circumstances of his personal character, and his newly acquired power, what other security has he for retaining that power, but the sword? His hold upon France is the sword, and he has no other. Is he connected with the soil, or with the habits, the affections, or the prejudices of the country? He is a stranger, a foreigner, and an usurper; he unites in his own person every thing that a pure Republican must detest; every thing that an enraged Jacobin has abjured; every thing that a sincere and faithful Royalist must feel as an insult. If he is opposed at any time in his career, what is his appeal? He appeals to his fortune; in other words to his army and his sword. Placing, then, his whole reliance upon military support, can he afford to let his military renown pass away, to let his laurels wither, to let the memory of his achievements sink in obscurity? Is it certain that, with his army confined within France, and restrained from inroads upon her neighbours, he can maintain, at his devotion, a force sufficiently numerous to support his power? Having no object but the possession of absolute dominion, no passion but military glory, is it certain, that he can feel such an interest in permanent peace, as would justify us in laying down our arms, reducing our expense, and relinquishing our means of security, on the faith of his engagements?"

"The advocates of the French revolution boasted in its outset, that by their new system they had furnished a security for ever, not to France only but to all countries in the world, against military despotism; that the force of standing armies was vain and delusive; that no artificial power could resist public opinion; and that it was upon the foundation of public opinion alone that any government could stand. I believe, that in this instance, as in every other, the progress of the French revolution has belied its professions; but so far from its being a proof of the prevalence of public opinion against military force, it is instead of the proof, the strongest exception from that doctrine, which appears in the history of the world. Through all the stages of the revolution military force has governed; public opinion has scarcely been heard. But still I consider this as only an exception from a general truth; I still believe, that, in every civilized country (not enslaved by a jacobin faction) public opinion is the only sure support of any government."

"He defies me to state, in one sentence, what is the object of the war. I know not whether I can do it in one sentence; but is one word, I can tell him that it is SECURITY: security against a danger, the greatest that ever threatened the world. It is security against a danger which never existed in any past period of society. It is security against a danger which in degree and extent was never equalled; against a danger which threatened all the nations of the earth; against a danger which has been resisted by all the nations of Europe, and resisted by none with so much success as by this nation, because by none has it been resisted so uniformly, and with so much energy. This country alone, of all the nations of Europe, presented barriers the best fitted to resist its progress. We alone recognised the necessity of open war, as well with the principles, as the practice of the French revolution. We saw that it was to be resisted no less by arms abroad, than by precaution at home; that we were to look for protection no less to the courage of our forces, than to the wisdom of our councils; no less to military effort, than to legislative enactment. At the moment when those, who now admit the dangers of jacobinism while they contend that it is extinct, used to palliate its atrocity, and extenuate its mischief, this house wisely saw that it was necessary to erect a double safeguard against a danger that wrought no less by undisguised hostility than by secret machination."

"[W]e had not an option at this moment, between the blessings of peace and the dangers of war that from the fatality of the times, and the general state of the world, we must consider our lot as cast, by the decrees of Providence, in a time of peril and trouble that he trusted the temper and courage of the nation would conform itself to the duties of that situation that we should be prepared, collectively and individually, to meet it with that resignation and fortitude, and, at the same time, with that active zeal and exertion, which, in proportion to the magnitude of the crisis, might be expected from a brave and free people; and that we should reflect, even in the hour of trial, what abundant reason we have to be grateful to Providence, for the distinction we enjoy over most of the countries of Europe, and for all the advantages and blessings which national wisdom and virtue have hitherto protected, and which it now depends on perseverance in the same just and honourable sentiments, still to guard and to preserve."

"The amount of our danger, therefore, it would be impolitic to conceal from the people. It was the first duty of ministers to make it known, and after doing so, it should have been their study to provide against it, and to point out the means to the country by which it might be averted."

"Much has been said of the danger of arming the people. I confess that there was a time when that fear would have had some weight; but there never was a time when there could have been any fear of arming the whole people of England, and particularly not under the present circumstances. I never, indeed, entertained any apprehensions from a patriot army regularly officered, according to the manner specified in the measure before the house, however I might hesitate to permit the assemblage of a tumultuary army otherwise constituted. From an army to consist of the round bulk of the people, no man who knows the British character could have the least fear if it even were to include the disaffected; for they would bear so small a proportion to the whole, as to be incapable of doing mischief, however mischievously disposed. There was indeed a time when associations of traitors systematically organized, excited an apprehension of the consequences of a sudden armament of the populace: but that time is no more, and the probability is now, as occurred in the case of the volunteers, that, if there are still any material number of disaffected, by mixing them with the loyal part of the community, the same patriotic zeal, the same submission to just authority will be soon found to pervade the whole body, and that all will be equally anxious to defend their country or perish in the attempt."

"[I]f we are not wanting to ourselves, if we have not forgotten our national character, but remember who we are, and what we are contending for, the contest will be glorious to us, and must terminate in the complete discomfiture of the enemy, and ultimate security to this kingdom."

"That we shall have no difficulty in procuring the men who are to compose this force, I am perfectly satisfied, because the spirit of the country is now raised in the capital, and will from thence rapidly pervade all the extremities of the empire. That spirit was first kindled in the north, from thence it has extended to the metropolis, and is now catching from town to town, from village to village, and very shortly the whole kingdom will, I am convinced, manifest one scene of activity, of animation, and of energy, displaying in its native lustre the character of Englishmen."

"We ought to have a due sense of the magnitude of the danger with which we are threatened; we ought to meet it in that temper of mind which produces just confidence, which neither despises nor dreads the enemy; and while on the one hand we accurately estimate the danger with which we are threatened at this awful crisis, we must recollect on the other hand what it is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay, for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for every thing dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave."

"[T]he result of this great contest will ensure the permanent security, the eternal glory of this country; that it will terminate in the confusion, the dismay, and the shame, of our vaunting enemy; that it will afford the means of animating the spirits, of rousing the courage, of breaking the lethargy, of the surrounding nations of Europe; and I trust, that, if a fugitive French army should reach its own shores after being driven from our coasts, it will find the people of Europe reviving in spirits, and anxious to retaliate upon France all the wrongs, all the oppressions, they have suffered from her; and that we shall at length see that wicked fabric destroyed which was raised upon the prostitution of liberty, and which has caused more miseries, more horrors to France and to the surrounding nations, than are to be paralleled in any part of the annals of mankind."

"I need not remind the house that we are come to a new era in the history of nations; that we are called to struggle for the destiny, not of this country alone, but of the civilized world. We must remember that it is not for ourselves alone that we submit to unexampled privations. We have for ourselves the great duty of self-preservation to perform; but the duty of the people of England now is of a nobler and higher order. We are in the first place to provide for our security against an enemy whose malignity to this country knows no bounds: but this is not to close the views or the efforts of our exertion in so sacred a cause. Amid the wreck and the misery of nations, it is our just exultation, that we have continued superior to all that ambition or that despotism could effect, and our still higher exultation ought to be, that we provide not only for our own safety, but hold out a prospect to nations now bending under the iron yoke of tyranny, what the exertions of a free people can effect; and that at least in this corner of the world, the name of liberty is still revered, cherished, and sanctified."

"I return you many thanks for the honour you have done me; but Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example."

"Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies; and all That shared its shelter perish in its fall."

"Oh my country! How I love my country!"

"I think I could eat one of Bellamy's mutton pies."

"Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years."

"His talents, quickness, temper and application well qualified him to have been a Prime Minister in the real sense of the word."

"Not merely a chip of the old 'block', but the old block itself."

"Mr. Pitt is, at the head of his own table, exactly what hits my taste—attentive without being troublesome—mixing in the conversation without attempting to lead it—laughing often and easily—and boyish enough if it should fall in his way, to discuss the history of Cock Robin."

"I think I have never left him without liking him better than before. I could not admire or love him more, even if I had no obligations to him; though, in that case, I should give a freer, because less suspicious testimony of the claims which, I think, he has to be both loved and admired."

"Here's to the Pilot that weather'd the Storm!"

"In attacking France, Pitt preserved social order in England, and kept civilisation in the paths of that regular and gradual progress which it has followed ever since. He loved power not as an end but as a means."

"The greatest statesman of his century."

"He was far too practical a politician to be given to abstract theories, universal doctrines, watchwords, or shibboleths of any kind. He knew of no political gospel that was to be preached in season and out of season alike. When he thought reform wholesome, he proposed it: when he ceased to think it wholesome, he ceased to propose it. Whether his memory would be claimed by Reformers or anti-Reformers was a question upon which he troubled himself very little. In the same way he urged Catholic Emancipation, even at the cost of power, when he judged that the balance of advantages was on its side. He abandoned it with equal readiness as soon as the King's strong resistance and the necessity of avoiding intestine division in the face of foreign peril had placed the balance of advantage on the other side. The same untheoretical mind may be traced in all his legislation. The great merit of his measures, so far as they had a trial, was that they were admirably calculated to attain the object they had in view, with the least possible damage to the interests which any great change must necessarily affect. Their demerit was, if demerit it be, that they were justifiable on no single theory, and were often marred by what seemed to be logical contradictions, which damaged them in argument, though they did not hinder them in practice."

"Time and again he showed a rare sense of what was due to the occasion. With astonishing magnanimity he forebore to reveal Charles James Fox's involvement in an intrigue with the Russian court in 1790, traversing ministerial policy, which by any standard came near to the verge of a treasonable misdemeanour and gives a lamentable impression of Fox's flawed political integrity. When a bad harvest sent bread prices rocketing Pitt plunged into state trading in grain – until Parliament imposed its veto. In these and other ways...the liberal impulses in Pitt's mind survived against revolution after 1790. And this was also true of foreign affairs... Even under the stress of war the Pittite circle preserved its sympathy for the idea of French constitutional monarchy, was not averse to seeing those elements that were of value salvaged from the Revolution of 1789 and...hung back from any endorsement of the Bourbon princes' demands for a return to the pre-revolutionary regime."

"But did he live or die a Tory? Ehrman is surely right to answer no. Pitt called himself a Whig. His personal commitment to the Anglican Church and to the monarchy was limited. He took a utilitarian view of traditional institutions, ruthlessly transforming them when necessary. In an ideal world, he thought Tom Paine was right. He was conservative only in his conviction that an ideal world was unattainable and that property should be preserved. Only after his death was a renovated Tory party forged, with him as a crucial part of its mythology."

"To all appearance, indeed, the better part of the work achieved by Chatham was in ruins. Its restoration, so far as restoration was now possible, was the task which lay before his son. He brought to it great gifts of intellect and character—a swift comprehensive mind, eloquence, patience, unbending courage, intense devotion to his country, and, most useful of all, a capacity to face facts as they are and to shape policy in accordance with the lessons of experience."

"I will only here sum up what I have to say to those Tory gentlemen who belong to what are called Pitt Clubs, that the two most formidable objects of their apprehensions, Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation, were the measures of Mr. Pitt."

"His reputation has suffered both from hero-worship, which skimmed over the contradictions of his character, and from denigration, which was oblivious to its complexities. He remains an enigma, for his correspondence does not abound in those flashes of exuberant self-revelation which make Charles Fox and Edmund Burke so vivid and compelling. But the stabilisation of British economy after the American War, the reform of the customs, the pruning of wasteful expenditure, the restoration of national self-respect, and the courageous defence of English and European liberties threatened by an absolutism more powerful than the old, constitute an enduring claim to fame."

"Were the Tories inimical to national improvement when under Pitt they first applied philosophy to commerce, and science to finance; when under their auspices the most severe retrenchment was practised in every department of the public expenditure; when a bill for the Commutation of Tithes was not only planned but printed; and when nothing but the violence of the French Revolution prevented the adoption of a matured scheme of Ecclesiastical Reform, which would not have left our revolutionary oligarchs a single pretext to veil their present plundering purpose? Why! the cry of Parliamentary Reform was first raised by a Tory minister, struggling against the bigoted and corrupt authority of the Whig oligarchy."

"He created a plebeian aristocracy and blended it with the patrician oligarchy. He made peers of second-rate squires and fat graziers. He caught them in the alleys of Lombard Street, and clutched them from the counting-houses of Cornhill."

"[W]ith that last breath expired the last hopes of this country... [I]t is deprived of the services of such a man whose like we shall never look upon again."

"What I have found remarkably agreeable in any conversation I have had with Mr. Pitt on business is not only the extreme quickness of his apprehension but the undivided and unprejudiced attention which he gives."

"I have been this morning with Lady Hester Pitt, and there is little William Pitt, not eight years old, and really the cleverest child I ever saw, and brought up so strictly and so proper in his behaviour, that, mark my words, that little boy will be a thorn in Charles's side as long as he lives."

"Impossible, impossible; one feels as if there was something missing in the world—a chasm, a blank that cannot be supplied."

"[O]ur reverence for the memory of that statesman, to whom it is, in our opinion, mainly owing that those institutions are still preserved to us, and that the continuance of that policy is still within our power; that these nations now enjoy the blessings of domestic tranquillity, and that what remains of independent Europe is now leaning with confidence upon our aid... [T]hat great minister, who united in himself, beyond the example of all former ministers, the confidence of his fellow-subjects with the favour of his sovereign... [T]hose stupendous talents, of which even the most ordinary exercise was a source of wonder and delight; which resembled, in the mightiness of their force, the elementary powers of nature, and in the truth and precision of their movement, the most exquisite process of art."

"No one who really knew Pitt intimately would have called him cold. A man who is Prime Minister at twenty-six, cannot carry his heart on his sleeve and be "Hail, fellow! well met," with every Jack, Tom, and Harry. Pitt's manner by nature, as well as by habit and necessity, was in public always dignified, reserved, and imperious; but he had very warm feelings and, had it not been for the obligations of the official position, which lay on him almost throughout his whole life, I believe he might have had nearly as many personal friends as Fox."

"I am certain that, up to the very last, it was Pitt's determination to have kept clear from the European wars consequent on the French Revolution. Nothing was more unjust than the charge constantly brought against him that he did not do all that a patriotic minister could do to preserve peace. His personal interests and predilections were all in favour of peace, and nothing but the outrageous conduct of the French compelled him to take part in the war, which no English minister could have long avoided, unless by joining the French in their onslaught upon all the old governments in Europe."

"Mr. Pitt, like other men, had his errors; and the country is still smarting for them. But I cannot refer even to the errors of so great a man without avowing my respect and veneration for his memory. [A Laugh.] Sir, I am under no obligation to profess such a sentiment; it is our right and duty to read the characters of public men in the light of history; but I say simply, because it is the truth, that I look with sincere and profound respect upon the political character and the genius of Mr. Pitt."

"Mr. Pitt has gain'd himself great Credit by his two or three last Speeches. His Language and Oratory amazes, but the sensible thinking People are astonished at his knowledge. The Opposition even cannot help expressing Astonishment. Your Papa says that he is a most wonderful young man. His Passions are all guided by Reason, with a mind so improved, such Discretion, and so perfect a Knowledge of the Commerce, Funds, and Government of the Country that one must imagine to hear him on these subjects, that he had the experience of fifty years, and at the same Time so clever, lively, and agreeable in Society, without the least assuming, that it is impossible to know him without liking him and wondering at his Knowledge and Parts."

"William Pitt, the greatest Parliamentary statesman whom England has produced... He...was...the one man upon whom, through long years of danger both from foreign and domestic enemies, a nation reposed confidence, whose removal from power was the signal for general despair, whose restoration revived the public spirit as sunrise renews the daylight, and whose death was lamented by the tears not only of personal friends and Parliamentary supporters, but by thousands who had never seen him, yet felt themselves reduced to sudden helplessness by the loss of their tried protector. Such a position as this no other man in English history has ever occupied; and this, which is wholly independent of particular measures or combinations, is Pitt's title to immortality."

"You must know (I think) that I was very much attached to Mr. Pitt, as a public Man; but You cannot know, for it is difficult to conceive the enthusiasm I felt for him, and still feel for his memory. I am almost disposed to repeat, what I once heard Lord Muncaster say, "that he considered him as something supernatural, something between God and man." Without going quite that length I consider him the greatest Statesman this, or any other Country ever produced; and moreover, as good, and as honest as a public man could be."

"If Mr. Pitt had lived in 1832, it is our firm belief that he would have been a decided Reformer."

"Little as I revere the memory of Mr. Pitt, I must confess that, comparing the plan he formed with the policy of Cromwell and William, he deserves praise for great wisdom and humanity. The Union of Ireland with Great Britain was part of his plan, an excellent and essential part of it, but still only a part. It never ought to be forgotten that his scheme was much wider in extent, and that he was not allowed to carry it into effect. He wished to unite not only the kingdoms, but the hearts and affections of the people. For that object the Catholic disabilities were to be removed, the Catholic clergy were to be placed in an honourable, comfortable, and independent position, and Catholic education was to be conducted on a liberal scale. His views and opinions agreed with, and were, I have no doubt, taken from those of Mr. Burke, a man of an understanding even more enlarged and capacious than his own. If Mr. Pitt's system had been carried into effect, I believe that the Union with Ireland would fully now have been as secure, and as far out of the reach of agitation, as the Union with Scotland. The Act of Union would then have been associated in the minds of the great body of the Catholic Irish people with the removal of most galling disabilities."

"From personal knowledge I am therefore enabled to state, that no Minister ever understood so well the commercial interests of the country. He knew that the true sources of its greatness lay in its productive industry, and he therefore encouraged that industry."

"He erected a screen against the winds of change, tempering their strength, yet permitting a few zephyrs to filter through: a sinecure suppressed here, a rationalization of tax there. There was no fear that he would upset the structure of government or attempt to realign the basis of power. And when, as he often did, he made a messy compromise, he stayed in power, nothing daunted. What Pitt did was to provide aloof, capable, deeply conservative leadership about which the traditional forces in society, fragmented by the humiliation of the American War, could coalesce. In consequence, they could face the greater problems created by the growing gulf in English life between the political nation and those who held political property, and make certain of the victory of the latter."

"In 1783 ruin financial as well as ruin military stared Britain in the face: she was impoverished, isolated and – except at sea – ignominiously helpless. The nation wanted financial and personal integrity in government, a break with the politics and the politicians that had betrayed it, and a lengthy period of uninterrupted convalescence. The bleak independence of the Younger Pitt, his superb parliamentary and economic talents, and the aura of authority which he diffused gave Britain what she needed, and knew that she needed, in the years between peace in 1783 and war in 1797. The man fitted the moment. If there had been no Pitt, Britain could well have been the image, instead of the antithesis, of contemporary France. The essence of what Pitt did for Britain lies in the Chapter 'Retrenchment and Revival 1784–92'; in order to understand the influence which Pitt continued to influence from beyond the grave over Peel, over Gladstone, over Britain of the high nineteenth century, one needs to study and study again the budgetary and fiscal measures of those eight years."

"Pitt was truly a great man of principle, of one single principle that transcended all others and on which no compromise was possible. The welfare of his country, with which he associated the preservation of the Constitution and loyalty to the Crown, was the mainspring of his life, and for it he was ready to sacrifice cherished causes, personal advantage, and even his own reputation for integrity. This dedication was absolute... Pitt alone possessed the qualities of integrity and endurance necessary to inspire confidence and courage. To his successors he left an example of leadership, fortitude and self-denial. To his country he bequeathed the priceless legacy of hope."

"The policy of the London Cabinet largely contributed to the first movement of our Revolution …Taking advantage of political tempests (the cabinet) aimed to effect in an exhausted and dismembered France a change of dynasty and to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI … Pitt … is an imbecile, whatever may be said of a reputation that has been much too greatly puffed up. A man who, abusing the influence acquired by him on an island placed haphazard in the ocean, is desirous of contending with the French people, could not have conceived of such an absurd plan elsewhere than in a madhouse."

"This afflicting stroke follows close on the loss of Lord Nelson, for whom I had also a cordial love and affection; and it leads me to reflect on the uncommon similarity of their characters:—gentleness of mind; sweetness of disposition, accompanied by the most determined resolution; quickness of conception, and promptitude in decision; ardent zeal for the welfare of their country, rendering it most signal and important services; wisdom in concerting plans, and firmness in executing them, undismayed by any hazards or the severest responsibility. In all these they resembled each other with a degree of exactness not to be conceived by any one who did not know them as intimately and as entirely as I did... These two great men died, as they lived, for their country. Mr. Pitt sacrificed his life in its service as much as Lord Nelson did."

"The name of Pitt is, in an historical sense, very dear to us, belonging as it does to a party which may be said to have taken its origin from those who gathered around him, and who may be said to have been the founders of modern Toryism... England was his first, his only thought, and it is for that reason that he has left behind him a name which all men revere, and a pattern which the rulers of this country in time of peril may follow."

"The firmness, propriety and prudence of every part of your young friends conduct must, as long as it is remembered, place him very high in the estimation of every wise and thinking man in the Kingdom."

"Mr. Pitt used to say that Tom Paine was quite in the right; but then he would add, "What am I to do? If the country is overrun with all these men, full of vice and folly, I cannot exterminate them. It would be very well, to be sure, if every body had sense enough to act as they ought; but, as things are, if I were to encourage Tom Paine's opinions, we should have a bloody revolution; and, after all, matters would return pretty much as they were.""

"The actual occasions for war (the execution of Louis and the control of the Scheldt) came at the conclusion of twelve months which had transformed Pitt from the Prime Minister of economic retrenchment, peace, and piecemeal reform into the diplomatic architect of European counterrevolution. And this transformation was not of one man but of a class; of the patricians as well as of the commercial and manufacturing bourgeoisie who had seen in Pitt their hope for economic rationalisation and cautious political reform."

"Mr. Pitt had foibles, and of course they were not diminished by so long a continuance in office; but for a clear and comprehensive view of the most complicated subject in all its relations; for that fairness of mind which disposes a man to follow out, and when overtaken to recognise the truth; for magnanimity, which made him ready to change his measures when he thought the good of the country required it, though he knew he should be charged with inconsistency on account of the change; for willingness to give a fair hearing to all that could be urged against his own opinions, and to listen to the suggestions of men, whose understandings he knew to be inferior to his own; for personal purity, disinterestedness, integrity, and love of his country, I have never known his equal."

"In society he was remarkably cheerful and pleasant, full of wit and playfulness, neither, like Mr. Fox, fond of arguing a question, nor yet holding forth, like some others. He was always ready to hear others as well as to talk himself."

"Lord North could sustain no competition with the late Mr. Pitt, who on those, as on all other occasions, manifested a perspicuity, eloquence, rapidity, recollection, and talent altogether wonderful, which carried the audience along with him in every arithmetical statement, left no calculation obscure or ambiguous, and impressed the House at its close with tumultuous admiration."

"In his manners, Pitt, if not repulsive, was cold, stiff, and without suavity or amenity. He seemed never to invite approach or to encourage acquaintance, though when addressed, he could be polite, communicative, and occasionally gracious. Smiles were not natural to him, even when seated on the Treasury bench, where, placed at the summit of power, young, surrounded by followers, admirers, and flatterers, he maintained a more sullen gravity than his antagonist exhibited, who beheld around him only the companions of his political exile, poverty, and privations. From the instant that Pitt entered the doorway of the House of Commons, he advanced up the floor with a quick and firm step, his head erect and thrown back, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor favouring with a nod or a glance any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many who possessed five thousand pounds a year would have been gratified even by so slight a mark of attention. It was not thus that Lord North or Fox treated Parliament, nor from them would Parliament have so patiently endured it; but Pitt seemed made to guide and to command, even more than to persuade or to convince, the assembly that he addressed."

"[T]here was one man, whom Providence reserved for the tempestuous age which he adorned and controuled, whose unshaken fidelity to his sovereign, whose commanding genius sustained by the most courageous resolution, whose attachment to the British constitution, equalled only by his zeal for the liberties of the civilized world, qualified him to move upon a more elevated sphere, and to be at once the admiration of the good, and the hatred of the wicked. He towered above all his competitors, and stood alone, arrayed in glory, himself an host."

"The honourable William Pitt, son to the late Earl of Chatham, now rose for the first time, and in a speech directly in answer to matter that had fallen out in the course of the debate, displayed great and astonishing powers of eloquence. His voice is rich and striking, full of melody and force; his manner easy and elegant; his language beautiful and luxuriant. He gave, in that first and short essay, a specimen of eloquence, not unworthy the son of the immortal parent."

"The name of Pitt...is embalmed in the heart of admiring nations, with a yet holier passion; for he not only preached, but fought the good fight; and with the reverence which is paid to him as a prophet, we mingle the love which is due to the memory of a hero and a martyr... The gratitude of those who bless his memory forms a bond of connexion and of confidence that will not easily be disunited."

"Pitt was stiff with everyone but women."

"Anything but history, for history must be false."

"The doctrine of unlimited passive obedience was first invented to support arbitrary power, but [was] of no use in her Majesty’s reign, where the law was the only measure of the regal power and people's obedience; and since it could be of no use or security to her Majesty there could be no other aim in it than to unhinge the government, and clear the way to the impostor's title. In fine, if the sin of resistance was damnable, there must a sincere repentance ensue to wash away the guilt, and this could not be done without restitution."

"I am at a loss to discover where they will find this divine right in our government, or at least where they do find it in the reign of the late King [William III], whose title to be rightful and lawful king they have all sworn, or where they will find it in the next Protestant successor, for whom they profess an equal zeal, is not very obvious to me."

"It is obvious, that the people of England are at this moment animated against each other, with a spirit of hatred and rancour. It behoves you, in the first place, to find a remedy for these distempers which at present are predominant in the civil constitution."

"The most unrighteous judgment was passed upon me in the House that was ever heard of...against the most positive evidence that it was possible in any case to give. ... I am made a sacrifice to the violence of a party and entirely innocent."

"I dare be bold to affirm that, had the King of France beaten us, as we have done him, he would have been so modest as to have given us better terms than we have gained after all our glorious victories."

"All those men have their price."

"The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favours."

"He was an honorable man and a sound Whig. He was not, as the Jacobites and discontented Whigs of his time have represented him, and as ill-informed people still represent him, a prodigal and corrupt minister. They charged him in their libels and seditious conversations as having first reduced corruption to a system. Such was their cant. But he was far from governing by corruption. He governed by party attachments. The charge of systematic corruption is less applicable to him, perhaps, than to any minister who ever served the crown for so great a length of time. He gained over very few from the Opposition. Without being a genius of the first class, he was an intelligent, prudent, and safe minister. He loved peace; and he helped to communicate the same disposition to nations at least as warlike and restless as that in which he had the chief direction of affairs... With many virtues, public and private, he had his faults; but his faults were superficial. A careless, coarse, and over familiar style of discourse, without sufficient regard to persons or occasions, and an almost total want of political decorum, were the errours by which he was most hurt in the public opinion: and those through which his enemies obtained the greatest advantage over him. But justice must be done. The prudence, steadiness, and vigilance of that man, joined to the greatest possible lenity in his character and his politics, preserved the crown to this royal family; and with it, their laws and liberties to this country."

"In private life he was good natured, Chearfull, social. Inelegant in his manners, loose in his morals. He had a coarse wit, which he was too free of for a Man in his Station, as it is always inconsistent with dignity. He was very able as a Minister, but without a certain Elevation of mind...He was both the ablest Parliament man, and the ablest manager of a Parliament, that I believe ever lived...Money, not Prerogative, was the chief Engine of his administration, and he employed it with a success that in a manner disgraced humanity...When he found any body proof, against pecuniary temptations, which alass! was but seldom, he had recourse to still a worse art. For he laughed at and ridiculed all notions of Publick virtue, and the love of one's Country, calling them the Chimerical school boy flights of Classical learning; declaring himself at the same time, No Saint, no Spartan, no reformer. He would frequently ask young fellows at their first appearance in the world, while their honest hearts were yet untainted, well are you to be an old Roman? a Patriot? you will soon come off of that, and grow wiser. And thus he was more dangerous to the morals, than to the libertys of his country, to which I am persuaded that he meaned no ill in his heart... His Name will not be recorded in History among the best men, or the best Ministers, but much much less ought it to be ranked among the worst."

"I am sensible that Sr Robert, who is at once both a Wagg and a boaster, would be apt to ridicule these hopes of mine as fond and sanguine."

"[H]is prevailing weakness was, to be thought to have a polite and happy turn to gallantry,—of which he had undoubtedly less than any man living."

"The eloquence of Sir Robert Walpole was plain, perspicuous, forcible, and manly, not courting, yet not always avoiding metaphorical, ornamental, and classical allusions; though addressed to the reason more than to the feelings, yet on some occasions it was highly animated and impassioned. No debater was ever more happy in quickness of apprehension, sharpness of reply, and in turning the arguments of his assailants against themselves."

"The tone of his voice was pleasing and melodious; his pronunciation distinct and audible, though he never entirely lost the provincial accent. His style, though by no means elegant, often deficient in taste, and sometimes bordering on vulgarity, was highly nervous and animated, persuasive and plausible."

"The political axiom generally attributed to him, that all men have their price, and which has been so often repeated in verse and prose, was perverted by leaving out the word those. Flowery oratory he despised; he ascribed to the interested views of themselves or their relatives, the declarations of pretended patriots, of whom he said, "All those men have their price," and in the event, many of them justified his observation."

"Sir Robert loved to take company home with him to dinner after a debate: when the letters came in, he threw such and such aside, and said they might stay till to-morrow; when he saw the direction of his Huntsman, he said he would read it immediately."

"[H]e had great method and a prodigious memory, with a mind and spirit that were indefatigable: and without every one of these natural as well as acquired advantages, it would indeed have been impossible for him to go through half what he undertook."

"No man ever was blessed with a clearer head, a truer or quicker judgment, or a deeper insight into mankind; he knew the strength and weakness of everybody he had to deal with, and how to make his advantage of both; he had more warmth of affection and friendship for some particular people than one could have believed it possible for any one who had been so long raking in the dirt of mankind to be capable of feeling for so worthless a species of animals."

"Colonel Cecil, who was agent for the Chevalier St. George...suffered himself to be cajoled and duped by Sir Robert Walpole to such a degree, as to be fully persuaded that Sir Robert had formed a design to restore the House of Stuart. For this reason he communicated to Sir Robert all his dispatches, and there was not a scheme which the Chevalier's court or the Jacobites in England had projected during Sir Robert's long administration, of which that minister was not early informed, and was therefore able to defeat it without any noise or expence."

"He was not a reformer, or a successful war minister, or a profound and original thinker, or even a tactician of great enterprise, and yet he possessed qualities which have justly placed him in the foremost rank of politicians. Finding England with a disputed succession and an unpopular sovereign, with a corrupt and factious Parliament, and an intolerant, ignorant, and warlike people, he succeeded in giving it twenty years of unbroken peace and uniform prosperity, in establishing on an impregnable basis a dynasty which seemed tottering to its fall, in rendering, chiefly by the force of his personal ascendency, the House of Commons the most powerful body in the State, in moderating permanently the ferocity of political factions and the intolerance of ecclesiastical legislation."

"But however distasteful this was to several serious men among the Whigs, Mr. Walpole enjoyed and encouraged it all, as pursuing of his plan of having everybody be deemed a Jacobite who was not a professed and known Whig."

"For twenty years Walpole had just held in check those aspirations natural to a society which was faced with enormous possibilities of commercial expansion, a society which had, too, the capacity to seize its chances and the wealth and men needed to exploit them. Walpole had avoided wars and kept the peace because he believed England existed for the sake of men of substance, who gained from security and low taxation, and not for the sake of rash commercial adventurers... England has never known a prime minister more adroit in handling men than Walpole, but he was too rooted in reality, too sensitive to the everyday world to be a great statesman."

"Although in 1714 the materials for oligarchy everywhere abounded, it seemed as if no party could use them and that political instability, which had been such a marked feature of English life since the Revolution, would continue. Within a decade all was changed: aided both by events, and by the tidal sweep of history, a politician of genius, Robert Walpole, was able to create what had eluded kings and ministers since the days of Elizabeth I—a government and a policy acceptable to the Court, to the Commons, and to the majority of the political establishment in the nation at large. Indeed, he made the world so safe for Whigs that they stayed in power for a hundred years."

"It is great pleasure to me that I never saw him better, and that quiet and hunting, together, have repaired his health so well. Your friend Sir Robert has but one of these helps; but I remember when I saw him last, which was the last time he sent to desire me, he told me he owed his strength to it."

"He possessed no vain desire to distinguish himself by peculiarity of opinion or hardiness of enterprize, and he detested war. This made the late acute Dr. Johnson (who was no friend to his political opinions) say of him, "He was the best minister this country ever had; as, if we would have let him" (he speaks of his own violent faction) "he would have kept the country in perpetual peace.""

"I need not mention the many advantages that will attend this manner of proceeding. It will in a great measure obviate the delusion which Sir Robert makes use of in a certain place, to wit, that the majority of the House of Commons is the majority of the nation."

"With favour and fortune fastidiously blest, He's loud in his laugh, and he's coarse in his jest; Of favour and fortune unmerited, vain, A sharper in trifles, a dupe in the main; Achieving of nothing, still promising wonders, By dint of experience, improving in blunders; Oppressing true merit, exalting the base, And selling his country to purchase his place; A jobber of stocks by retailing false news; A prater at court in the style of the stews; Of virtue and worth by profession a giber; Of juries and senates the bully and briber. Though I name not the wretch, you all know who I mean— 'Tis the cur-dog of Britain, and spaniel of Spain."

"The most unpopular Ministers in England, were the Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Robert Walpole, during their respective Administrations; the former a true, a steady, and equal Friend to a limited Monarchy, and the just civil Rights of the People; and the latter the best commercial Minister this Country ever had, and the greatest Promoter of its real Interests."

"One of the great merits of Sir Robert Walpole, and in which perhaps no minister ever approached him, was that of simplifying the taxes, abolishing the numerous petty complicated imposts, which checked commerce and vexed the fair trader, and substituting in their stead more equal and simple. But to omit matters of lesser note, the wisest proposal to relieve the nation was the Excise Scheme, by means of which the whole island would have been one general free port, and a magazine and common storehouse for all nations."

"It was perhaps still more remarkable, and an instance unparalleled, that sir Robert governed George the first in Latin, the king not speaking English, and his minister no German, nor even French."

"Sir Robert Walpole used to say, that it was fortunate so few men could be prime ministers, as it was best that few should thoroughly know the shocking wickedness of mankind. I never heard him say, that all men have their prices; and I believe no such expression ever came from his mouth."

"But Orford's self I've seen, whilst I have read, Laugh the heart's laugh, and nod th' approving head."

"In private amiable, in public great, Gentle in power, but daring in disgrace, His love was liberty, his wish was peace."

"The object of Socialism is not to render the individual capable of living on his personal resources. That is the theory of radical individualism. Its object is to create in him a greater and greater sense of his dependence upon the state, and, at the same time, to inculcate in him the conviction that he is a part of it and that he has a duty and responsibility toward the state; and that only in so far as he fulfils this duty can he benefit by the advantages of a complete personal and social life."

"Truth," it has been said, "is the first casualty of war."

"It is no part of my job as Chancellor of the Exchequer to put before the House of Commons proposals for the expenditure of public money. The function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I understand it, is to resist all demands for expenditure made by his colleagues and, when he can no longer resist, to limit the concession to the barest point of acceptance."

"I would like to see the word 'nationalization' banned from the socialist vocabulary."

"I hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party...this is not socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad."

"They were told that Cobdenism was dead. ... Cobdenism was never more alive throughout the world than it was to-day. ... To-day the ideas of Cobden were in revolt against selfish nationalism. The need for the breaking down of trade restrictions, which took various forms, was universally recognized even by those who were unable to throw off those shackles."

"To every outworn shibboleth of 19th-century economics he clung with fanatic tenacity. Economy, Free Trade, Gold — these were the keynotes of his political philosophy, and deflation the path he trod with almost ghoulish enthusiasm."

"He was really a tender-hearted man, who would not have hurt a gnat unless his party and the Treasury told him to do so, and then only with compunction. ... We must imagine with what joy Mr. Snowden was welcomed at the Treasury by the permenant officials. All British Chancellors of the Exchequer have yielded themselves, some spontaneously, some unconsciously, some reluctantly to that compulsive intellectual atmosphere. But there was the High Priest entering the sanctuary. The Treasury mind and the Snowden mind embraced each other with the fervour of two long-separated kindred lizards, and the reign of joy began. He was a preaching friar with no Superior to obey but his intellect. ... The British democracy should be proud of Philip Snowden. He was a man capable of maintaining the structure of Society while at the same time championing the interests of the masses."

"It is always difficult for an administration or party which is founded upon attacking capital to preserve the confidence and credit so important to the highly artificial economy of an island like Britain. Mr. MacDonald’s Labour-Socialist Government were utterly unable to cope with the problems which confronted them. They could not command the party discipline or produce the vigour necessary even to balance the budget. In such conditions a Government, already in a minority and deprived of all financial confidence, could not survive. The failure of the Labour Party to face this tempest, the sudden collapse of British financial credit, and the break-up of the Liberal Party, with its unwholesome balancing power, led to a national coalition. It seemed that only a Government of all parties was capable of coping with the crisis. Mr. MacDonald and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, on a strong patriotic emotion, attempted to carry the mass of the Labour Party into this combination. Mr. Baldwin, always content that others should have the function so long as he retained the power, was willing to serve under Mr. MacDonald. It was an attitude which, though deserving respect, did not correspond to the facts. Mr. Lloyd George was still recovering from an operation – serious at his age; and Sir John Simon led the bulk of the Liberals into the all-party combination."

"When perhaps any Government would have been broken by economic events beyond the control or even the influence of this country—but when the outdated Treasury views of the pre-Keynes era, reinforced by the Puritan Cobdenism of Snowden, prevented any expansionist action to relieve unemployment. Men were sacrificed and left to rot under the Treasury doctrine that the way to deal with unemployment caused by chronic deficiency of demand was to add to that deficiency by cruel retrenchment."

"The upper classes in every country are selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent. The struggle for socialism in Europe...has been hard, cruel, merciless and bloody. The penalty for participation in the liberation movement has been death for oneself, if caught, and, if not caught oneself, the burning of one's home and the death by torture of one's family. ... Remember that one of the prices paid for our survival during the war has been the death by bombardment of countless thousands of innocent European men and women."

"Britain's economic problem is fundamentally far greater than France's since France is much less dependent on foreign trade and imported raw materials. Moreover Britain has economic relations with her Commonwealth whose importance outweighs the potential benefits of economic co-operation with Europe. For example, by 1952 over half Britain's foreign trade will be with the Commonwealth as against 22 per cent with Europe. Also Britain's imports from the Commonwealth are mainly indispensable raw materials, whereas her imports from Europe are less essential."

"By his conduct of the campaign against the Labour Government Aneurin Bevan has destroyed a good chance of succeeding the Party's leadership. Whereas Bevan's proletarian virility has always hypnotised many middle-class intellectuals, the trade unionists tend to see in him the familiar figure of the self-seeking agitator... Bevanism is essentially a flight from reality into dogma. But its opponents have had little to offer as a positive alternative. The Great Debate in British Socialism has so far consisted in one side talking nonsense and the other side keeping mum. The Labour Party may hope to carry the Welfare State and planning further than the Tories, but for a long time physical and psychological factors will fix rigid limits. Further 'soaking the rich' will no longer benefit the poor to any noticeable extent. Further nationalisation no longer attracts more than a tiny fringe of the Labour Party itself; it positively repels the electorate as a whole. Even among Labour economists there is a growing revolt against physical controls in favour of the price mechanism. A policy based on class war cannot have a wide appeal when the difference between classes is so small as Labour made it."

"Nye [Bevan] thinks that the best way to win friends and influence people is to kick them in the teeth... But there is in the country and in the Party a great deal of real anti-Americanism and in my view it is a disgrace to Socialism and a menace to peace. A lot of it is just jingoism with an inferiority complex, trying to make foreigners a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in this country. We are Socialists; we are supposed to believe...in the brotherhood of man, and we cannot say all men are brothers except Americans... I ask you to throw away the stale mythology of these political Peter Pans... We cannot solve the problems of foreign policy on a diet of rhetorical candy-floss."

"'The owl of Minerva only flies abroad when the shades of night are gathering.' Speaking for Conservatism, Hegel was right. And nothing proves it better than the post-war crop of Tory intellectuals, sprouting like mushrooms in the damp cellars of Abbey House. Not until the stimuli which originally conditioned Conservative reflexes have finally disappeared can the intellectual emerge to provide a rationale for Conservative behaviour. So Conservative theory must always base itself on some form of historical restorationism. The moderate seeks the world of Joseph Chamberlain—or if he is daring, of Disraeli. The really advanced radical looks still further back, to Prince Rupert, or the Middle Ages, particularly if he is a Catholic."

"Hugh Gaitskell was absolutely right when he said yesterday that what gets cheers at this conference does not necessarily get votes at elections. If it did we would have won Devonport [the seat which Michael Foot had just lost]. There are far too many people who...want to luxuriate complacency in moral righteousness in Opposition. But who is going to pay the price for their complacency? You can take the view that it is better to give up half a loaf if you cannot get the whole loaf, but the point is that it is not we who are giving up the half loaf. In Britain it is the unemployed and old age pensioners, and outside Britain there are millions of people in Asia and Africa who desperately need a Labour Government in this country to help them. If you take the view that it is all right to stay in Opposition so long as your Socialist heart is pure, you will be 'all right, Jack'. You will have your TV set, your motor car and your summer holidays on the Continent and still keep your Socialist soul intact. The people who pay the price for your sense of moral satisfaction are the Africans, millions of them, being slowly forced into racial slavery; the Indians and the Indonesians dying of starvation. We are not just a debating society. We are not just a Socialist Sunday School. We are a great movement that wants to help real people living on this earth at the present time. We shall never be able to help them unless we get power. We shall never get power unless we close the gap between our active workers and the average voter in the country."

"I think the Services can be rightly very upset at the continuous series of defence reviews which the Government has been forced by economic circumstances—and maybe economic mistakes too—to carry out..."

"I warn my hon. Friends...that once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders."

"We did not want middle class Robespierres."

"Do we really want to nationalise Marks and Spencers to make it as efficient as the Co-Op?"

"We are all agreed on a massive extension of public ownership...We are all agreed on establishing comprehensive planning control over the 100 or so largest companies in Britain. We are all agreed on the need for a national enterprise board to organise and extend public ownership in the profitable manufacturing industries."

"We shall increase income tax on the better off so that we can help the hundreds of thousands of families now tangled helplessly in the poverty trap by raising the tax threshold and introducing reduced rates of tax for those at the bottom of the ladder. I warn you, there are going to be howls of anguish from the rich. But before you cheer too loudly let me warn you that a lot of you will pay extra taxes too."

"Squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak"

"It has never been my nature, I regret to admit to the House, to turn the other cheek."

"It is far better that more people should be in work, even if that means accepting lower wages on average, than that those lucky enough to keep their jobs should scoop the pool while millions are living on the dole. That is what the social contract is all about."

"We are spending 6 per cent more than we are earning... You can also bankrupt a nation by excessive wage demands... That is why I said that it is better to have a lower standard of life for all workers than for some of them to be unemployed."

"The fact is that she [Margaret Thatcher] emerged in this debate as La Pasionaria of privilege."

"The borrowing requirement was 'terrifying'. He just had to cut back public expenditure. The Social Contract wasn't working. Inflation was getting out of control."

"I fully understand why I have been urged by so many friends both inside and outside the House to treat unemployment as the central problem and to stimulate a further growth in home consumption, public or private, so as to start getting the rate of unemployment down as fast as possible. I do not believe it would be wise to follow this advice today. As I have said, I did last July and November adopt reflationary measures whose full effect would only be felt this year. I cannot afford to increase demand further today when 5p in every £ we spend at home has been provided by our creditors abroad and inflation is running at its current rate. I do not believe anyone in Britain would thank me for producing an even larger deficit on our balance of payments and injecting a further massive dose of inflation through price and wage increases. Moreover a Rake's Progress of this nature could not last for long. The patience of our creditors would soon be exhausted. We would then face the appalling prospect of going down in a matter of weeks to the levels of public services and personal living standards which we could finance entirely from what we earned. I do not believe that our political or social system could stand that strain."

"The Budget I have presented today is a hard one for all of us in Britain. It is dictated by the harsh reality of the world we live in. A severe Budget is a necessary element in any strategy for improving the overall performance of our economy, which has been lagging increasingly behind most industrial economies for more than a single generation. Added to the need for measures to produce the essential structural changes in the balance of our economy are the burdens we carry with other countries because the explosion of world prices has cut our real income by 4 per cent. But in this situation the key to our immediate success is the rate of inflation inside Britain, and it is our failure here which is responsible for the special severity of this Budget. So long as pay and prices increase at their present rates, no Chancellor of the Exchequer who puts his country first would act otherwise than I have done this afternoon."

"No country would suffer more than Britain from an international trade war, since we depend more on world trade than any of our competitors. That is why we cannot accept the proposal made in some quarters that we should seek to solve our problems through imposing import controls for a long period over a whole range of manufactured consumer goods."

"He must be out of his tiny Chinese mind."

"By the end of next year, we really shall be on our way to that so-called economic miracle we need."

"If we can keep our heads—and our nerve—the long-awaited economic miracle is in our grasp. Britain can achieve in the Seventies what Germany and France achieved in the Fifties and Sixties."

"The alternative to getting help from the IMF would be economic policies so savage I think they would produce riots in the streets, an immediate fall in living standards and unemployment of three million."

"I am going to negotiate with the IMF on the basis of our existing policies, not changes in policies, and I need your support to do it. (Applause) But when I say "existing policies", I mean things we do not like as well as things we do like. It means sticking to the very painful cuts in public expenditure (shouts from the floor) on which the Government has already decided. It means sticking to a pay policy which enables us, as the TUC resolved a week or two ago, to continue the attack on inflation. (Shout of, "Resign".)"

"No Government can produce an economic miracle. An economic miracle depends on people on the shop floor, in the board room, in the sales office, working a bit harder and more efficiently than they have worked in the past."

"Keynesianism has failed."

"The central problem of our economy for more than a generation has been that, although our productivity has grown more slowly than that of our competitors, we have seen annual wage increases of the same order as theirs. So our inflation has risen faster than in other countries and we have been able to maintain price competitiveness and full employment only by a series of devaluations which have further added to inflation and increased the pressure for excessive wage increases. In the era of North Sea oil it will be more difficult to devalue our currency to maintain price competitiveness. So unless we can keep wage increases close to the level of productivity increase we shall face rising unemployment and a further erosion of our industrial base."

"I start with the measures which the Government announced last Thursday, and which are the immediate occasion of today's debate, and to which the right hon. Gentleman finally came round - a trifle nervously, I thought - after ploughing through that tedious and tendentious farrago of moth-eaten cuttings presented to him by the Conservative Research Department. I must say that part of his speech was rather like being savaged by a dead sheep."

"Austria came to terms with its political and economic disadvantages after the war, jettisoned those parts of its Marxist ideological inheritance which were obviously no longer relevant, and turned a country which in the inter-war years had been suffering from an ex-imperial hangover into a model welfare state, without sacrificing any of its cultural attractions in the process. [I am offering no New Jerusalem], simply a country with stable prices, jobs for those who want them and help for those who need it."

"Our party can't be united unless it remains what it always has been till now: a broad coalition of men and women from all sections of our society, supporting many different approaches to democratic socialism, who tolerate their disagreements with one another, and defend the right of minorities to fight for changes in the policies they disagree with."

"I don't believe the party gains when a member of the last two Labour governments stumps round the country blackguarding the record of the governments as a betrayal of the British working class, and describing the Prime Ministers through whom he accepted office as medieval monarchs who turned Labour MPs into their puppets. What nonsense! Tell that to Eric Heffer or Jeff Rooker or any of the many Labour MPs who've made my life as Chancellor so difficult from time to time, and I never objected to that. No! Those who betray the working class of Britain are those who forced us for two whole years to fight one another when we should have been fighting the Tories and through a sort of ideological narcissism are helping to keep in power the most brutal government in living memory, a government which has commit itself to destroy our trade union movement. We didn't lose the last election because we failed to follow the advice of these elitists. It was Maggie Thatcher who won the last election, not Mick McGahey. And we're losing votes today not to the Socialist Workers Party or the IMG but to David Steel and Roy Jenkins."

"NATO's nuclear strategy is an essential part of that balance [between East and West]. To threaten to upset it by refusing to let America base any of her nuclear weapons in Britain would make war more likely, not less likely."

"I would fight to change the policy before the General Election. If I failed then I wouldn't accept office in a Labour Government."

"Faced with the difficulties of unilateral reflation, some socialists are tempted to seek salvation through trade restrictions or competitive devaluation. But such beggar-my-neighbour policies, if pursued on the scale required...are more likely to lead to a trade and currency war than to insulate their sponsors from the recession in the outside world."

"We will unilaterally get rid of Trident and cruise, and we will put Polaris into the arms talks with the Soviet Union and hope to phase it out in multilateral negotiations. If the Russians...fail to cut their nuclear forces accordingly it would be a new situation that we could consider at that time."

"[Margaret Thatcher] wraps herself in the Union Jack and exploits the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors and airmen in the Falkland Islands for purely party advantage – and hopes to get away with it. It wasn't a very credible approach from the word 'go' because this Prime Minister, who glories in slaughter, who has taken advantage of the superb professionalism of our armed forces, is at this very moment lending the military dictatorship in Buenos Aires millions of pounds to buy weapons – including weapons made in Britain – to kill British servicemen. That is an act of stupefying hypocrisy."

"What almost halved the support for the Labour Party was the feeling that it has lost its traditional common sense and its humanity to a new breed of sectarian extremism."

"[W]ho is the Mephistopheles behind this shabby Faust? The answer to that is clear. The handling of this decision by—I quote her own Back Benchers—the great she-elephant, she who must be obeyed, the Catherine the Great of Finchley, the Prime Minister herself, has drawn sympathetic trade unionists, such as Len Murray, into open revolt. Her pig-headed bigotry has prevented her closest colleagues and Sir Robert Armstrong from offering and accepting a compromise. The right hon. Lady, for whom I have a great personal affection, has formidable qualities, a powerful intelligence and immense courage, but those qualities can turn into horrendous vices, unless they are moderated by colleagues who have more experience, understanding and sensitivity. As she has got rid of all those colleagues, no one is left in the Cabinet with both the courage and the ability to argue with her. I put it to all Conservative Members, but mainly to the Government Front Bench, that to allow the right hon. Lady to commit Britain to another four years of capricious autocracy would be to do fearful damage not just to the Conservative party but to the state."

"So long as the Soviet Union has nuclear weapons there have to be nuclear weapons somewhere in NATO to deter them from using them."

"The reason we were defeated in so far as defence played a role is that people believe we were in favour of unilaterally disarming ourselves. It wasn't the confusion. It was the unilateralism that was the damaging thing."

"We are going through a period of uncertainty, but we are in a good position to strengthen ourselves and win back a majority. We have already got rid of much deadwood and Kinnock is winning back younger voters. He is politically intelligent, has character and courage; but he has never been a minister, lacks experience, and people know it. In troubled times, the electorate looks for a strong leader and Mrs Thatcher is seen as one."

"The US, whether we like it or not, has nuclear weapons. The US is a member of NATO. Possession by the US of nuclear weapons is obviously a deterrent."

"No. Absolutely not. I think that the Russians are praying for a Labour victory...praying is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words. I think that they would much prefer a Labour government and that the idea that they would prefer a Tory government, I think is utter bunkum, and they [the Soviets] authorized me to say so."

"I am a socialist who believes that the Labour Party offers the best hope for Britain's future."

"I wouldn't object strongly to leaving the EU. The advantages of being members of the union are not obvious. The disadvantages are very obvious. I can see the case for leaving – the case for leaving is stronger than for staying in."

"The trouble about Europe is what I call the Olive Line, the line below which people grow olives. North of the Olive Line people pay their taxes and spend public money very cautiously. South of it they fail to pay their taxes at all, but spend a lot of public money."

"[Referring to the "Olive line"] That division makes federation impossible – inconceivable, in my opinion."

"Denis Healey was a great champion for social justice, in and out of government, a stalwart of the Labour Party, a true patriot who fought for and cared deeply about his country and an extraordinary and vibrant character. ... He steered the Labour government and the country through some of the most difficult economic times; and in winning the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 1981, he probably saved the Labour Party as an instrument of government and social change. All of us in the Labour Party owe him a huge debt. Britain has lost a dedicated and faithful public servant."

"I always had a sneaking affection for Denis Healey, even at his most outrageous. I liked his rumbustiousness, a quality which adds richness to politics provided it is combined with intellectual insight and personal incorruptibility, as it was in Denis's case. He is an instinctive bully, but bullies always bring out the best in me and I enjoyed our clashes in Cabinet. His autobiography is a masterly piece of work and, as I read it, I chuckled over the cunning way he skates over his confessions of past mistakes, leaving the impression that they did not adversely affect events, though of course they did."

"Denis Healey was a giant of the Labour Party whose record of service to his party and his country stands as his testament. ... His wit and personality transcended politics itself, making him one of the most recognisable politicians of his era. Speaking personally, we had many interesting conversations when I was first elected to Parliament in 1983 and I found him a decent and very knowledgeable man who I enjoyed engaging with, particularly in his work as shadow foreign secretary."

"The art of John Dryden would be required to encompass the complex personality of the ambitious and many-sided politician who, in 1974, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. The most cultured of Chancellors, he could also be the greatest bully. Perhaps the most brilliant of Chancellors intellectually, he was possessed also of a common touch which attracted a wider public even when it most disliked his actions. His various disguises could confuse. A friendly commentator might attribute to him a deep seriousness worn lightly, sometimes perhaps flippantly. The flippancy could have been diagnosed as a defence mechanism for a man whose outward ebullience concealed inner doubts. Or it could have been interpreted as an expression of total self-confidence. The friendly commentator would have detected great courage, normally kept in reserve, as though courage was only for the decisive moment and it would be tedious to fight too hard when the issues appeared not of the first importance. A less friendly commentator might have criticised the flippancy, encountered not just in words but in deeds, as indicative of irresponsibility. Certainly it was not always to the taste of those who worked for him. By civil servants in the Treasury, he came to be admired for the excitement he generated and feared for his penetration of official work less than first class. But by those, Ministers and officials, who could not take his dismissive rudeness, he might even be hated. He came to dominate the international community of Finance Ministers by his intellectual brilliance and his committee skills."

"He had a clear idea of the objectives he wanted to secure, and mostly, from a socialist point of view, they were good ones. He would listen; he could be endlessly patient in negotiations, which is the only way to negotiate with would-be friends or allies; he had an irrepressible intellectual curiosity deriving partly from his interest in matters which touched only the fringe of politics."

"The greatest interest to economists of the Budget strategy will be in the way the Chancellor [Healey] has finally and totally broken with postwar economic orthodoxy, abandoned full employment as the sovereign purpose of the Budget, and decided that future stability of both prices and the foreign balance depended on achieving a better balance of the Budget itself."

"He has long carried light ideological baggage on a heavy gun carriage."

"He didn't suffer fools gladly or, indeed, at all. That partly explains why he was never leader of the party despite having rich political talent. He was brilliant in the Commons, an ebullient campaigner in the country, and his piano-thumping performances in by-election sing-songs were – like him – loud, lively, and uplifting. ... To know Denis Healey was to enjoy him."

"Healey is a strong fighter. He is intellectually gifted and capable of prodigious acts of endurance, but his aggressive approach is said to have alienated some of his potential supporters. In the 1976 leadership election he came a poor third behind Michael Foot and Jim Callaghan. By 1980, after a year of conflict and division within the Labour Party, he was portrayed by the left as one of those principally responsible for ignoring party policy. He looked increasingly, as one correspondent said, like a whale stranded on a beach being attacked by minnows."

"After the 1980 conference, at which the electoral college was accepted in principle, Healey refused to join the Gang of Three in meeting the left head on. He is a politician of the old school who prefers dining with, and talking to, trade union general secretaries and other leading figures in the Labour movement, in the hope that they will control the votes of their members, to involving himself directly in the day-to-day battle within the constituencies... Healey appeared to be in a safe position to hold the deputy leadership and stay above the battle. David Owen, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers seemed increasingly likely to start a new political party, but Healey appeared to have accepted his defeat [in the 1980 leadership election] and gave no indication that he would be prepared to join them. He also seemed unwilling to take on the left within the party, and his fighting instincts were not roused until Tony Benn began to make unexpected headway in the attempt to win the deputy leadership from him [in the 1981 deputy leadership election]."

"The only hope was Denis Healey. ... But my hopes were shortlived. Soon after the party conference in October [1980], it became evident that Denis Healey, whether he became leader or not, was not going to fight head-on the unilateralist and anti-European policy of the Labour Party. He was not going to make the party face up to the electoral incredibility of being both in effect anti-Nato and anti-European. ... So, Denis Healey was not going to fight the left. That became clear. Denis does not have good political judgement. In that sense he is not a good politician. He has a first-class brain, he is extremely well informed and he's got good judgement about many things, but he's not been a very good judge of feelings and moods within the Labour Party. I think he calculated that by taking the soft approach, the emollient approach, he could woo the left and win the leadership and, having secured it, would then fight for his policies. But he wasn't going to fight beforehand."

"We wanted Denis Healey to win, and Bill and I voted for him to win, but we wanted the right policies to win too. If he had fought for those policies and had lost we would have been bound to stick with him for a while and to have gone on fighting for them within the party. No question about it. Well, Denis did not heed our message. He stood as a ‘Peace’ candidate. It was just ludicrous. Everybody knew perfectly well, I think, that he didn't agree with a word of what he was supporting. His position was totally unconvincing. If he had fought on, so to speak, a ‘war ticket’, he would have probably lost, but I have no doubt that he would have been the leader of the Labour Party within two years. In retrospect that was the moment when the SDP was created."

"Of all the senior politicians I have known, Denis was by far the most loyal to decisions he did not like, to colleagues he served or who served him, to Labour Party policy he disliked and above all to his wife Edna and his family. This quality of his, more than any other, means that I have always measured Denis by a stringent but more generous yardstick than I use for any other politicians. He also has great style. I can hear him, as if it were yesterday, getting up from a dinner at Admiralty House and announcing with chuckle that he was off "to vote for the people against privilege". It was not just a joke. There was always a hint of "Denis the Menace" against privilege, and justly so. For all his faults he is a big man and I have been lucky to learn from him and to know him."

"On Wednesday 10 March [1976] members of the Tribune group of left-wing MPs launched their attack by abstaining on a motion from the Chancellor to 'level off' total public expenditure from April 1977... There were bitter exchange among MPs... Tribunites hurled vulgar abuse. Denis Healey...responded with characteristic vigour. 'Stalinist! Stalinist!' Eric Heffer shouted at him. 'Bastard! Bastard!' echoed Russell Kerr. Healey's own version is that, returning to the Chamber from the voting lobby, 'one of the rebels used demotic language to cast aspersions on my paternity, so I praised his virility in similar language several times.' According to one witness, the Chancellor's precise words to his critics were: 'Go and fuck yourselves.'"

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been—I know this because I have watched him over the years—a monetarist much longer than anyone has ever suspected of him. I used to listen with enjoyment to his speeches in the years 1972 to 1974, and I would shake my head and say to myself, "He will be a good Chancellor of the Exchequer, for he understands the real causes of inflation." Oh, he understands them all right."

"The right hon. Gentleman will be known for ever as the only Chancellor in the post-war period who brought this country to the brink of bankruptcy."

"[T]he defence budget is one of the very few elements of public expenditure that can truly be described as essential. The point was well-made by a robust Labour Defence Minister, Denis (now Lord) Healey, many years ago: ‘Once we have cut expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.’"

"Denis is a colourful, ebullient personality, combative and life-loving, with an unusually rich hinterland outside politics. He is an exceptionally gifted photographer...and is immensely knowledgeable about music... Yet he was never a serious candidate for the leadership. He was unpredictable, behaving rather like a strongly served tennis ball hitting a soft spot and then bouncing sideways. You could never be sure what he might do. He was a loner, enjoying his family and a few close friends, mainly not politicians, so predictions about his behaviour from colleagues were not particularly helpful. He had been brusque with many of them, or scorched them with his brilliant, brutal humour. He was not a popular figure in the Commons tea room. I liked him very much."

"He said things the way they were and you couldn't stop him from doing so. ... He was a mixture of incredible courage, lack of tact and not very good at playing in a way that would give him the advantage as distinct from party or the country. It was an impressive performance and I shan't forget it."

"Unless during the first five years so great a degree of change has been accomplished as to deprive Capitalism of its power, it is unlikely that a Socialist Party will be able to maintain its position of control without adopting some exceptional means, such as the prolongation of the life of Parliament for a further term without an election."

"The [Labour] Government's first step will be to call Parliament together at the earliest moment and place before it an Emergency Powers Bill to be passed through in all its stages on the first day. This Bill will be wide enough in its terms to allow all that will be immediately necessary to be done by ministerial orders. These orders must be incapable of challenge in the Courts or in any way except in the House of Commons."

"In 1919 we pledged our honour as a country that we would disarm as soon as possible, and other countries did the same. In the face of that Germany accepted the Treaty of Versailles. We had done nothing. We had offered a Disarmament Conference which might well make the gods laugh if they desired the destruction of the human race. We had got to realize the extraordinary gravity of the European situation—the pass to which the National Government had brought the world. The worst Foreign Secretary for 200 years had led this country into folly after folly in the international field. They ought to warn the Government that in no circumstances would they break any of the pacts they had made not to go to war. There was only one effective way in which they could make that threat effective...and that was to call a general strike. It was for the people of this country, in answer to that call, to put themselves behind the trade unions and to compel the trade unions to draw up plans immediately for that great resistance."

"I do not believe in private armies but if the Fascists started a private army it might be for the Socialist and Communist Parties to do the same. When the Labour Party come into power they must act rapidly, and it will be necessary to deal with the House of Lords and the influence of the City of London. There is no doubt that we shall have to overcome opposition from Buckingham Palace and other places as well...There must not be time to allow the forces outside to gather and to exercise their influence upon the Legislature before the key-points of capitalism have been transferred to the control of the State, and I look upon these two key-points myself as being the land and finance. If other people become revolutionary, then the Socialist Government, like any other Government, must take steps to stamp out the revolution. The Socialist Government must not be mealy-mouthed about saying what they mean. They must make it perfectly clear that it is their intention to carry out the mandate they have been given by the people."

"The problem of dealing with the armed forces of the Crown is the most difficult one we will have to face when we do get into power. The Labour Party will have to face the fact that it is a class Party...It has to be prepared to take steps more forceful than even the steps taken at the time of the Ulster Rebellion."

"But it is a fallacy, if one is examining the methods by which security can be attained, to start upon the assumption, as so many hon. Members do, that we get security by an increase of air armaments or an increase of any other form of armaments."

"I cannot imagine the Labour Party coming into power without a first-rate financial crisis. That is why we ask for full emergency measures."

"It must be the duty of the next Labour Government in power to make an immediate challenge to the capitalist system and take the banks and the land into the custody of the people. The time had come to drop all hesitancy and to be bold. If they returned a Socialist Government next time, it was going to "do things," whatever it cost."

"We will have nothing to do with Imperialist or capitalist wars. If the time comes, as we hope it will, when the workers of this country own England as they do not own England to-day; if their policy is a policy of international socialism, then it may be that we may have to defend the system and the country against the marauders of some capitalist Power...the majority of the workers would be prepared to defend the system, but so long as they were being asked to defend something with which they profoundly disagreed, something which they believed to lie at the root of the dangers of the world to-day, then it was their duty to say that they would have nothing to do with the armed forces or with war. It was no exaggeration to say that to-day we were far more in danger of a holocaust than we were in 1913...in 1931 Lombard Street determined that it was time to finish the life of the Labour Government. It was finished not by the traditional method of a hostile vote in the Commons, but by means which [I] dared to mention in Nottingham—and caused a considerable uproar in the Press—the Buckingham Palace influence."

"You have only got to look at the pages of British imperial history to hide your head in shame that you are British."

"It is fundamental to Socialism that we should liquidate the British Empire as soon as we can."

"The National Government's only remedy for a difficult national problem was to arm and arm and arm, regardless of the lessons of history and the proved fact that armament racing could only end in war. ... If we are plunged in war I devoutly hope that the workers of this country will use it for the purpose of revolution. I hope that the present government can be made to understand that that will happen. It will be a very healthy thought for them to have in the back of their mind."

"Every possible effort should be made to stop recruiting for the Armed Forces. This may, and probably would, lead to some form of conscription being proposed or introduced. Thus would be provided a most favourable political platform upon which to fight the National Government."

"I do not believe it would be a bad thing for the British working-class if Germany defeated us. It would be a disaster for the profit-makers and capitalists, but not necessarily for the working-class."

"All sorts of excuses were being given why we should uphold rearmament, including the old-fashioned "For God, King and Country" patriotism, assisted by all the tomfoolery of jubilees and coronations."

"The reactionaries of our Movement are keen to prevent Socialists from coming into it. The last thing anyone should do is to pander to the reactionaries by staying out. James Maxton and Harry Pollitt should be the Leaders of the Labour Movement today"

"Money cannot make armaments. Armaments can only be made by the skill of the British working class, and it is the British working class who would be called upon to use them. To-day you have the most glorious opportunity that the workers have ever had if you will only use the necessity of capitalism in order to get power yourselves. The capitalists are in your hands. Refuse to make munitions, refuse to make armaments, and they are helpless. They would have to hand the control of the country over to you."

"The workers must now make it clear beyond all doubt that they will not support the Government or its armaments in its mad policy which it is now pursuing."

"I want to see the end of the British Empire in the world."

"Emphatically no, and I never have been."

"...we must avoid a competitive raising of wages and conditions in a scarce labour market, which raises prices. ... If we allow prices to rise because of internal costs rising, we shall lose and not gain our overseas markets, or at least not be able to gain new ones in the competition. Therefore, incentives must be strictly limited to increased production so that more earnings mean more production. We cannot in any circumstances afford to pay more for the same or less production. We must await the further raising of the levels of earnings until we can provide the goods upon which those earnings can be spent. In the same way, let me point out, that large profits drawn from industry today are just as inimical because they, too, raise the price levels and, furthermore, they offer an immediate temptation for the demand for greater salaries."

"We must bring home to the people the seriousness of the country's present plight and the future problems that we face. We must convince them of their power to overcome all difficulties by common effort. We must draw out from people that courage and determination which have always been the hallmarks of the British character."

"Production, and production alone, can find us relief in our immediate situation. It is no part of the British character to resign ourselves to such difficulties or to fail to take the measures, however hard, to overcome them. It has been truly said that by our faith we can move mountains. It is by our faith in ourselves, in our country, in the free democratic traditions for which the people of this country have for centuries fought and battled, and for which they must fight again as willingly on the economic front as upon the oceans, on the land and in the air, it is by our faith in the deep spiritual values that we acknowledge in our Christian faith, that we shall be enabled and inspired to move the present mountains of our difficulties, and so emerge into that new and fertile plain of prosperity which we shall travel in happiness only as the result of our own efforts and our own vision."

"...we do not contemplate taking any action to alter the rate of sterling in relation to other currencies, as we do not believe that this will be rendered necessary or advisable."

"[In the case of sterling devaluation was] neither necessary nor will it take place."

"Though we have achieved considerable success in our policy of increasing production and maintaining full employment, this has been accompanied by constant pressure for higher wages resulting in higher prices. We have not yet found out how we can maintain full employment in combination with stable or decreasing costs and prices."

"His Majesty's Government have not the slightest intention of devaluing the pound."

"The Government decided...to reduce the dollar exchange value of the pound sterling. In the last few days we have settled what the new rate should be and now I have to tell you of that decision; it is that in place of the present rate, fixed in 1946, of $4 3c. for the pound the rate will in future be $2 80c. to the pound."

"Our position is such that we could not 'integrate' our economy into that of Europe in any manner that would prejudice the full discharge of these other responsibilities. At the same time, Britain regarded herself as bound up in western Europe, not only in economic, strategic and political interests, but in our culture and indeed in our participation in the heritage of Christian civilization."

"He was a man the greatness of whose intellectual and practical abilities was matched by his nobility of character and high idealism. ... I believe he did immense service to this country."

"As one who has been a nationalist leader and worker for India's independence, though now my activity is no longer in the political but in the spiritual field, I wish to express my appreciation of all you have done to bring about this offer. I welcome it as an opportunity given to India to determine for herself, and organise in all liberty of choice, her freedom and unity, and take an effective place among the world's free nations. I hope that it will be accepted, and right use made of it, putting aside all discords and divisions.... I offer my public adhesion, in case it can be of any help in your work."

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

"There, but for the grace of God, goes God."

"Stafford Cripps was a man of force and fire. His intellectual and moral passions were so strong that they not only inspired but not seldom dominated his actions. They were strengthened and also governed by the workings of a powerful, lucid intelligence, and by a deep and lively Christian faith. He strode through life with a remarkable indifference to material satisfactions or worldly advantages. I suppose there are few hon. Members in any part of the House who have not differed violently from him at this time or that, and yet there is none who did not regard him with respect and with admiration, not only for his abilities, but for his character."

"Cripps seems quite unable to see the argument that he is damaging the party electorally. It is all ‘misreporting’, or picking sentences out of their context. He has become very vain and seems to think that only he and his cronies know what Socialism is or how it should be preached. His gaffes cover an immense range – Buckingham Palace – League of Nations – ‘compelling’ Unions to declare a General Strike – prolonging Parliament beyond five years...‘seize land, finance and industry’ (without compensation?) – Emergency Powers Bill in one day, giving ‘all necessary powers’...I make a violent – perhaps too violent – speech asking that this stream of oratorical ineptitudes should now cease...It is the number of these gaffes which is so appalling. Our candidates are being stabbed in the back and pushed onto the defensive. Tory HQ regard him as their greatest electoral asset...Attlee says I am like a pedagogue addressing a pupil. I wish the pupil were a bit brighter."

"We mourn today the passing of a fine Christian knight, a dauntless spirit, a devoted public servant, a noble character whose life, whose integrity, and whose work are an example and an inspiration to us all, whose shining faith never faltered in the face of difficulties, however mountainous."

"Cripps, a man without roots, a demagogue and a liar, would pursue his sick fancies although the Empire were to crack at every corner. Moreover, this theoretician devoid of humanity lacks contact with the mass that's grouped behind the Labour Party, and he'll never succeed in understanding the problems that occupy the minds of the lower classes."

"O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul."

"In reply to your letter I have to remark that members who sit below the gangway have always acted in the House of Commons with a very considerable degree of independence of the recognised and constituted chiefs of either party, nor can I (who owe nothing to anyone and depend on nobody) in any way or at any time depart from that well-established and highly respectable tradition."

"The great bulk of the Tory party throughout the country is composed of artisans and labouring classes. They are directly represented here to-day; they are always directly represented on your Council; no party management can be effective and healthy unless the great labouring classes are directly represented on the Executive of the party. I hope before long to see Tory working men in Parliament."

"Now some of our friends in the party have a lesson to learn which they do not seem disposed to learn. The Conservative party will never exercise power until it has gained the confidence of the working classes; and the working classes are quite determined to govern themselves, and will not be either driven or hoodwinked by any class or class interests. Our interests are perfectly safe if we trust them fully, frankly and freely; but if we oppose them and endeavour to drive them and hoodwink them, our interests, our Constitution and all we love and revere will go down. If you want to gain the confidence of the working classes, let them have a share and a large share—a real share and not a sham share—in your party Councils and in your party government."

"Your iron industry is dead; dead as mutton; your coal industries, which depend greatly upon the iron industries, are languishing. Your silk industry is dead, assassinated by the foreigner. Your woollen industry is in articulo mortis, gasping, struggling. Your cotton industry is seriously sick. The shipbuilding industry, which held out longest of all, is come to a standstill. Turn your eyes where you will, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease. The self-satisfied Radical philosophers will tell you it is nothing; they point to the great volume of British trade. Yes, the volume of British trade is still large, but it is a volume which is no longer profitable; it is working and struggling. So do the muscles and nerves of the body of a man who has been hanged twitch and work violently for a short time after the operation. But death is there all the same, life has utterly departed, and suddenly comes the rigor mortis. Well, but with this state of British industry what do you find going on? You find foreign iron, foreign wool, foreign silk and cotton pouring into the country, flooding you, drowning you, sinking you, swamping you; your labour market is congested, wages have sunk below the level of life, the misery in our large towns is too frightful to contemplate, and emigration or starvation is the remedy which the Radicals offer you with the most undisturbed complacency. But what has produced this state of things? Free imports? I am not sure; I should like an inquiry; but I suspect free imports of the murder of our industries much in the same way as if I found a man standing over a corpse and plunging his knife into it I should suspect that man of homicide, and I should recommend a coroner's inquest and a trial by jury."

"The Prime Minister [William Ewart Gladstone] is the greatest living master of the art of personal advertisement."

"For the purposes of recreation he has selected the felling of trees, and we may usefully remark that his amusements, like his politics, are essentially destructive. (Laughter.) Every afternoon the whole world is invited to assist at the crashing fall of some beech or elm or oak—the forest laments in order that Mr. Gladstone may perspire."

"How many more of England's heroes—how many more of England's best and bravest—are to be sacrificed to the Moloch of Mid Lothian?"

"‘Trust the people’—I have long tried to make that my motto; but I know, and will not conceal, that there are still a few in our party who have that lesson yet to learn and who have yet to understand that the Tory party of to-day is no longer identified with that small and narrow class which is connected with the ownership of land; but that its great strength can be found, and must be developed, in our large towns as well as in our country districts. Yes, trust the people. You, who are ambitious, and rightly ambitious, of being the guardians of the British Constitution, trust the people, and they will trust you—and they will follow you and join you in the defence of that Constitution against any and every foe. I have no fear of democracy. I do not fear minorities; I do not care for those checks and securities which Mr. Goschen seems to think of such importance. Modern checks and securities are not worth a brass farthing. Give me a fair arrangement of the constituencies, and one part of England will correct and balance the other."

"My chief reason for supporting the Church of England I find in the fact that, when compared with other creeds and other sects, it is essentially the Church of religious liberty. Whether in one direction or in another, it is continually possessed by the ambition, not of excluding, but of including, all shades of religious thought, all sorts and conditions of men, and in standing out like a lighthouse over a stormy ocean it marks the entrance to a port where those who are wearied at times with the woes of the world, and troubled often by the trials of existence, may search for and may find that "peace that passeth all understanding". I cannot and will not allow myself to believe that the English people, who are not only naturally religious, but also eminently practical, will ever consent, for the purpose of gratifying sectarian animosities, or for the wretched purpose of pandering to infidel proclivities, to deprive themselves of so abundant a fountain of aid and consolation, or acquiesce in the demolition of a constitution which elevates the life of the nation and consecrates the acts of the State."

"Mr. Chamberlain, a pinchbeck Robespierre."

"To tell the truth I don't know myself what Tory Democracy is. But I believe it is principally opportunism."

"[H]e would say that he doubted whether it was possible for anyone who had not visited India, even Members of Her Majesty's Government, to realize how incredibly strong, and, at the same time, how incredibly slender, our position in India was. It was strong far beyond ordinary human strength so long as we showed ourselves capable of ruling; but it was weaker than the weakest the moment we showed the faintest indications of relaxing our grasp."

"The struggle between England and Russia at the present moment is rather analogous to a celebrated struggle which took place some years ago, and which I can just remember, between two individuals in this country—the great fight between Heenan and Sayers."

"I consider it to have been my good fortune to have heard and to have read many speeches and many orations of the Prime Minister [William Ewart Gladstone] with regard to Ireland. Many of his most confident predictions, vaticinations, and declarations are fresh in my mind. I have been more than once under what may be called the wand of the magician; and I know of no experience to which I can compare it, except, perhaps, the taking of morphia. The sensations, while the operation is going on, are transcendent; but the recovery is bitter beyond all experience."

"If political parties and political leaders, not only Parliamentary, but local, should be so utterly lost to every feeling and dictate of honour and courage as to hand over coldly, and for the sake of purchasing a short and illusory Parliamentary tranquility, the lives and liberties of the loyalists of Ireland to their hereditary and most bitter foes, make no doubt on this point: Ulster will not be a consenting party; Ulster at the proper moment will resort to the supreme arbitrament of force; Ulster will fight; Ulster will be right; Ulster will emerge from the struggle victorious, because all that Ulster represents to us Britons will command the sympathy and support of an enormous section of our British community, and also, I feel certain, will attract the admiration and the approval of free and civilized nations."

"For the sake of this fifth message of peace to Ireland, this farrago of superlative nonsense, the vexatious and costly machinery of a general election is to be put in motion, all business other than what may be connected with political agitation is to be impeded and suspended; trade and commercial enterprise, now suffering sadly from protracted bad times, and which political stability can alone re-invigorate, are to be further harassed and handicapped; all useful and desired reforms are to be indefinitely postponed; the British Constitution is to be torn up; the Liberal party shivered into fragments. And why? For this reason and no other. To gratify the ambition of an old man in a hurry."

"Politics is not a science of the past; politics is the science of the future. You must use the past as a lever with which to manufacture the future. Politics is not a science, it is not a profession which consists in standing still; it is in this country essentially a science and a profession of progress."

"[T]he main principle and the guiding motive of the policy of the Government in the future will be to maintain intact and unimpaired the union of the Unionist party."

"The primary object of all government at the present moment is to maintain the Union, to maintain it not for a session or for a Parliament, but for our time."

"Balfourism acts like a blister on Ireland and the Irish, and has the bad and good effects which such treatment generally produces. A too protracted application of the blister might do much harm."

"[T]he interest of the Conservative party is undoubtedly to reform the land laws of this country with the view of multiplying the owners of land. (Cheers.) The more we can increase and multiply the owners of land in England the more we strengthen the real and true Conservative party in this country, for it is an undoubted fact that owners of land when once they come into their land develop strong Conservative tendencies."

"That state of things discloses this as a rule; it discloses as a general practice high rents, mercilessly exacted, wretched accommodation, total neglect by the ground landlords of their duties to their tenants, and of the general duties of property. (Hear, hear.) I fancy—I say it in warning to the ground landlords in the large towns—that a heavy reckoning is at hand for them from the people if they do not take time by the forelock, and if they do not recognize that property has its duties as well as its rights. (Cheers.)"

"I say, and I say most earnestly, we ought by law to impose upon our local authorities the duty of re-housing the labouring classes within their jurisdiction where the labouring classes are housed in an insanitary, wretched, or improper manner. (Cheers.) We ought to give to the local authorities powers of compulsory purchase of land and of wretched, miserable dwellings... The ground landlords have to my mind so neglected their duties, they have been content to allow their tenants to be so miserably and wretchedly accommodated, they have been content as a rule, though, of course, there are exceptions, merely to fill their own pockets, and I do not think very much mercy or consideration need to be shown to them; and I think as a rule very few years' purchase would be sufficient to purchase out their rights."

"[S]uppose the town authorities purchased sites of land and erected great buildings such as I hold are suitable for the class that would inhabit them, the land so purchased and the dwellings so built would belong to the people of the town in which the operations took place, because the corporation or the town council is merely the representative of the people and merely distributes the rates and administers the rates they raise for the people; and, owning the houses, would own them in the name of the people, who would be virtually the owner of an enormous proportion of the dwellings in which they lived. (Cheers.) Under these circumstances, gentlemen, you would have no rack-renting, there would be no motive for rack-renting, for the profits which would arise from very moderate rents would be amply sufficient to maintain those buildings in repair, and would leave a margin for new buildings to be erected."

"I allude to the inquiry by the House of Lords' Committee into the sweating system. There we have had proof upon proof and witness after witness showing that there are men and women in this country in great numbers who, in order to earn a living, a mere pittance, have positively to labour 20 and even 22 hours a day. (Cries of "Shame.") It is almost incredible; and I say labour of that kind is totally inconsistent with either health or strength. (Cheers.) Now we wish to be a free people, but surely above all things we should try that we should be a strong and a healthy people (hear, hear); and where labour is carried to this excess for the benefit of one person or another I say it is carried to an excess which it is very difficult to justify."

"Political power passed very considerably from the landed interest to the manufacturing capitalist interest, and our whole fiscal system was shaped by this latter power to its own advantage, foreign policy being also made to coincide. We are now come, or are coming fast, to a time when labour laws will be made by the labour interest for the advantage of labour. The regulation of all the conditions of labour by the State, controlled and guided by the labour vote, appears to be the ideal aimed at, and I think it extremely probable that a foreign policy which sought to extend by tariff reforms over our colonies and even over other friendly States the area of profitable barter of produce, will strongly commend itself to the mind of the labour interest. Personally I can discern no cause for alarm in this prospect, and I believe that on this point you and I are in perfect agreement. Labour, in this modern movement, has against it the prejudices of property, the resources of capital, and all the numerous forces—social, professional, and journalistic—which those prejudices and resources can influence."

"It is our business as Tory politicians to uphold the Constitution. If under the Constitution as it now exists, and as we wish to see it preserved, the labour interest finds that it can obtain its objects and secure its own advantage, then that interest will be reconciled to the Constitution, will find faith in it, and will maintain it. But if it should unfortunately occur that the Constitutional party to which you and I belong are deaf to hear and slow to meet the demands of labour, are stubborn in opposition to those demands, and are persistent in the habit of ranging themselves in unreasoning and short-sighted support of all the present rights of property-capital, then the result may be that the labour interest may identify what it will take to be defects in the Constitutional party with the Constitution itself, and in a moment of indiscriminate impulse may use its power to sweep both away. This view of affairs, I submit, is worthy of attention at a time when it is a matter of life or death to the Constitutional party to enlist in the support of the Parliamentary Union of the United Kingdom a majority of the votes of the masses of labour."

"My views as to the reforms in the public service, which public safety and economy alike urgently call for, are, I think, well known to you; they have undergone no change, save that I hold them more strongly than ever. You are also, I imagine, not unaware of my desire to meet with all legitimate sympathy and good will the newly-formed but very articulate and well-defined demands of the labouring classes."

"In these later years Lord Randolph Churchill was drawn increasingly towards a Collectivist view of domestic politics. Almost every speech which he made from 1889 to 1891 gives evidence of the steady development of his opinions. His interest in the problems of the labouring classes grew warmer and keener as time passed... His answer to a deputation of miners who waited in succession on him and Mr. Gladstone to urge the enforcement of an eight hours’ day in the coal trade was accepted by them as far more favourable to their desires than anything that fell from the Liberal leader."

"Tory Democracy was necessarily a compromise (perilously near a paradox in the eye of a partisan) between widely different forces and ideas: ancient permanent institutions becoming the instruments of far-reaching social reforms: order conjoined with liberty; stability and yet progress; the Tory party and daring legislation! Yet narrow as was the path along which he moved, multitudes began to follow. Illogical and unsymmetrical as the idea might seem—an idea not even novel—it grew vital and true at his touch. At a time when Liberal formulas and Tory inertia seemed alike chill and comfortless, he warmed the heart of England and strangely stirred the imagination of her people."

"From the moment Lord Randolph Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible in large measure for the affairs of the nation, he ceased in vital matters to be a Tory. He adopted with increasing zest the Gladstonian outlook, with the single exception of Irish Home Rule; and in all social and labour questions he was far beyond what the Whig or middle-class Liberal of that epoch could have tolerated."

"I read industriously almost every word he had ever spoken and learnt by heart large portions of his speeches. I took my politics almost unquestioningly from him. He seemed to me to have possessed in the days of his prime the key alike to popular oratory and political action. Although Lord Randolph Churchill lived and died a loyal Tory, he was in fact during the whole of his political life, and especially during its finest phase after he had left office for ever, a liberal-minded man. He saw no reason why the old glories of Church and State, of King and country, should not be reconciled with modern democracy; or why the masses of working people should not become the chief defenders of those ancient institutions by which their liberties and progress had been achieved. It is this union of past and present, of tradition and progress, this golden chain, never yet broken, because no undue strain is placed upon it, that has constituted the peculiar merit and sovereign quality of English national life."

"I may confess, however, that I do not feel quite like a fish out of water in a legislative assembly where English is spoken. I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. "Trust the people." That was his message. I used to see him cheered at meetings and in the streets by crowds of workingmen way back in those aristocratic Victorian days when as Disraeli said "the world was for the few, and for the very few." Therefore I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly and I have steered confidently towards the Gettysburg ideal of government of the people, by the people, for the people."

"I can speak from personal recollection of his performances both in Parliament and in the country. I heard many of the personal attacks upon Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal Government, and, perhaps, scarcely less upon the respectable persons who then led the Conservative party, by means of which he hewed his way to fame. The tomahawk was always in his hand. It is impossible to describe the gleeful ferocity with which he swept off the scalps of friend and foe. Some of these speeches contained the grossest errors of taste, and nearly all were marked by a vein of almost burlesque exaggeration. In later times, however, he led the House of Commons for a few weeks with unquestionable brilliance, and some of his speeches showed a rapidly-growing sense of responsibility and great constructive power. His manner, like his speeches, revelled in contrast, alternating from extreme insolence to sweet reasonableness and an engaging courtesy. Like Disraeli, on whom he clearly modelled himself, he oscillated between the adventurer and the statesman. He spoke with a voice resonant, but not musical, from copious notes, and often committed large portions of his speech to memory. He gesticulated much with his hands; the fierce twirling of his moustache and his protruding eye were favourite themes with the political caricaturist."

"It was as a mob-orator that Randolph Churchill excelled; no speaker of our day was for a few years such a popular hero. The effrontery with which he assailed accepted idols, his mastery of a rather coarse but pungent humour, his racy sallies, his use of large-sounding phrases in the Disraelian manner, and the belief that he was the prophet of a new political creed, which was permanently to attach the democracy to the Tory Party, combined to make him the darling of the crowd. I remember asking one of his Birmingham supporters the reason of his amazing popularity. "We like our liquors neat," was the reply, "and Randolph gives 'em us d——d neat.""

"He is a very difficult person to give an impartial and fair account of (laughter), but my own opinion of him, very imperfect as it is, is that if by any process you could cut out of him about half of the qualities he possesses you might make out of the other half a valuable and distinguished public servant (Laughter.)."

"I am not going to be dragged at the tail of the Conservative Party. My policy is very similar to that of Randolph Churchill."

"Lord Randolph Churchill, who was perhaps the shrewdest political prophet of his day."

"His career was not a complete success, and yet it was far from a failure. While it lasted it eclipsed the fame of almost all who were then engaged in politics. Many, no doubt, severely censured his methods and the violence of his attacks... And the antipathy was almost as great as the enthusiasm which he excited. Not a few good men thought him absolutely wicked, and beyond the pale of political salvation. But, while he was a figure, he enlisted public interest and public admiration as no one did but Mr. Gladstone: his popularity, indeed, was at one time almost unbounded."

"Lord Randolph Churchill may be best described as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of modern politics. The secret of his rapid success is very simple—he has always known exactly what time of day it is. As for the public at large, there are, he saw, only two sure ways of bringing down the House. One is to appeal to the higher moral sentiments, the other to use a great many "big, big D’s." His lordship went in for the big D’s, and his platform performances are dictated by a constant desire to meet a demand to "give it ’em hot, Randy.""

"What you call my "self-renunciation" is merely an effort to deal with an abnormal, and very difficult, state of things. It arises from the peculiarities of Churchill. Beach having absolutely refused to lead, Churchill is the only possible leader in the Commons, as his ability is unquestionable. But he is wholly out of sympathy with the rest of the Cabinet: and being besides of a wayward and headstrong disposition, he is far from mitigating his resistance by the method of it. As his office of Leader of the House gives him a claim to be heard on every question, the machine is moving along with the utmost friction both in home and foreign affairs. My self-renunciation is only an attempt—a vain attempt—to pour oil upon the creaking and groaning machine. Like you, I am penetrated with a sense of the danger which the collapse of our Government would bring about, otherwise I should not have undertaken, or should have quickly abandoned, the task of leading an orchestra in which the first fiddle plays one tune, and everybody else, including myself, wishes to play another."

"As to the projects of R. C. to take my place, they do not trouble me much. He probably entertains them, and he may possibly succeed. The present course of politics is so distasteful to me, and the position of a peer is really so helpless politically, that I should really welcome a state of things which assured me that the duty of continuing a hopeless struggle was no longer incumbent upon me. But I should hesitate to utter any prophecies about him; the qualities for which he is most conspicuous have not usually kept men for any length of time at the head of affairs."

"My own family's heritage is Muslim. Myself and my four brothers were brought up to believe in God, but I do not practise any religion. My wife is a practising Christian and the only religion practised in my house is Christianity."

"I didn't expect to have this kind of opportunity to serve the country at this level so soon, but I take it as a huge privilege,"

"With a heavy heart and no enthusiasm, I shall be voting for the UK to remain a member of the European Union."

"The fallout from a ‘leave’ vote this summer would only add to economic turbulence that is, quite possibly, about to engulf the world."

"We are stronger, safer, and better off in a reformed EU. Survey after survey shows that small businesses - the backbone of our economy - want to stay inside the EU rather than take a leap in the dark."

"[The High Court case that could delay the Brexit process is] a clear attempt to frustrate the will of the British people"

"It was a clear result, clear instructions were issued... by the British people to their politicians saying: We need a decision. Now it's our job as politicians to get on with it."

"It immediately impacted me. I'm a second-generation migrant, my parents came to this country from Pakistan, just like the Windrush generation, obviously a different part of the world, from South Asia not the Caribbean, but other than that, similar in almost every way."

"[There must be] no safe spaces in the UK for terrorists to spread their vile views, or for them to plan and carry out attacks and no safe spaces online for terrorist propaganda and technical expertise to be shared, and for people to be radicalised in a matter of weeks"

"I've been impressed by the progress the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Apple have made on counter-terrorism. Now I want to see the same level of commitment from these companies and others for child sexual exploitation."

"[It is] unequivocally, crystal clear this was the act of the Russian state - two Russian nationals sent to Britain with the sole purpose of carrying out a reckless assassination attempt"

"We need to make people understand that if you are a middle-class drug user and you sort of think, 'Well, I'm not doing any damage, I know what I'm doing,' well, there's a whole supply chain that goes into that. Youths whose lives have been abused, the county lines, other drug takers being abused, crime being encouraged. You are not innocent - no one is innocent if they are taking illegal drugs."

"Across our immigration system, no-one should face a demand to supply DNA evidence and no-one should have been penalised for not providing it."

"When it comes to gang-based child exploitation it is self-evident to anyone who cares to look that if you look at all the recent high-profile cases there is a high proportion of men that have Pakistani heritage."

"There could be - I'm not saying that there are - there could be some cultural reasons from the communities that these men came from that could lead to this kind of behaviour."

"I'm the British home secretary and my job is to protect the British public, to do what I think is right to protect the British public. That's my number one job."

"[The UK will remain] one of the safest countries in the world [in the event of a no-deal Brexit]."

"FGM is child abuse. I am determined to stamp out this despicable and medieval practice. We will do all we can to protect girls at risk."

"People should not be taking this very dangerous journey and, if they do, we also need to send a very strong message that you won't succeed. 'You are coming from France, which is a safe country. In almost every case you are claiming asylum in the UK but if you were a real, genuine asylum seeker then you could have done that in another safe country'."

"As home secretary, I am committed to doing everything in my power to ensure Britain does not become a safe haven for anyone who supports violence or abuse against Jewish people."

"[Hezbollah is] continuing in its attempts to destabilise the fragile situation in the Middle East"

"Young people are being murdered across the country, it can't go on."

"I want serious violence to be treated by all parts of government, all parts of the public sector, like a disease and I want us to tackle it the same way - everyone would come together."

"Tech companies must do more to stop his messages being broadcast."

"It is wrong and it is illegal. Online platforms have a responsibility not to do the terrorists' work for them. This terrorist filmed his shooting with the intention of spreading his ideology."

"They were simply targeted for being Muslims, as they paid respects to God. My own late father never missed Friday prayers. I often joined him, and I fondly look back on the peaceful moments we shared."

"The police are on the front line in the battle against serious violence and it's vital we give them the right tools to do their jobs."

"They believe, whether they are coming from the far left or far right, that someone's colour should define who they are - or their background, their faith, or something, that characteristic, rather than the content of their character."

"I think in Britain, anyone who is capable, regardless of whether they are Muslim, or Hindu for that matter, or any religion - or no religion - can be prime minister."

"I've asked my officials to work closely with the police and intelligence agencies to urgently review the case for exercising this power in relation to Syria, with a particular focus on Idlib and the north east. Anyone who is in these areas without a legitimate reason should be on notice."

"first and foremost, we must deliver Brexit"

"the British people's frustration and the need to make good on the referendum have never been greater"

"[W]e will not beat the Brexit Party by becoming the Brexit Party"

"One nation is a term that was coined by a prime minister who was a bit of an outsider. Pick a prime minister who is also a bit of an outsider."

"Anyone who takes drugs should be thinking about how they are not just hurting themselves, but about how they are destroying so many countless lives along the way"

"If we got to end of October and the choice was between no deal or no Brexit, I'd pick no deal."

"[The US president endorsed a] vile hate-filled organisation that hates me and people like me"

"With 92 days until the UK leaves the European Union it's vital that we intensify our planning to ensure we are ready"

"We want to get a good deal that abolishes the anti-democratic backstop. But if we can't get a good deal, we'll have to leave without one. This additional £2.1bn will ensure we are ready to leave on 31 October - deal or no-deal."

"We're seeing volatility in the figures and one of the best ways to actually end this volatility is to bring certainty around Brexit and make sure we leave on 31 October."

"I want ... to start to end the snobbishness in some quarters about the quality and importance of a vocational education."

"We will leave on 31 October."

"I remember vividly being called a 'Paki bastard' in the school playground. Like Sayeeda, and so many others, I know what it's like to face prejudice – as a child, in the workplace and in politics. I pay tribute to all those calling out discrimination wherever they see it. We will only defeat racism by working together."

"Sajid Javid is a true champion of our cause. We cannot thank him enough for all he has done to support Holocaust remembrance – including his strong leadership in the development of the National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre to be built next to Parliament, as well as his recent commitment to fight antisemitism on university campuses. Sajid Javid is held with huge affection by Holocaust survivors and the wider community – we wish him all the best in his new role and thank him for all he has done."

"Sajid Javid has seized control of his notoriously bloody minded department."

"[Javid acknowledges a "Muslim heritage" but practices no religion] I think deep down he does genuinely care about this stuff [...] Because if you take the definition of Islamophobia, it’s not about religiosity or Islam or whether you're actually a Muslim, it's Muslimness or perceived Muslimness."

"I don't think the Conservative Party could win an election in 1,000 years on this ultra right-wing programme."

"We are all in agreement about the principles of the national health service ...it should be provided free at the point of treatment, according to clinical need and largely funded out of taxation."

"The referendum is not binding."

"All political careers are a rollercoaster."

"When we negotiate trade agreements in the future, we will be pressing other countries to open up their public procurement processes to genuine, fair, international competition. It would be totally ridiculous to abandon that principle now to give into not only constituency pressures, which I understand, but otherwise nationalist nonsense that ought to be ignored."

"If a Brexiteer majority still wishes to persist in leaving, once we have made some progress and it’s obvious we’re getting there, you can invoke Article 50 again and leave fairly rapidly. To me, that seems the only rational way in which we can precede. But common sense has gone out of the window."

"[On Margaret Thatcher] She was a bizarre character. She was one of the most unlikely human beings I ever met. If you'd told me that this woman would become Prime Minister, I mean no dislike of her at all, I'd have thought that was ridiculous."

"I don’t want the new leader to make me parliamentary under-secretary for nuts and bolts."

"At the moment I save the House of Commons from having Dennis Skinner as father of the house by 25 minutes"

"If the Conservative Party cannot think of anything else to do it has a leadership contest."

"I wouldn't reject it if it was the only way forward."

"No one has officially told me that I have lost the Tory whip. The fault’s probably mine. I’m notorious for only using my mobile phone for outgoing calls: nobody knows my London number and I certainly don’t do anything online. So there may somewhere be an email or text message or something telling me, but I gather from the media that there’s no doubt that I’ve lost the whip. My status otherwise is completely unclear."

"Am I to hear myself charged as the author of our present misfortunes? and— [Many gentlemen cried across the house, “You are, you are.”]"

"Oh, God! it is all over!"

"If you mean there should not be a Government by departments, Isigma with you; I think it a very bad system. There should be one man, or a Cabinet to govern the whole, and direct every measure. Government by departments was not brought in by me. I found it so, and had not vigor and resolution to put an end to it. The King ought to be treated with all sort of respect and attention, but the appearance of power is all that a king of this country can have."

"I was not, when I was honoured with office, a Minister of chance, or a creature of whom Parliament had no experience. I was found among you when I was so honoured. I had been long known to you. In consequence, I obtained your support; when that support was withdrawn, I ceased to be a Minister. I was the creature of Parliament in my rise; when I fell I was its victim. I came among you without connection. It was here I was first known: you raised me up; you pulled me down."

"Did freedom depend upon every individual subject being represented in that House? Certainly not; for that House, constituted as it was, represented the whole kingdom. Freedom depended on a very different circumstance. He was free, because he lived in a country governed by equal laws. Where the highest and the lowest were governed by the same laws, where there was no distinction of persons, there freedom might be said to exist as purely and as perfectly as in the nature of things it could exist."

"Lord North is a good man, unlike the others. He is a good man."

"H[is] M[ajesty] continued this Evening to speak very kindly of Lord North, & said He was the Man He loved best in the World."

"I told His Majesty that I came into his service to preserve the constitution of my country, and to prevent any undue and unwarrantable force being put upon the Crown; that upon these principles I should continue to act, and would endeavour, as far as I was able, to assist the King in the difficulties he lay under; but that the success of these endeavours must depend upon the King himself, and upon the cordial union of all such as were attached to his service."

"When I proposed to tax America, I asked the House, if any gentleman would object to the right; I repeatedly asked it, and no man would attempt to deny it. Protection and obedience are reciprocal. Great Britain protects America; America is bound to yield obedience. If not, tell me when the Americans were emancipated? When they want the protection of this kingdom, they are always very ready to ask it. That protection has always been afforded them in the most full and ample manner. The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give them their protection; and now they are called upon to contribute a small share towards the public expence, an expence arising from themselves, they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out, I might almost say, into open rebellion. The seditious spirit of the colonies owes its birth to the factions in this House."

"Ungrateful people of America! Bounties have been extended to them. When I had the honour of serving the crown, while you yourselves were loaded with an enormous debt, you have given bounties on their lumber, on their iron, their hemp, and many other articles. You have relaxed, in their favour, the Act of Navigation, that palladium of the British commerce; and yet I have been abused in all the public papers as an enemy to the trade of America."

"A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity, but a weak one is odious in the former, and contemptible in the latter."

"Undoubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of this House, except in such things as some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low, pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power, through the laborious gradations of public service; and to secure to himself a well-earned rank in parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a perfect practice in all its business."

"Though Mr. Grenville is a most disagreeable man to do business with, he is nevertheless the fittest person to be at the head of this country."

"The late Lord Essex informed the Editor that one of the Under Secretaries of that day had often said to him, "Mr. Grenville lost America because he read the American despatches, which none of his predecessors ever did." There is no doubt that the business of the colonies was despatched in a very slovenly manner—or to use Mr. Burke's words, it was treated "with a salutary neglect;" and the many volumes of Minutes of Colonial Affairs still preserved at the Board of Trade, relate generally to such insignificant transactions as to be almost ludicrous."

"George Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke strongly on his favourite theme, the profusion with which the late war had been carried on. That profusion, he said, had made taxes necessary. He called on the gentlemen opposite to him to say where they would have a tax laid, and dwelt on this topic with his usual prolixity. "Let them tell me where," he repeated in a monotonous and somewhat fretful tone. "I say, sir, let them tell me where. I repeat it, sir; I am entitled to say to them, Tell me where." Unluckily for him, Pitt had come down to the House that night, and had been bitterly provoked by the reflections thrown on the war. He revenged himself by murmuring, in a whine resembling Grenville's, a line of a well known song, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where." "If," cried Grenville, "gentlemen are to be treated in this way"—Pitt, as was his fashion, when he meant to mark extreme contempt, rose deliberately, made his bow, and walked out of the House, leaving his brother in law in convulsions of rage, and every body else in convulsions of laughter. It was long before Grenville lost the nickname of the Gentle Shepherd."

"Mr. Grenville...was of all the heads of party the worst patron...he weighed every favour in the nicest scale; but I knew my honour would be always safe with him... He had nothing seducing in his manners. His countenance had rather the expression of peevishness and austerity... He was to a proverb tedious...he was diffuse and argumentative, and never had done with a subject after he had convinced your judgment till he wearied your attention—the foreign ministers complained of his prolixity which they called amongst each other, the being Grenvilisé. The same prolixity rendered him an unpleasant speaker in the House of Commons... Yet though his eloquence charmed nobody, his argument converted... his skill upon all matters of finance, of commerce, of foreign treaties, and above all the purity of his character...gave him...weight."

"He was a man born to public business, which was his luxury and amusement. An Act of Parliament was in itself entertaining to him, as was proved when he stole a turnpike bill out of somebody's pocket at a concert and read it in a corner in despite of all the efforts of the finest singers to attract his attention. Order and economy were so natural to him that he told me from the first office he ever held till he became minister he had made it an invariable rule to add the year's salary to his capital contenting himself with carrying the interest the succeeding year into his expenses. His prudence rather bordered upon parsimony."

"Mr. Grenville is universally able in the whole business of the House, and, after Mr. Murray and Mr. Fox, is certainly one of the very best parliament men in the House."

"George Grenville complained that men objected to laying burthens on the sinking fund, and called rather for new taxes. He wished gentlemen would show him where to lay them. Repeating this question in his querulous, languid, fatiguing tone, Pitt, who sat opposite to him, mimicking his accent aloud, repeated these words of an old ditty—Gentle shepherd, tell me where! and then rising, abused Grenville bitterly. He had no sooner finished than Grenville started up in a transport of rage, and said, if gentlemen were to be treated with that contempt—Pitt was walking out of the House, but at that word turned round, made a sneering bow to Grenville and departed. The latter had provoked him by stating the profusions of the war. There is use in recording this anecdote: the appellation of The Gentle Shepherd long stuck by Grenville; he is mentioned by it in many of the writings on the stamp act, and in other pamphlets and political prints of the time."

"I have mentioned his jealousy and ill-treatment of the Favourite Lord Bute]; his manners made him as distasteful to the King, as his engrossing fondness for power had made him to the Favourite... that awkward man of ways and means, whom nature had fitted for no employment less than a courtier's, fatigued the King with such nauseous and endless harangues, that, lamenting being daily exposed to such a political pedant, the King said to Lord Bute of Grenville, "When he has wearied me for two hours, he looks at his watch to see if he may not tire me for an hour more.""

"Mr. Grenville was, confessedly, the ablest man of business in the House of Commons, and, though not popular, of great authority there from his spirit, knowledge, and gravity of character. His faults, however, had been capital, and to himself most afflicting. His injudicious Stamp Act had exposed us to the risk of seeing all our Colonies revolt."

"Mr. Perceval would indeed feel happy in the obedience which he shall pay to your Majesty's gracious commands if he thought that his exertions & services could merit such an opinion. Mr. Perceval can only say that he will not be wanting in exertion, in industry, in zeal & in duty—but in talent & power, he feels his great defects for such a station in such arduous times."

"He is not a ship-of-the-line, but he carries many guns, is tight built, and is out in all weather."

"Yesterday the Duke of Wellington talked about the Spanish war... We talked of Napier's controversy with Perceval. He said Napier had not fairly treated Perceval's character in the controversy."

"Spencer Perceval, who has been the object of so much party hatred and invective, had, indeed, all the qualities which claim the admiration of those who are capable of appreciating sterling worth. The person who, out of the limits of Perceval's domestic circle, perhaps knew him best—who possessed his entire confidence, who was familiar with all his actions, and we might almost say with all his thoughts—was wont to speak on every occasion of his former chief as the model of a high-minded, high-principled, truthful, generous gentleman, sans peur et sans reproche."

"He did enter, and there was an instant noise, but as a physical fact it is very remarkable to state that, though I was all but touching him, and if the ball had passed through his body it must have lodged in mine, I did not hear the report of the pistol. It is true it was fired in the inside of the lobby, and I was just out of it; but, considering our close proximity, I have always found it difficult to account for the phenomenon I have noticed. I saw a small curling wreath of smoke rise above his head, as if the breath of a cigar; I saw him reel back against the ledge on the inside of the door; I heard him exclaim, "Oh God!" or "Oh my God!" and nothing more or longer (as reported by several witnesses), for even that exclamation was faint; and then making an impulsive rush, as it were, to reach the entrance to the house on the opposite side for safety, I saw him totter forward, not half way, and drop dead between the four pillars which stood there in the centre of the space, with a slight trace of blood issuing from his lips."

"That he was a good Protestant and a bad belligerent are the two worst things that have been said of him. He was honest, adroit, courageous, and distinguished for his skill in debate. Lord Eldon speaks highly in his letters of "little P." as he calls him, and he seems to have been highly popular with all that section of the Tories. But though decidedly a very able man, he had neither the information nor the genius essential to an English Minister at that momentous epoch."

"But, unluckily, like many other men of narrow views, he was gifted with that strength of will and decision of manner by which weaker natures are subdued in spite, it may be, both of higher culture and more enlightened opinions. Though far less capable of appreciating the character of the struggle than several among them, Mr. Perceval's will became a law to his colleagues, and completely overruled the better judgment and more special experience of Lord Liverpool."

"Perceval's character is completely established in the House of Commons; he has acquired an authority there beyond any minister within my recollection except Mr. Pitt."

"I am very much grieved at Perceval's death. Many of his opinions I disliked—but there was nothing to object to in him besides his opinions. His talents were admirable, and if he had not been bred a lawyer he would probably have risen to the character of a great man. He wanted Mr. Pitt's splendid declamatory eloquence, but in quickness and dexterity as a debater he was (I think) hardly inferior to him. On the whole he appeared to me the most powerful man (independently of his situation) that we had in Parliament since the death of Mr. Fox. Perhaps I ought to except Lord Grey, but I am not sure. In private, by the universal consent of everybody that knew him, he seems to have been possessed of all the qualities that can make human nature amiable and respectable — particularly good temper and generosity."

"They were not now in the situation of arguing, for the first time, whether they should act on the principle of restriction or not. For not only on the subject of corn, but on all great branches of trade in this country, they had, from time immemorial, proceeded on a system of restriction. And therefore, he contended, they were not now placed in a situation of discussing first principles. They were not now, for the first time, to inquire, whether they were to act on this principle or not. The system had been acted on for a long period, and we could not depart from it without encountering a frightful revulsion, which it would be dreadful to combat. It was not, therefore, a question between restriction and non-restriction—but how they were to apply principles, that had been long called into action, to the existing circumstances of the country. This was the only ground on which he would now recommend the measure he was about to submit to their consideration."

"He had always given it as his opinion, that the restrictive system of commerce in this country was founded in error, and calculated to defeat the object for which it was adopted."

"We certainly do not want a Catholic Association to assist us. If they attempt to excite our fears, they will fail; for they will enlist our pride, at least as strong as any other feeling, against them. We shall betray our duty; we shall do mischief to Ireland; we shall render her incapable of enjoying the benefits which she has lately acquired, or which she may hereafter acquire, unless we make up our minds steadily and firmly to put an end to this Association, which I sincerely believe to be the bane and curse of the country."

"The King has behaved admirably, and has shown his sincere desire to keep Canning's Government together upon the principles upon which it was formed. It is our duty to do our part to preserve it as long as we can, and to do all in our power not to disappoint his Majesty's expectations, or to thwart his genuine objects. We must forget all that is unpleasant in what has occurred, and act cordially and frankly together. If we do, and start well, depend upon it the country will support the King in his resolution to support us, particularly if we exert ourselves bonâ fide to get rid of, or at least to nullify, the odious distinctions of Whig and Tory, and to get the press, if possible, to support the Government, not so much on account of its individual composition, but because it is the King's Government and founded upon just and honourable principles."

"He had made a sacrifice of many preconceived opinions, of many early predilections, and of many long-cherished notions."

"When I introduced, in 1815, the Corn Bill of that day, I did it...with the greatest reluctance. I was not a Member of the Government; that is to say, I only held a subordinate situation in it—and when the Earl of Liverpool sent to desire that I would move the measure, I took the liberty of expressing to him that I had a great objection to the principle of any Corn Law whatever. I thought then—I have thought ever since—that a Corn Law is in itself an evil to be justified solely by the establishment of some paramount necessity, sufficient to overcome the magnitude of the objection, and to sanction the imposition on the country of what is in itself an evil."

"Indeed, it would have been impossible for me to have supported a Corn Law as a part of a great system of national policy intended to give uniform and universal protection to native industry, because over and over again I have laid down the opposite principle with reference to protection; and I have shared year after year in measures and arguments, the object of which was to break in the principle of what is called protection to British industry, and to get rid, as speedily as circumstances would permit, first of prohibition, and then of protection, which I have always held to be injurious not only to the country generally, but ultimately to the very interests which it is designed to serve."

"The only ground on which I reconciled myself to the fitness of a Corn Law at all was my apprehension—an apprehension which I most sincerely entertained—that this country would become, or might become, more dependent than in prudence she ought to be upon supplies of corn from foreign countries."

"Mr. Robinson sat down amid demonstrations of applause more loud and more general than perhaps ever before greeted the opening of a ministerial statement of finance."

"If adverse critics charged him with shallow reasoning and a diffuse diction, his clear and flowing style, and copiousness of illustration, with the art which he certainly possessed of enlivening even dry subjects of finance with classical allusions and pleasant humour, made his speeches always acceptable to a large majority of his hearers."

"Let me not omit what gave me and all his friends sincere pleasure, that Frederick Robinson highly distinguished himself in the best young man's speech I ever heard in the Parliament. Peel, when he has spoken, has been more flowery, and with more classical allusion; but in readiness, in clear, forcible, and demonstrative language, and in the appearance of an old and able debater, Robinson beat him, and indeed all his contemporaries. Whitbread, who spoke after him, paid him very handsome compliments."

"I guess you could say that, moving from banking, I am one of the few people entering politics to be going to a more popular profession."

"Until this government's formation just over a year ago, every generation of women has enjoyed greater opportunity. My great-grandmother was a cockle picker on the south coast of Wales, my grandmother worked in shoe factories, and my mother is a primary school teacher. But this expectation that women of the next generation will do better than the one before is now fundamentally threatened."

"Unless you take swift action in the wake of a financial crisis the problems stick around for 10 to 20 years."

"The real cause of what is happening now is a terrorist attack. If Britain or any other country was attacked by terrorists, we would believe, and rightly so, that we have every right to defend ourselves, to get back hostages and to protect our citizens. Israel is no different. It has every right to defend itself. [...] Of course, it has to abide by international rules of engagement."

"I want to see a Palestinian state existing alongside a safe and secure Israel and what frustrates me so much is that what Hamas has done over the last few days has set back the cause of peace that I am so desperate to see in the Middle East and that people across Labour are desperate to see in the Middle East. But terrorism is not the way to get there and I am appalled by what we have seen."

"I also know that many of you have concerns closer to home, about the antisemitism, the anti-Zionism and the anti-Israeli feeling that is allowed to flourish in some communities in Britain. And so we stand alongside you here at home as well and will ensure that the police do everything within their powers to hold responsible anybody who behaves in that way here at home. And we stand in solidarity with the Jewish community here in Britain, not just today but every single day."

"“I feel like in many ways, I’m standing on their shoulders… I believe the biggest impact that I can make to the lives of ordinary women, women who go out to work, is to close the gender pay gap once and for all.”"

"“I’m not going to let [critics] stop me from doing what this government’s got a mandate to do, and that is to grow the economy, to make working people better off.”"

"“In too many areas, regulation still acts as a boot on the neck of businesses, choking off the enterprise and innovation that is the lifeblood of growth.”"

"“The global economy has become more uncertain … The increased global uncertainty has had two consequences. First, on our public finances. And second, on the economy.”"

"“These fiscal rules are non-negotiable. They are the embodiment of this government’s unwavering commitment to bring stability to our economy.”"

"“We are renewing Britain. But I know that too many people in too many parts of our country are yet to feel it. This government’s task, my task as Chancellor and the purpose of this spending review is to change that.”"

"“This is going to be the most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury that this country has ever seen.”"

"“We have seen global economic uncertainty play out in the last week. But leadership is not about ducking these challenges, it is about rising to them. The economic headwinds that we face are a reminder that we should – indeed, we must – go further and faster in our plan to kick-start economic growth.”"

"“Growth … is now our national mission.”"

"“This government was given a mandate. To restore stability to our country, and to begin a decade of national renewal. … To deliver that investment we must restore economic stability and turn the page on the last 14 years"

"“The government will change its self-imposed debt rules in order to free up billions for infrastructure spending … so that we can grow our economy and bring jobs and growth to Britain.”"

"“The most recent GDP … are very positive … That is good news and does show we are beginning to turn the corner.”"

"“Without growth, we cannot cut hospital waiting lists or put more police on the streets. … Without growth, we cannot meet our climate goals… or give the next generation the opportunities that they need to thrive.”"

"“I’m confident that our plans, far from increasing poverty, will actually result in more people having fulfilling work, paying a decent wage to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.”"

"“Today I am taking immediate action to fix Britain’s economic foundations. … By growing our economy we can rebuild Britain and make every part of the country better off.”"

"“That is why we on this side of the house are serious about taking the action needed to grow our economy. Backing the builders, not the blockers.”"

"England, our native country, one of the most renowned monarchies in the world, against which the Pope beareth a special eye of envy and malice: envy for the wealth and peace that we enjoy through the goodness of Almighty God...[and] malice for the religion of the Gospel which we profess, whereby the dignity of his triple crown is almost shaken in pieces...Their [our enemies'] scope is by invasion and rebellion to subdue and conquer all, with purpose, as it seemeth, to root out from them [Britain and Ireland] the English nation for ever. And if it fall not out according to their desires — as, with God's help, it never shall — yet at the least they will do their best to trouble the Queen and her State, to burn, to spoil, to kill, to rob...By sea is one of the things we ought chiefly to regard, being rightly termed the wall of England; for which her Majesty, with her provident care, is so furnished with great and good shipping...as in no age the like, and such and so many as no Prince in Christendom may compare with."