Whig (British political party) politicians

"The army causes taxes, the taxes cause discontents, & the discontents are alleged to make an army necessary. Thus you go in a circle."

"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."

"When I first came abroad, every thing struck me, and I wrote its history; but now I am grown so used to be surprised, that I don't perceive any flutter in myself when I meet with any novelties; curiosity and astonishment wear off, and the next thing is, to fancy that other people know as much of places as one's self; or, at least, one does not remember that they do not. It appears to me as odd to write to you of St. Peter's, as it would do to you to write of Westminster-abbey. Besides, as one looks at churches, &c. with a book of travels in one's hand, and sees every thing particularised there, it would appear transcribing, to write upon the same subjects."

"Harry Vane, Pulteney's toad-eater."

"It always amazes me, when I reflect on the women, who are the first to propagate scandal of one another. If they would but agree not to censure what they all agree to do, there would be no more loss of characters among them than amongst men. A woman cannot have an affair, but instantly all her sex travel about to publish it and leave her off: now, if a man cheats another of his estate at play, forges a will, or marries his ward to his own son, nobody thinks of leaving him off for such trifles!"

"Why, I'll swear I see no difference between a country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever the first laughs, or the latter is cut, there run out just the same streams of gravy! ... Oh! my dear Sir, don't you find that nine parts in ten of the world are of no use but to make you wish yourself with that tenth part? ..."

"Our supreme governors, the mob."

"My aversion to them...springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society—I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them."

"If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary. The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty."

"A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary."

"Instead of the glorious and ever-memorable year 1759, as the newspapers call it, I call it this ever-warm and victorious year. We have not had more conquest than fine weather: one would think we had plundered East and West Indies of sunshine. Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories. I believe it will require ten votes of the House of Commons before people believe it is the Duke of Devonshire that has done this, and not Mr. Pitt."

"The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel– a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept."

"It was easier to conquer it [the East] than to know what to do with it."

"A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch."

"The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room."

"The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra."

"To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy, to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is, and despise affectation."

"The whole nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it."

"Prognostics do not always prove prophecies, — at least the wisest prophets make sure of the event first."

"It is the story of a mountebank and his zany."

"Allen of Bath procured them the same honours from thence; and for some weeks it rained gold boxes: Chester, Worcester, Norwich, Bedford, Salisbury, Yarmouth, Tewkesbury, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Stirling, and other populous and chief towns following the example. Exeter, with singular affection, sent boxes of heart of oak."

"Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors."

"Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent."

"He was my counsel in affairs, was my oracle in taste, the standard to whom I submitted my trifles, and the genius that presided over poor Strawberry."

"Manfred was not one of those savage tyrants who wanton in cruelty unprovoked. The circumstances of his fortune had given an asperity to his temper, which was naturally humane; and his virtues were always ready to operate, when his passions did not obscure his reason."

"“Peace, simpleton!” said the Princess. “Though he said he was unhappy, it does not follow that he must be in love.”"

"Have done with this rhapsody of impertinence."

"And is anybody unhappy about another, unless they are in love with them?"

"“Heaven,” replied Manfred, “does not send Heralds to question the title of a lawful Prince. I doubt whether it even notifies its will through Friars—but that is your affair, not mine."

"You think me ambitious: ambition, alas! is composed of more rugged materials. If I were ambitious, I should not for so many years have been a prey to all the hell of conscientious scruples."

"Thy purpose is as odious as thy resentment is contemptible."

"“My councils do not need a Friar’s intervention,” said Manfred; “and of all men living is that hoary traitor the only one whom you delight to confer with?”"

"The Americans are mostly engaged in trade and plantations. Their chief object is to make money. And, in truth, money is freedom."

"These horrible affairs in France are the offspring of fanaticism. Yes, sir; if the reformation had taken place there, as well as here, religion and the clergy would have been respected, as they are here. Fanatics make atheists. If I cannot believe in God without believing that a wafer is God, my reason abjures the deity. I wish religion to exist: it is of infinite use to society, and I therefore wish it to be as rational as possible. A synod of the English church might order several objectionable tenets and expressions of our worship to be altered. I love those reformations that prevent revolutions, by keeping pace with the gradual progress of reason and knowledge."

"Lord Bolingbroke discovered a foible of the great duke of Marlborough, that he delighted in tying Miss Jenning's garters. When he repeated the story, he used to add, "What is known to women is known to the world.""

"Lord Bute was my schoolfellow. He was a man of taste and science, and I do believe his intentions were good. He wished to blend and unite all parties. The Tories were willing to come in for a share of power, after having been so long excluded—but the Whigs were not willing to grant that share. Power is an intoxicating draught; the more a man has, the more he desires."

"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."

"William, Duke of Cumberland, gave promises of talents that were never accomplished. One day he had given some offence to his royal mother, and was remanded to the confinement of his chamber. After what the queen thought a sufficient duration of his punishment, she sent for him. He returned in a very sullen humour. "What have you been doing?" said the queen.—"Reading."—"What book?"—"The New Testament."—"Very well. What part?"—"Where it is said, Woman, why troublest thou me?""

"A fig for our democrats! [1792]. Barking dogs never bite. The danger in France arose from silent and instantaneous action. They said nothing, and did every thing—ours say every thing, and will do nothing."

"I visit Paris often, and have considerably studied the French character. In individuals it is often excellent; but taken in general it disgusts by its petulance and vanity. The French have always been dissolute in their amours; and are thus led to assail the chastity of foreign women, the most unpardonable of all affronts to fathers, brothers, husbands, and lovers. This, and their petulant overbearing conduct, prevent their conquests from being lasting. Yes, I swear to you by the Sicilian vespers, they can never be of much duration."

"Mr. Hollis is always publishing republican books, and yet professes great veneration for our constitution. I cannot reconcile this; our constitution being, in its leading part, an oligarchy, the form, perhaps, of all others, the most opposite to a republic."

"I have sometimes thought that a squire and a vestry were a king and republic in miniature. The vestry is as tyrannic, in its way, as the squire in his. Any power necessarily leads to abuses of that power. It is difficult to stop any impetus of nature."

"We must speak to the eyes, if we wish to affect the mind."

"If Milton had written in Italian, he would have been, in my opinion, the most perfect poet in modern languages; for his own strength of thought would have condensed and hardened that speech to a proper degree."

"Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments."

"Good men are never concerned in revolutions, because they will not go the lengths. Sunderland caused the revolution of 1688, while Devonshire stood aloof—the latter was the angel, the former the storm. Bad men and poisonous plants are sometimes of superlative use in skilful hands."

"Rousseau's ideas of savage life are puerile. He is equally absurd in supposing that no people can be free, if they entrust their freedom to representatives. What is every body's business is nobody's business. The people would soon be sick of such freedom; they must attend to their own private business, else they could not live. The people of France are easily electrified. We are too solid for such dreams. Amber may draw straws: we do not gravitate so easily."

"The critics generally consider a tragedy as the next effort of the mind to an epic poem. For my part, I estimate the difficulty of writing a good comedy to be greater than that of composing a good tragedy. Not only equal genius is required, but a comedy demands a more uncommon assemblage of qualities—knowledge of the world, wit, good sense, &c; and these qualities superadded to those requisite for tragical composition."

"King William asked Mr. Locke how long he thought the revolution principles might last in England. The philosopher answered, "Till this generation shall have passed away, and our universities shall have had time to breed a new one." Many things I disapprove in our universities, where the country gentlemen are educated in Toryism by Tory clergy."

"To talk of the weather was once a matter of ridicule. But that soon went out; for the weather is, in fact, so important in this changeable climate, that our health and bread depend on it. There are also numerous classes in this island, farmers, seamen, &c. &c. whose very existence depends on the weather. It is idle to deny that the state of our spirits depends on the weather: the stoutest man cannot take exercise on a rainy day, and must feel ennui, because he cannot divide his time as usual. For my part, I care as little for the weather as any; and I sometimes say, that all I want is cold winters, and hot summers."

"We must thank the Whigs for all the prosperity of our country. The Tories have only thrown us into disagreeable crises. It is risible to hear the latter boast of the public happiness, which is wholly the work of their antagonists. They are so absurd as to regret the national freedom, the sole source of the wealth on which they fatten. Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes! Had the Tories succeeded at the revolution, or accession, this fair country would have been another Spain; the desolate abode of nobles and priests. What has rendered it the wonder and envy of Europe? Freedom. One would wonder that any man would conspire against the general felicity—but this infatuation arises from the esprit du corps, which can even produce mental blindness—can instigate its unhappy devotee to destroy the hen that lays the golden eggs."

"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well."

"He was born a writer of letters, and if he had been shut up in a desert island like Robinson Crusoe he would have written letters all the same, and kept them till some ship arrived which should carry them to their destination."

"His politics are always under the strong influence of party and often of faction, and his details of social life and personal character are rendered more amusing indeed, but less trustworthy, by a strong seasoning of scandal, and occasionally of malice. It is not given to man to be at once of a party, and impartial — to be a gossip, and not censorious. We do not take the characters of Lord Wharton or Sir Robert Walpole from Swift, nor should we from Horace Walpole those of Bute or North."

"One thing that happens with gothic novels is the idea of the evil Other. That’s quite clear if you read Walpole or Radcliffe. It’s often an evil Italian or an evil Spaniard. Catholicism is mixed with that. It’s like these exotic evil Catholic people that are coming to pervert us."

"What acquaintance have the people at large with the arcana of political rectitude, with the connections of kingdoms, the resources of national strength, the abilities of ministers, or even with their own dispositions? ... I pay no regard whatever to the voice of the people: it is our duty to do what is proper, without considering what may be agreeable."

"Religion was best understood when least talked of."

"Kings, Sir, govern by means of popular assemblies, only because they cannot do without them; to suppose a king fond of that mode of governing, is to suppose a chimera."

"The war of the Americans is a war of passion; it is of such a nature as to be supported by the most powerful virtues, love of liberty and of country, and at the same time by those passions in the human heart which give courage, strength, and perseverance to man; the spirit of revenge for the injuries you have done them, of retaliation for the hardships inflicted on them, and of opposition to the unjust powers you would have exercised over them; every thing combines to animate them to this war, and such a war is without end; for whatever obstinacy enthusiasm ever inspired man with, you will now have to contend with in America: no matter what gives birth to that enthusiasm, whether the name of religion or of liberty, the effects are the same; it inspires a spirit that is unconquerable, and solicitous to undergo difficulties and dangers; and as long as there is a man in America, so long will you have him against you in the field."

"...against which we should direct all our force, the navy of France: in the destruction of her marine we might see some hope of recovering America; but while our army remained in that country, we were to expect nothing from its operations. On the continent of Europe, it might be employed; there we might contend with France, in a manner that would make her feel that her own consequence was at stake. But the old Whig system of alliances on the continent had been given up, and we were left to fight all our battles by ourselves. If these alliances were renewed, France might then be taught, that rashness, not prudence, had made her enter into the American confederacy...America...might be won in Europe, while England might be ruined in America."

"There is no man who hates the power of the crown more, or who has a worse opinion of the Person to whom it belongs than I."

"[T]he question now was, whether the British constitution, "that beautiful fabric, raised by the steadiness of our ancestors, and cemented by the best blood of the country!" ... whether that beautiful fabric, raised by the steadiness of our ancestors, and cemented by the best blood of our country, was to be maintained in that freedom, in that purity, in that perfection, in which those ancestors had delivered it to us, and for which, that blood had been spilt; or whether we were to submit to that system of despotism, which had so many advocates in this country."

"Gentlemen, the malicious and groundless Reports which have been spread, make it necessary for me to assure you, that notwithstanding all that has been said, I never have supported, nor ever will support, any Measure which can by any Means be prejudicial to the Protestant Religion, or in any way tend to establish Popery in this Kingdom."

"It is intolerable that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief."

"[Fox] exhibited two pictures of this country; the one representing her at the end of the last glorious war, the other at the present moment. At the end of the last war this country was raised to a most dazzling height of splendour and respect. The French marine was in a manner annihilated, the Spanish rendered contemptible; the French were driven from America; new sources of commerce were opened, the old enlarged; our influence extended to a predominance in Europe, our empire of the ocean established and acknowledged, and our trade filling the ports and harbours of the wondering and admiring world. Now mark the degradation and the change, We have lost thirteen provinces of America; we have lost several of our Islands, and the rest are in danger; we have lost the empire of the sea; we have lost our respect abroad and our unanimity at home; the nations have forsaken us, they see us distracted and obstinate, and they leave us to our fate. Country! ...This was your situation, when you were governed by Whig ministers and by Whig measures, when you were warmed and instigated by a just and a laudable cause, when you were united and impelled by the confidence which you had in your ministers, and when they were again strengthened and emboldened by your ardour and enthusiasm. This is your situation, when you are under the conduct of Tory ministers and a Tory system, when you are disunited, disheartened, and have neither confidence in your ministers nor union among yourselves; when your cause is unjust and your conductors are either impotent or treacherous."

"On speaking to Mr. Fox (who had just received the seals as Secretary of State) on the important event of the day, he said certainly things look very well, but he, meaning the K[ing], will dye soon, and that will be best of all."

"[I] charged Mr. Pitt with having come into office upon unconstitutional grounds, and upon such principles as were disgraceful to himself, disgusting to the country, and such as must necessarily deprive him and his coadjutors of the confidence of that House."

"Those principles which brought about the glorious revolution, which seated his majesty's illustrious family upon the throne, and which have preserved the liberty of this constitution, have ever been the inviolable rule of my political conduct."

"The true simple question of the present dispute is, whether the House of Lords and Court Influence shall predominate over the House of Commons, and annihilate its existence, or whether the House of Commons...shall have power to....regulate the prerogative of the Crown, which was ever ready to seize upon the freedom of the Electors of this country."

"The worst of revolutions is a restoration."

"I stand, said Mr. Fox, upon this great principle. I say that the people of England have a right to control the executive power, by the interference of their representatives in this House of parliament. The right honourable gentleman William Pitt] maintains the contrary. He is the cause of our political enmity."

"It behoved them, therefore, to waste not a moment unnecessarily, but to proceed with all becoming speed and all becoming diligence to restore the sovereign power and the exercise of the royal authority... In his firm opinion, his royal highness the Prince of Wales had as clear, as express a right to assume the reins of government, and exercise the power of sovereignty, during the continuance of the illness and incapacity with which it had pleased God to afflict his majesty, as in the case of his majesty's having undergone a natural and perfect demise."

"We shall have several hard fights in the H. of Cs. this week and next, in some of which I fear we shall be beat, but whether we are or not I think it certain that in about a fortnight we shall come in; If we carry our questions we shall come in in a more creditable and triumphant way, but at any rate the Prince must be Regent and of consequence the Ministry must be changed... I am rather afraid they will get some cry against the Prince for grasping as they call it at too much power, but I am sure that I can not in conscience advise him to give up any thing that is really necessary to his Government, or indeed to claim any thing else as Regent, but the full power of a King, to which he is certainly entitled."

"How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world! and how much the best!"

"To suppose a man wicked or immoral, merely on account of any difference of religious opinion, was as false as it was absurd; yet this was the original principle of persecution."

"Persecution always said, "I know the consequences of your opinion better than you know them yourselves." But the language of toleration was always amicable, liberal, and just; it confessed its doubts, and acknowledged its ignorance. It said, "Though I dislike your opinions, because I think them dangerous, yet, since you profess such opinions, I will not believe you can think such dangerous inferences flow from them, which strike my attention so forcibly." This was truly a just and legitimate mode of reasoning, always less liable to error, and more adapted to human affairs. When we argued à posteriori, judging from the fruit to the tree, from the effect to the cause, we were not so subject to deviate into error and falsehood, as when we pursued the contrary method of argument. Yet, persecution had always reasoned from cause to effect, from opinion to action, which proved generally erroneous; while toleration led us invariably to form just conclusions, by judging from actions and not from opinions."

"[H]e was indebted to his right honourable friend [Edmund Burke] for the greatest share of the political knowledge he possessed,—his political education had been formed under him,—his instructions had invariably governed his principles."

"Toleration in religion was one of the great rights of man, and a man ought never to be deprived of what was his natural right."

"[H]e thought one of the most splendid triumphs of Christianity was, its having caused slavery to be so generally abolished, as soon as ever it appeared in the world. One obvious ground on which it did this, was by teaching us, that in the sight of Heaven all mankind are equal. The same effect might be expected also from the general principles which it taught. Its powerful influence appeared to have done more in this respect than all the ancient systems of philosophy; though even in them, in point of theory, we might trace great liberality and consideration for human rights."

"Where could be found finer sentiments of liberty, than in the works of Demosthenes and Cicero? Where should we meet with bolder assertions of the rights of mankind, and the dignity of human nature, than in the historians Tacitus and Thucydides?"

"Any thing that proves that it is not in the power of Kings and Princes by their great armies to have every thing their own way is of such good example that without any good will to the French one can not help being delighted by it, and you know I have a natural partiality to what some people call rebels."

"The people had been told by their representatives in parliament that they were surrounded with dangers, and had been shewn none. They were, therefore, full of suspicion and prompt of belief. All this had a material tendency to impede freedom of discussion, for men would speak with reserve, or not speak at all, under the terror of calumny."

"Was it not a situation of the country horrible to relate, that men's correspondence and conversation were to be pried into with such inquisitorial jealousy, as to make it dangerous for them to commit their thoughts to paper, or to converse with a stranger but in the presence of a third person? Let the House do away all these suspicions and rumours by an honest inquiry, and restore the public to that freedom and confidence, both of writing and speech, which it was the pride of our constitution to bestow, and which became the frank and open character of a free people."

"[I]f difference of opinion were a cause of withholding sympathy and compassion, this would indeed be a dismal world to inhabit. Difference of opinion was, in his mind, one great cause of the improvement of mankind, because it led to inquiry and discussion. It was his opinion that in all points, civil and religious, toleration of opinion was wisdom; upon that depended all the peace, he had almost said all the virtue, and consequently all the happiness of the world. This humane doctrine was the great leading feature of the mild and beneficent system of Christianity, and what had tended to render it such an inestimable blessing to mankind."

"Was every man who had liberty in his mouth to be considered as a traitor, merely because liberty had been abused in France, and had been carried to the most shocking licentiousness? He would venture to say, that if this was to be the consequence, fatal, indeed, would it be for England! If the love of liberty was not to be maintained in England; if the warm admiration of it was not to be cherished in the hearts of the people: if the maintenance of liberty was not to be inculcated as a duty; if it was not to be reverenced as our chief good, as our boast and pride and richest inheritance;—what else had we worthy of our care? Liberty was the essence of the British constitution. King, lords, commons, and courts of judicature, were but the forms; the basis of the constitution was liberty, that grand and beautiful fabric, the first principle of which was government by law, and which this day they were going to suspend."

"To deny to the people the right of discussion, because upon some occasions, that right had been exercised by indiscreet or bad men, was what he could not subscribe to. The right of popular discussion was a salutary and an essential privilege of the subject. He would not answer long for the conduct of parliament, if it were not subject to the jealousy of the people."

"In his opinion, the best security for the due maintenance of the constitution, was in the strict and incessant vigilance of the people over parliament itself. Meetings of the people, therefore, for the discussion of public objects, were not merely legal, but laudable."

"He would never forgo inquiry into the causes of the war, and measures to prevent similar calamities in future. This was due to the people, least, in the enjoyment of peace, they should forget their former sufferings from war, and again yield themselves up to delusion. Both the present and the American war were owing to a court party in this country, that hated the very name of liberty; and to an indifference, amounting to barbarity, in the minister, to the distresses of the people. It was some consolation to him that he had done his utmost to prevent the war, and to know that those who provoked it could not but feel, even while they were endeavouring to persuade others of the contrary, that they must, in no very long space of time, adopt the very course which he was recommending as fit to be adopted now."

"His opinion, indeed, was well known to those, who had done him the honour to attend to him; it was, that at all times, in all countries, and upon all occasions, there should be no distinctions in political rights, on account of religious opinions. He thought that the prejudices of the people were, generally speaking, worthy of attention. But when prejudices bent against the general principles of toleration, he did not think them entitled to much respect."

"He would have religious toleration as equal as the laws of England, and that all men should be estimated in society by their morals, and not by the mode of religious worship. To root out prejudices altogether was not a thing to be accomplished at once; but it was a thing to be attempted, and every step towards it would be an advantage to the country."

"...a greater evil than the restoration of the Bourbons to the world in general, and England in particular, can hardly happen."

"Peace is the wish of the French of Italy Spain Germany and all the world, and Great Britain alone the cause of preventing its accomplishment, and this not for any point of honour or even interest, but merely lest there should be an example in the modern world of a great powerful Republic."

"But at no one time had he given an unqualified opinion of the governments which succeeded that event [the abolition of the French monarchy]; much less would he stand pledged to give the least countenance to the scenes of blood and cruelty which had been the almost inseparable attendants on the varied and successive governments that followed one another. He formed his opinion of government by the test of practice, and not by the theory and on paper."

"The people are to be prevented from discussing public topics publicly: they are to be prevented from discussing them privately. If then, without this private intercourse or public debate, the grievances of this country are to be felt, and are such as to call forth a general desire that they should be redressed, what are the public to do? They must send, it seems, to a magistrate, and under his good leave they are to be permitted to proceed... Behold, then, the state of a free born Englishman! Before he can discuss any topic which involves his liberty, he must send to a magistrate who is to attend the discussion. That magistrate cannot prevent such meeting: but he can prevent the speaking, because he can allege, that what is said tends to disturb the peace and tranquillity of this realm."

"I am not friendly to any thing that will produce violence. Those who know me will not impute to me any such desire; but I do hope, that this bill will produce an alarm: that while we have the power of assembling, the people will assemble; that while they have the power, they will not surrender it, but come forward and state their abhorrence of the principle of this proceeding; and those who do not, I pronounce to be traitors to their country. Good God, Sir, what madness, what frenzy has overtaken the authors of this measure! I will suppose for a moment that the only object which they have in view is the preventing a revolution in this country. But that they should have proceeded upon a plan which has no regard tor the liberty of the people, no regard for the glorious efforts of our ancestors, no regard for their maxims, no esteem for the principles and the conduct which have made us what we are, or rather, if this bill be countenanced, what we were, is to me astonishing! For to proceed thus, in order to suppress or prevent popular tumults, appears to me to be the most desperate infatuation. Good God, Sir! We have seen and have heard of revolutions in different states. Were they owing to the freedom of popular opinions? Were they owing to the facility of popular meetings? No, Sir, they were owing to the reverse of these; and therefore I say, if we wish to avoid the danger of such revolutions, we should put ourselves in a state as different from them as possible. What are we now doing? Putting ourselves in a condition nearly resembling the periods when these revolutions happened."

"Look to France before the period of her revolution. Was it the facility of public meetings, or the freedom of discussion granted to the subject, that tended to produce that great change? On the contrary, was it not the absolute prerogative of the king? Was it not the arbitrary power lodged in ministers? Was it not the oppressive privilege of issuing Lettres de Cachet against all who dared to utter their sentiments, and complain of existing grievances, that excited the indignation of the people and accelerated the downfall of the monarchy? If, therefore, one view on which the present measure is held out to your acceptance, be in order to prevent the troubles arising from the frequency of popular assemblies, on that very ground ought the friends of peace and of order to resist the adoption of the measure."

"In countries where men may openly state their grievances and boldly claim redress, the effect of their complaints and remonstrances may, indeed, for a time be obstructed by the operation of ministerial corruption and intrigue; but perseverance must ultimately be effectual in procuring them relief. But if you take away all legal means of obtaining that object, if you silence remonstrance and stifle complaint, you then leave no other alternative but force and violence."

"If the pretext of grievances be groundless, and not warranted by any immediate pressure, the more it is discussed, the less effect it will have in exciting discontent. But if you preclude these political humours, if I may so call them, from having a vent, you then leave no alternative but unconstitutional submission, or actual violence. If ever there exists a just cause of grievance, one or other must be adopted; a tame acquiescence, incompatible with the spirit of freedom, or an open resistance, subversive of the order of government. I know that peace and quiet are the greatest of all blessings, but I know also, that rational liberty is the only security for their enjoyment."

"I admire the British constitution, because it gives scope to the people to exercise the right of political discussion; not merely with the permission of a magistrate, or under the control of an executive force, but on all occasions to state, in bold and plain words, the grievances which they feel, and the redress which they desire."

"There appears to me to be no device at present but between an absolute surrender of the liberties of the People and a vigorous exertion... My view of things is I own very gloomy, and I am convinced that in a few years this Government will become completely absolute, or that confusion will arise of a nature almost as much to be deprecated as despotism itself... This is a great Crisis."

"He declared he could discover nothing in the present state of the country that could justify this new infringement on the liberties of the subject intended by the bill. So far from it, the power and influence of the crown were obviously so enormous that all the liberty that subsisted in the country was preserved only by the freedom of speech and the liberty of the press; if either of these were given up, or in any degree taken away, the only barrier that we had against the annihilation of liberty would be completely destroyed."

"Upon the liberty of the press and freedom of discussion, the basis of the constitution was known to rest. Take away these, and the whole fabric most fall."

"[W]hen the power of speaking was taken away, what was there left but the patience of implicit submission? What hopes could be entertained that grievances would be removed when those who felt them dared not complain? In such a case, it would give him but little anxiety that a spirit of resistance was found impossible to be suppressed."

"He admitted, that, by passing of the bill, the people would have lost a great deal. A great deal! (said Mr. Fox,) Aye, all that is worth preserving. For you will have lost the spirit, the fire, the freedom, the boldness, the energy of the British character, and with them its best virtue. I say, it is not the written law of the constitution of England, it is not the law that is to be found in books, that has constituted the true principle of freedom in any country, at any time. No! it is the energy, the boldness of a man's mind, which prompts him to speak, not in private, but in huge and popular assemblies, that constitutes, that creates, in a state, the spirit of freedom. This is the principle which gives life to liberty; without it the human character is a stranger to freedom. If you suffer the liberty of speech to be wrested from you, you will then have lost the freedom, the energy, the boldness of the British character."

"He must also add, that if the people of this country, who felt that they were called by Providence into a free state, should revolt at such a measure as the present bill, he should not wonder at it. If they saw a conspiracy against that liberty which made them happy, a conspiracy proved, as it was, by the bill—for the bill repealed the bill of rights, and reduced Englishmen to the character of slaves—he should not wonder if they resented it. If, therefore...the people of England should be so unwise as to commit acts of resistance, ministers might condemn them, parliament might condemn them, the law might condemn them, prudence might condemn them, but he believed no good man could ever accuse them of moral guilt."

"This is the last opportunity, (said Mr. Fox,) that I may have to state my sentiments with respect to these bills. I feel it therefore incumbent upon me to declare, that my objections still remain unimpaired. The one is calculated to prevent the liberty of speech; the other the liberty of writing and publishing. If these bills be carried into effect, and if their influence extend to the national character, other nations will be enabled to say, that England, which has conquered others, has at last made a shameful conquest of herself."

"Our Sovereign's Health, the Majesty of the People."

"That a great General like Bonaparte should be inclined to military means of effecting a military Government is less to be wondered at than lamented...by taking the common & beaten path of Ambition he has...done much against the liberty of mankind in every part of the world...The only good that could come from this Event, so pernicious to the cause of general Liberty, was Peace, and that you see our Ministers are determined to refuse."

"[Napoleon has now] surpassed...Alexander & Caesar, not to mention the great advantage he has over them in the Cause he fights in."

"As to Bonaparte, you know what my apprehensions always were, and I can not help thinking they are in a great degree verified. For though he may, and I hope he will, trounce the Austrians...yet it is impossible to deny that he has lost, or at least risqued the losing of an opportunity. Every man has his weak side, and I have always thought Bonaparte's was the thinking Austria more inclined to peace and more to be depended upon than She is. I hope to God he will not suffer from his errour."

"Why Egypt should be of such importance either to the French or to Us I never could discover and I have always thought the Expedition there the foolishest part, perhaps the only foolish part of Bonaparte's Conduct, unless perhaps he had some views in it connected with the internal Politicks of France of which we are not informed, or (which I have always suspected) that he had a desire to be out of the way of either accepting or refusing the command of an army destined to invade England."

"It may be said that the conditions are glorious for the French Republic: it must be confessed that they are; and there is not a Briton but who ought honestly to rejoice that such is the fact. The people of France resisted, as they ought to do, the whole combination of powers who would have imposed upon them a constitution contrary to their own will. Their's was the cause of liberty—the cause of mankind at large. They had every obstacle to oppose which imagination can suggest—but they have triumphed over such obstacles—their cause has been crowned with an everlasting triumph... We have not, I acknowledge, obtained the objects for which the War was undertaken—so much the better—I rejoice that we have not. I like the Peace the more on this very account."

"...for the truth is, I am gone something further in hate to the English Government than perhaps you and the rest of my friends are, and certainly further than can with prudence be avowed. The triumph of the French Government over the English does in fact afford me a degree of pleasure which it is very difficult to disguise."

"However it may have happened, it is an excellent thing, and I do not like it the worse for its being so very triumphant a peace for France...The sense of humiliation in the Government here will be certainly lost in the extreme popularity of the measure...this rascally people are quite overjoyed at receiving from Ministers what, if they had dared to ask it, could not have been refused them at almost any period of the war. Will the Ministers have the impudence to say that there was any time (much less that when Bonaparte's offer was refused) when we might not have had terms as good? Bonaparte's triumph is now complete indeed, and, since there is to be no political liberty in the world, I really believe he is the fittest person to be the master."

"As to War I can only say that my opinion is clearly that it will not be. I can tell you my reasons for this opinion in two sentences. 1st. I am sure that Bonaparte will do everything that he can to avoid it. 2nd. that, low as my opinion is of our Ministry, I cannot believe them quite so foolish as to force him to it, without one motive either of ambition or interest to incite them."

"Bonaparte's wish is Peace, nay that he is afraid of war to the last degree."

"There is not a power in Europe, no not even Bonaparte's that is so unlimited [as the British monarchy]."

"So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction, that I had done my duty."

"I die happy."

"...the following passage from Major Cartwright's Memorandum Book: “On Sunday the 10th of April, 1814, Earl Stanhope informed me that in conversation with Mr. Fox and a third person, Mr. Fox said ‘Parliamentary reform was a fit thing to be made use of in argument in the House of Commons, but not to be carried into execution.’” Lord Stanhope also mentioned the same fact to Major Cartwright's friend, Mr. Holt White, and in the same words."

"I will only mention one other circumstance as tending to show the fallacy of Mr. Bright's opinion. He quotes Charles James Fox as a great authority for peace. I happen to know, from the only living authority from whom that information could be derived—I happen to know that Charles James Fox, the great Minister who resisted the revolutionary war so long, told his colleagues each and severally, on his deathbed, that the great war in which they were then engaged could not be brought to a conclusion; he enjoined them to prosecute it with vigour, and I, among others, look back with gratitude to the results of that great contest."

"Charles James Fox, who, though through some of the perverse fortunes and accidents of political life, only held high office twice in his life, and in each case for a very brief time, was acknowledged by all good judges to be second to none among the Parliamentary speakers in what we are accustomed, and rightly, to describe as the Golden Age of British eloquence."

"[On 11 June 1784] I asked him [Samuel Johnson] if it was true as reported, that he had said lately, ‘I am for the King against Fox; but I am for Fox against Pitt.’ JOHNSON: ‘Yes, Sir; the King is my master; but I do not know Pitt; and Fox is my friend.’ ‘Fox, (added he,) is a most extraordinary man; here is a man (describing him in strong terms of objection in some respects according as he apprehended, but which exalted his abilities the more) who has divided the Kingdom with Caesar; so that it was a doubt whether the nation should be ruled by the sceptre of George the Third, or the tongue of Fox.’"

"Come down 50 years nearer to our own time, and you find a statesman, not long in office, but still held in the affections of all persons of liberal principles in this country, and in his time representing fully the sentiments of the Liberal party—Charles James Fox (Cheers.) Mr. Fox, referring to the policy of the Government of his time, which was one of constant interference in the affairs of Europe, and by which the country was continually involved in the calamities of war, said that although he would not assert or maintain the principle, that under no circumstances could England have any cause of interference with the affairs of the continent of Europe, yet he would prefer the positive policy of non-interference and of perfect isolation rather than the constant intermeddling to which our recent policy had subjected us, and which brought so much trouble and suffering upon the country."

"It was left...above all to Charles James Fox himself to defend the liberties of the subject, freedom of the press and of public meeting against the encroachments of a panicky Government. Fox was almost certainly wrong in his estimate of the danger from France, especially after Napoleon's coup d'état, and Whig opposition to the war had a tendency to degenerate into factiousness, but his defence of liberty was a vindication both of his own courage and of the liberal tradition."

"Pitt's reputation would have been less decisive had not it contrasted so pointedly with the public image of his main rival. Indeed, it is not easy to explain why a man, so attractive in his private circle, should have been so distrusted by the public at large. It would be too simple to see Fox as the victim of unrelenting propaganda. Paragraph after paragraph, it is true, dwelt on his debts, his gambling, his love affairs, and reminded readers that his father had once been called "the public defaulter of unaccounted millions". The accusation of "Cromwell" was particularly effective. It was reported to be the "received notion among the inferiors" in Yorkshire that Fox was "attempting to dethrone the King and make himself an Oliver Cromwell". In Lancashire the name of Fox was said to be "most universally execrated", and in Gloucestershire "the Good Women and the Mob" exclaimed against him and the India bill "with an honest vehemence that will not permit them to discriminate between the Minister and the Man". But he was hounded in this way because he was peculiarly vulnerable, and because the public was prepared to believe the worst of him."

"The main ingredient in the dislike of Fox seems to have been moral disapprobation. The wit, cynicism and urbanity of much of the fashionable world should not blind us to the fact that large sections of the community were sober, god-fearing and respectable, took their tone from the king, and were genuinely disgusted at the spectacle of Fox's furniture being put into the streets, or the leader of the opposition hurrying from the House of Commons to conduct a Faro bank. "Can you, as honest, rational men," appealed a broadsheet to the Parents of Westminster, "give your support to the high priest of drunkenness, gaming, and every species of debauchery that can contaminate the principles you would early wish to inculcate in your offspring...?" It was the paradox of Fox's life that, incomparably the sharpest weapon in his party's armoury, he was also its most grievous liability."

"It is impossible to read the speeches of Fox, at this time, without feeling one's heart yearn with admiration and gratitude for the bold and resolute manner in which he opposed the war, never yielding and never repining, under the most discouraging defeats; and, although deserted by many of his friends in the house, taunted with having only a score of followers left, and obliged to admit that he could not walk the streets without being insulted, by hearing the charge made against him of carrying on an improper correspondence with the enemy in France, yet bearing it all with uncomplaining manliness and dignity. The annals of Parliament do not record a nobler struggle in a nobler cause."

"Charles Fox...[had] the combination of gifts which made him the most attractive Englishman who ever gave his mind to parliamentary politics. Somehow the influence which persuaded Edward Gibbon to say, “Let him do what he will; I must love the dog,” has been transmitted down to us, and somehow, too, the cause of English liberty which he made peculiarly his own embodies the glow of his personality... Fox himself felt the democratic potency of those contests and gave emphasis to it in his own words: “It is the energy, the boldness of a man's mind, which prompts him to speak, not in private but in large and popular assemblies, that constitutes, that creates in a state, the spirit of freedom.” He drew strength and courage from the vast London crowds who swayed before him, and it was there he learned his hatred of censorship, repression, informers; his trust in the people."

"Little did I think that I should ever live to regret Mr. Fox's death."

"In his tour of Switzerland (September 1788) Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and private society. He seemed to feel, and even to envy, the happiness of my situation; while I admired the powers of a superior man, as they are blended in his attractive character with the softness and simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood."

"I heard him [Robert Peel] express a low opinion of Fox. So far as Fox's private character is concerned, Peel may have been right; but, as a public man, Fox had certainly a remarkable power of grasping general principles."

"Who was the best speaker you ever heard? Fox, during the American War—Fox in his best days; about the year 1779."

"He was loud, turbulent, & threatening, at these times talking in a manner very unlike himself, & being extremely angry with all around Him— The Q: was now in no favor, He called Mr Pitt a rascal, & Mr Fox his Friend."

"What subject is there, whether of foreign policy or domestic interest, or that in the smallest degree affects our Constitution, which does not immediately associate itself with the memory of Mr. Fox; and what moment so fit to address to you the observations which may be thought proper on such an occasion, as that in which your feelings are most excited by the mention of his name?"

"For not even our political sky is blacker than that under which Fox withstood the policy which devoted the strength of England to the appetites and the rancours of Europe, and diverted the splendid promise of the Revolution into the catastrophe of the Empire... He had surrendered to principle a popularity to retain which he had sacrificed everything else. He watched the dismal fulfilment of all his dark predictions, as the long-protracted war became each day more disastrous to liberty in Europe and at home... Those Englishmen who have inherited the Liberalism of Fox cannot reasonably complain if they share something of his hard lot... If Liberals choose the part of Fox, they cannot escape his eclipse. Mark the splendid waste of his genius—twenty years of his life exhausted in a fruitless struggle with the nightmares of a nation; his death surrounded by the abundant and unmistakable signs of the calamities he had seen written on the wall. Let Liberals measure their strength against the triumphant forces of Imperialism, and they can look for no better issue than a glorious defeat and the ineffectual stoicism of despair."

"The giant race is extinct."

"Although Fox's private character was deformed by indulgence in vicious pleasures, it was in the eyes of his contemporaries largely redeemed by the sweetness of his disposition, the buoyancy of his spirits, and the unselfishness of his conduct. As a politician he had liberal sentiments, and hated oppression and religious intolerance. He constantly opposed the influence of the crown, and, although he committed many mistakes, and had in George III an opponent of considerable knowledge of kingcraft and immense resources, the struggle between him and the king, as far as the two men were concerned, was after all a drawn game...the coalition of 1783 shows that he failed to appreciate the importance of political principles and was ignorant of political science...Although his speeches are full of common sense, he made serious mistakes on some critical occasions, such as were the struggle of 1783–4, and the dispute about the regency in 1788. The line that he took with reference to the war with France, his idea that the Treason and Sedition bills were destructive of the constitution, and his opinion in 1801 that the House of Commons would soon cease to be of any weight, are instances of his want of political insight. The violence of his language constantly stood in his way; in the earlier period of his career it gave him a character for levity; later on it made his coalition with North appear especially reprehensible, and in his latter years afforded fair cause for the bitterness of his opponents. The circumstances of his private life helped to weaken his position in public estimation. He twice brought his followers to the brink of ruin and utterly broke up the whig party. He constantly shocked the feelings of his countrymen, and ‘failed signally during a long public life in winning the confidence of the nation’ (LECKY, Hist. iii. 465 sq). With the exception of the Libel Bill of 1792, the credit of which must be shared with others, he left comparatively little mark on the history of national progress. Great as his talents were in debate, he was deficient in statesmanship and in some of the qualities most essential to a good party leader."

"Fox could speak for four hours at a stretch without repeating himself, and in prose so magnificent that it makes the blood race simply to read it—what it must have sounded like beggars the imagination. What is more, Fox could do that after staying up all night gaming and drinking."

"He could be irresponsible, he was certainly reckless, and, on occasion, he was a flagrant opportunist. He can rightly be accused of achieving in his lifetime little of what he so eloquently sought. But he was also warm-hearted, generous and immensely gifted; a richly endowed human being, whose principles have become synonymous with individual and political liberty. His posthumous influence has been enormous. For his arguments—however radical, however politically inconvenient, however ahead of their time—were incontestably right. As Pitt once wearily conceded, "Mr. Fox has never been answered". His arguments on the slave trade, on religious freedom, on the freedom of speech and of assembly, on constitutional reform and in opposition to war were—in the light of eternity—unanswerable. He could be outvoted, he could be out-manoeuvred, he could be checked. But he could not be silenced and—ultimately—he could not be stopped."

"Fame had informed me of his talents, and I soon found that he possessed a noble character, a good heart, liberal, generous, and enlightened views. I considered him an ornament to mankind, and was very much attached to him. We often conversed together upon various topics, without the least prejudice; when I wished to engage in a little controversy, I turned the conversation upon the subject of the infernal machine; and told him that his ministers had attempted to murder me; he would then oppose my opinion with warmth, and invariably ended the conversation by saying, in his bad French, “First Consul, pray take that out of your head.” But he was not convinced of the truth of the cause he undertook to advocate, and there is every reason to believe that he argued more in defence of his country, than of the morality of its ministers."

"As to Fox, one must not look for his model among the ancients. He is himself a model, and his principles will sooner or later rule the world. ... Certainly the death of Fox was one of the fatalities of my career. Had his life been prolonged, affairs would have taken a totally different turn; the cause of the people would have triumphed, and we should have established a new order of things in Europe."

"Froude's palliation of the intolerable egoistic, magniloquent tyranny of Henry VIII is as misplaced as the sympathy of many Whig historians for that thoroughly unscrupulous and factious political adventurer who did his best to hinder British war-effort in the early days of the struggle against Revolutionary France. I cannot bear the sonorous champion of liberty who outside the senate house spends his time with wine, women and gambling."

"Had Fox lived in times less troublesome than those in which he was thrown—or had he not been opposed to such a rival as Pitt—he would, undoubtedly, have been ranked not only among those statesmen the brilliancy of whose genius has reflected honour upon the country that produced them, but among those illustrious patriots whose names, consecrated by the applause of a grateful people, are held up to the admiration of posterity as fathers of their country and benefactors of the human race. He set out in life by being the supporter of the royal prerogative, and took part with the Crown against Wilkes. But being thrown into opposition by Pitt, he quitted a line in which he saw his rival would eclipse him, and became a strenuous advocate for the rights of the popular part of our constitution. In this course the ardour of his temper carried him further than prudence could justify; and, as it generally happens in controversies, he frequently in the violence of debate supported doctrines which, perhaps, his cooler reflection would have led him to disavow. With this impetuosity of temper it is less to be wondered at than regretted that, in the general delirium produced by the French Revolution, he should have been infected with the disorder, and have connected himself with the most frantic of the reformers. It was well remarked in one of the papers of the day, that there scarcely ever lived a statesman for whom as an individual the people felt more affection, or in whom as a politician they placed less confidence."

"In 1805...the Catholic question was again discussed. He would beg the House to attend to the speeches which were delivered on that occasion, one of which he should never forget, for he happened to have heard it.—He never heard a speech which made a greater impression on his mind, than that delivered by Mr. Fox during that debate."

"It was sometime in 1790 that Mirabeau, himself a moving and eloquent speaker, attempted to disparage Fox in Pitt's presence. Pitt replied simply: ‘You have never seen the wizard within the magic circle.’"

"Fox was a powerful speaker, and, in the words of Burke, the greatest debater the world ever saw. Not place or power, but reputation as an orator, was the object of his ambition, as he declares in one of his earliest letters to an intimate friend and relation. He inspired affection still more than admiration. In his worst days an observer said of his party, “There are only forty of them, but every one of them is ready to be hanged for Fox.” In his earlier days, Lord Mansfield being asked who that young man was whom he saw in Westminster Hall, answered, “That is the son of old Harry Fox, with twice his parts and half his sagacity.”"

"The errors of Fox—his coalition with Lord North, and his India Bill—were grave; but the warmth of his feelings and his passionate love of liberty should obtain for his memory indemnity for these or even greater faults. His affectionate temper, combined with his love of liberty, won him the attachment of devoted friends. His name ought to be consecrated in the heart of every lover of freedom throughout the globe."

"George III. said to his daughter, the Princess Mary, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester, who told it to me, that he never thought he should have regretted the death of Fox so much as he found he did."

"Fox's Libel Act had reached the statute book in the temperate early months of 1792, making the jury the judge of the matter as well as of the fact. It was, perhaps, Fox's greatest service to the common people, passed at the eleventh hour before the tide turned towards repression."

"Charles Fox had great facility of delivery; his words flowed rapidly, but he had nothing of Burke's variety of language or correctness, nor his method. Yet his arguments were far more shrewd; he was many years younger. Burke was indefatigable, learned, and versed in every branch of eloquence. Fox was dissolute, dissipated, idle beyond measure."

"Bernard [Levin] thought Charles James Fox was the greatest politician of the 18th century. I said, "Ridiculous. He was wrong about everything," after Bernard had said that he was right about everything. "Even about not wanting to fight Napoleon?" I asked. Petronella likes Charles James Fox. They both like romantic rollicking characters. Charles James Fox seems a very similar character to Nye Bevan, flashing and spectacular but not enough substance. We all agree however that we would rather have Charles James Fox to dinner with us that night than William Pitt."

"When trade is at stake, it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it, or perish...Sir, Spain knows the consequence of a war in America; whoever gains, it must prove fatal to her...is this any longer a nation? Is this any longer an English Parliament, if with more ships in your harbours than in all the navies of Europe; with above two millions of people in your American colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of receiving from Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable Convention?"

"It must cut up Liberty by the root and poison the Fountain of Publick Security; and who that has an English heart can ever be weary of asserting Liberty?"

"We are now to examine whether it is probable that we shall preserve our commerce and our independence, or whether we are sinking into subjection to a foreign power."

"Our seamen have always been famous for a matchless alacrity and intrepidity in time of danger; this has saved many a British ship, when other seamen would have run below deck, and left the ship to the mercy of the waves, or, perhaps, of a more cruel enemy, a pirate."

"I rejoice to hear that you have begun Homer's Iliad; and have made so great a progress in Virgil. I hope you taste and love those authors particularly. You cannot read them too much: they are not only the two greatest poets, but they contain the finest lessons for your age to imbibe: lessons of honour, courage, disinterestedness, love of truth, command of temper, gentleness of behaviour, humanity, and in one word, virtue in its true significance."

"He wanted to call this country out of that enervate state, that twenty thousand men from France could shake it. The maxims of our Government were degenerated, not our natives. He wished to see that breed restored, which under our old principles had carried our glory so high!"

"Substitute Tully and Demosthenes in the place of Homer and Virgil; and arm yourself with all the variety of manner, copiousness and beauty of diction, nobleness and magnificence of ideas of the Roman consul; and render the powers of eloquence complete by the irresistible torrent of vehement argumentation, and close and forcible reasoning, and the depth and fortitude of mind of the Grecian statesman."

"My Lord, I am sure I can save this country, and no one else can."

"A gloomy scene for this distressed, disgraced country."

"...the day is come when the very inadequate benefits of the treaty of Utrecht, the indelible reproach of the last generation, are become the necessary, but almost unattainable wish of the present, when the empire is no more, the ports of the Netherlands betrayed, the Dutch Barrier treaty an empty sound, Minorca, and with it, the Mediterranean lost, and America itself precarious."

"The only way to have peace is to prepare for war."

"[Pitt] said he could not allow what I said; that either we were in a situation to receive the law or to give it; that he thought the latter was our case; that therefore it was our business to propose the terms and tell France on what conditions they were to have peace; that it was so at the Peace of Utrecht and it would be absurd to act otherways."

"[Pitt] said he would not come into it; that he thought this country in a situation to give peace to France, and if we were at first firm in our proceedings and did not yield to France, we should soon have a very good peace."

"Pitt complained that we lay inactive, while the French pushed on their conquests."

"[Pitt said] he saw combinations of great Lords against him but for his part he would go his own way; that he was a British subject and he knew he stood upon British ground; that he had learnt his maxims and principles under the great Lord Cobham and the disciples of the greatest lawyers, generals and patriots of King William's days: named Lord Somers and the Duke of Marlborough."

"[Pitt] said that he saw so many Lords great in themselves and in their influence in the House of Commons, differing so much in opinion from him, and inclined to make concessions for the sake of peace than he could come into; that it was impossible for him to remain; that for the sake of unanimity he had gone as far as his conscience and even his sleep would permit him."

"This unjust and unexampled proceeding of the Court of Spain, by inforcing her demands on England through the channel and by the compulsion of a hostile power, denouncing eventually future war in conjunction, while Spain was still professing amity and friendship with Great Britain; and the full declaration and avowal at last made by the Spanish Ministry of a total union of councils and interests between the two monarchies of the House of Bourbon, are matters of so high and urgent a nature as call indispensably on His Majesty to take forthwith such necessary and timely measures as God has put into his hands, for the defence of the honour of his Crown, and of the just and essential interests of His Majesty's people."

"No doubt with me that Spain is France [more] than that the Isle of France is, a union in the House of Bourbon; loss of time loss of opportunity. Whatever is dangerous will be more so 6 months hence; no safety but acting with vigour. Procrastination will increase the danger. The fact is proved, the treatment we have had shews what we are to expect. The question is that France and Spain are joined: what is to be done? ... I am still of opinion that an immediate action gives us the best chance to extricate ourselves. Acquiesced in their partiality till such time as we had broke the force of France, wishing then that Spain would give us an opportunity to punish them. Best chance to order Lord Bristol away and your fleets to take every Spanish flag. If the means to do this are doubtful will it not be more so next spring. I am for it now."

"Spain's conduct in putting forward her grievances under the shield of England's enemy, with whom we are at war, is the highest indignity that ever was offered to the Crown of England, and it will fix an eternal stain upon that crown if no answer is returned to Spain's avowal of her action. As to the other consideration, the safety of the public—are we not already suffering from the worst species of war, when Spain supports France with her full weight, covers her trade, lends her moneys and abets her in negotiation? You are now at war with the House of Bourbon; but, for open war with Spain, you are prepared and she is not."

"Without having ever asked any one single employment in my life, I was called by my Sovereign and by the Voice of the People to assist the State when others had abdicated the service of it. That being so no one can be surprised that I will go on no longer since my advice is not taken. Being responsible I will direct, and will be responsible for nothing that I do not direct."

"A difference of opinion with regard to measures to be taken against Spain, of the highest importance to the honour of the crown, and to the most essential national interests, and this founded on what Spain had already done, not on what that court may further intend to do, was the cause of my resigning the seals."

"America has been conquered in Germany, where Prince Ferdinand's victories have shattered the whole military power of that great military monarchy, France. Recall the troops from Germany, and I should be robbed of my honour, while England, by deserting her allies, would be deserted by God and man. And, honour apart, nothing but that spectre of an invasion which the Ministry of 1755 had not constancy enough to look at, frightened us out of Minorca. So would it be again, if the troops of France found themselves at liberty to quit Germany."

"As Germany was formerly managed it was a millstone about our necks; as managed now, it is a millstone about the neck of France. When I came in, I found the subsidy to Prussia dictated by Hanover, not by Great Britain. I insisted that national defence and America must stand first, nor would I agree to the German war until every other service had been provided for. I acceded to the plan of a Ministry that wanted vigour and borrowed their majority to carry on their own plan. But I carried it on in my own way, and, though that may have been the wrong way, I offer myself confitentem reum, if I have not thereby annihilated French power in the East and West Indies."

"While we had France for an enemy, Germany was the scene to employ and baffle her arms."

"...the errors of Rome...[are] rank idolatry—a subversion of all civil as well as religious liberty, and the utter disgrace of reason and of human nature."

"We retain nothing, although we have conquered everything...France is chiefly, if not solely, to be dreaded by us in the light of a maritime and commercial power; and therefore by restoring to her all the valuable West India islands, and by our concessions in the Newfoundland fishery, we have given her the means of recovering her prodigious losses and of becoming once more formidable to us at sea...all the Spanish treasures and riches in America, lay at our mercy."

"The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail—its roof may shake—the wind may blow through it—the storm may enter—the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter!—all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!"

"Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom."

"It is my opinion, that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of Government and legislation whatsoever. The colonists are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen...The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power...When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax, what do we do? We, your Majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty,—what? Our own property?—No! We give and grant to your Majesty, the property of your Majesty's Commons of America...The distinction between legislation and taxation is essentially necessary to liberty...There is an idea in some, that the colonies are virtually represented in this House...Is he represented by any knight of the shire, in any county in this kingdom?...Or will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough?—a borough which perhaps its own representatives never saw.—This is what is called the rotten part of the constitution. It cannot continue a century. If it does not drop, it must be amputated...I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to let themselves be made slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest...The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when were they made slaves?"

"There are many things a parliament cannot do. It cannot make itself executive, nor dispose of offices which belong to the crown. It cannot take any man's property, even that of the meanest cottager, as in the case of enclosures, without his being heard."

"When the people condemn me I shall tremble but I shall set my face against the proudest connection in the country."

"When then, my Lords, are all the generous efforts of our ancestors, are all those glorious contentions, by which they meant to secure themselves, and to transmit to their posterity, a known law, a certain rule of living, reduced to this conclusion, that instead of the arbitrary power of a King, we must submit to the arbitrary power of a House of Commons? If this be true, what benefit do we derive from the exchange? Tyranny, my Lords, is detestable in every shape; but in none is it so formidable as where it is assumed and exercised by a number of tyrants. But, my Lords, this is not the fact, this is not the constitution; we have a law of Parliament, we have a code in which every honest man may find it. We have Magna Charta, we have the Statute-book, and we have the Bill of Rights...It is to your ancestors, my Lords, it is to the English barons that we are indebted for the laws and constitution we possess. Their virtues were rude and uncultivated, but they were great and sincere...I think that history has not done justice to their conduct, when they obtained from their Sovereign that great acknowledgment of national rights contained in Magna Charta: they did not confine it to themselves alone, but delivered it as a common blessing to the whole people...A breach has been made in the constitution—the battlements are dismantled—the citadel is open to the first invader—the walls totter—the place is no longer tenable.—What then remains for us but to stand foremost in the breach, to repair it, or to perish in it?...let us consider which we ought to respect most—the representative or the collective body of the people. My Lords, five hundred gentlemen are not ten millions; and, if we must have a contention, let us take care to have the English nation on our side. If this question be given up, the freeholders of England are reduced to a condition baser than the peasantry of Poland...Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my Lords, that where law ends, there tyranny begins."

"I have the principles of an Englishman, and I utter them without apprehension or reserve...this is not the language of faction; let it be tried by that criterion, by which alone we can distinguish what is factious, from what is not—by the principles of the English constitution. I have been bred up in these principles, and I know that when the liberty of the subject is invaded, and all redress denied him, resistance is justifiable...the constitution has its political Bible, by which if it be fairly consulted, every political question may, and ought to be determined. Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights, form that code which I call the Bible of the English constitution. Had some of his Majesty's unhappy predecessors trusted less to the commentary of their Ministers, and been better read in the text itself, the glorious Revolution might have remained only possible in theory, and their fate would not now have stood upon record, a formidable example to all their successors."

"A long train of these practices has at length unwillingly convinced me that there is something behind the throne greater than the King himself."

"Reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations."

"The first great and acknowledged object of national defence in this country, is to maintain such a superior naval force at home, that even the united fleets of France and Spain may never be masters of the Channel."

"Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects...What, though you march from town to town, and from province to province; though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local submission, which I only suppose, not admit—how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress, to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, possessing valour, liberty, and resistance? This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen: it was obvious, from the nature of things and of mankind; and, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money, in England: the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution: the same spirit which established the great, fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America; who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen."

"You have ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony; but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage—you cannot conquer; it is impossible: you cannot conquer the Americans. You talk, my Lords, of your friends among them to annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their army: I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch! ...If you conquer them, what then? You cannot make them respect you; you cannot make them wear your cloth: you will plant an invincible hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they can never respect you..."

"I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America...As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent—doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies—to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never! ...I call upon the honour of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at THE DISGRACE OF HIS COUNTRY! In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion, the Protestant religion of his country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition."

"My Lords, I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me; that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy! Pressed down as I am by the hand of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my Lords, while I have sense and memory, I will never consent to deprive the royal offspring of the House of Brunswick, the heirs of the Princess Sophia, of their fairest inheritance. Where is the man that will dare to advise such a measure? My Lords, his Majesty succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions? Shall this great kingdom, that has survived, whole and entire, the Danish depredations, the Scottish inroads, and the Norman conquest; that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Surely, my Lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people, that seventeen years ago was the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell its ancient inveterate enemy, take all we have, only give us peace? It is impossible! ...My Lords, any state is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like men!"

"We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy."

"He was possessed of the happy talent of transfusing his own zeal into the souls of all those who were to have a share in carrying his projects into execution; and it is a matter well known to many officers now in the House, that no man ever entered the Earl's closet who did not feel himself, if possible, braver at his return than when he went in."

"Chatham was incomparably the greatest British statesman of the eighteenth century: none could match him in boldness of purpose or extent of achievement. Almost alone among his contemporaries he saw the vision of Britain expanded across the world, and set her feet firmly on the path of imperial greatness."

"The internationally acknowledged but over vast areas undeveloped monopoly of the greater part of America by Bourbon Spain appeared an unjust obstacle to the expansion of British trade. Pitt, from first to last a fiery patriot, nursed the utmost contempt for the foreigner, especially of the Catholic monarchies of Versailles and Madrid, whose subjects could not read the Bible and knew nothing of Protestant liberty. He never considered the pagan motive of greed underlying the rivalries between Britain and her Atlantic neighbours a reproach; Protestant Britain was entitled to God's blessing and the rewards of wealth and empire no detriment."

"Pitt had been called to power by the suffrages of the 'people', the first minister in British history chosen by acclaim. Pitt's integrity and force of character convinced men that he alone could save the country, a capacity he himself never doubted. The call for the services of Churchill in 1940, and the co-operation he too had to welcome from old enemies of bitter blood on both sides of the House, is the irresistible parallel."

"Chatham had been the saviour of the national pride in the face of France. In the cases of general warrants and parliamentary privilege he had served popular liberties. As upholder of the rights of the Middlesex electors he was defender of the Constitution. In the cause of America he identified political and religious freedom at home with the constitutional and natural rights of the English-speaking peoples overseas, and, the vindication too, of the national dignity against the House of Bourbon. On each count, Chatham led the way, to the example of posterity."

"[W]e may affirm with truth and impartiality, that no man was ever better fitted than Mr. Pitt, to be the minister in a great and powerful nation, or better qualified to carry that power and greatness to their utmost limits. There was in all his designs a magnitude and even a vastness, which was not easily comprehended by every mind, and which nothing but success could have made to appear reasonable... He was called to the ministry by the voice of the people; and what is more rare, he held it with that approbation... Under him Great Britain carried on the most important war in which she ever was engaged, alone and unassisted, with greater splendour, and with more success than she had ever enjoyed at the head of the most powerful alliances. Alone this island seemed to balance the rest of Europe."

"In the conduct of the war he never suffered the enemy to breathe, but overwhelmed them with reiterated blows, and kept up the alarm in every quarter. If one of his expeditions was not so well calculated or so successfully executed, amends was made by another, and by a third. The spirit of the nation once roused, was not suffered for a moment to subside; and the French, dazzled, as it were, by the multitude and celerity of his enterprizes, seemed to have lost all power of resistance. In short, he revived the military genius of our people; he supported our allies; he extended our trade; he raised our reputation; he augmented our dominions."

"Lord Chatham a great Minister & bold in his undertakings. He inspired the People of England with Martial ardour when necessary for the safety of this Kingdom. He considered Mobs in the light of a raw material which might be manufactured to a proper stuff for their own Happiness in the end."

"This minister is, as you know, the idol of the people, who regard him as the sole author of their success, and they do not have the same confidence in the other members of the council... Pitt joins to a reputation of superior spirit and talent, that of most exact honesty...with simple manners and dignity, he seeks neither display nor ostentation... He is very eloquent, specious, wheedling, and with all the chicanery of an experienced lawyer. He is courageous to the point of rashness, he supports his ideas in an impassioned fashion and with an invincible determination, seeking to have no other ambition than to elevate Britain to the highest point of glory and to abase France to the lowest degree of humiliation."

"[A] great man, the greatest perhaps that this age or this country has produced, to whom this country owes her present prosperity, and, I am sorry to say it, her pride, her pride of conquest, which has infatuated her, even in this impracticable war, with the ideas of victory, and certain success; that great man, from whose opinions, though some of your lordships may sometimes differ, yet there is not one of your lordships who does not pay homage to his consummate capacity, his extensive talents, his great services, and his age, when he delivers those opinions from his place."

"It is a considerable fact in the history of the world, that he was for four years King of England."

"Dr. Franklin is filled with admiration of that truly great man! He has seen, in the course of life, sometimes eloquence without wisdom, and often wisdom without eloquence: in the present instance, he sees both united, as he thinks, in the highest degree possible."

"Over-bearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England,—his ambition was fame; without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting he made a venal age unanimous; France sunk beneath him; with one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England."

"When I saw Lord Chatham's bill, I entertained high hope that a reconciliation could have been brought about. The difference between his terms, and those offered by our Congress, might have been accommodated, if entered on, by both parties, with a disposition to accommodate. But the dignity of Parliament, it seems, can brook no opposition to its power."

"Both the elder and the younger Pitt delighted in a kind of ostentatious virtue which raised them, in the eyes of careless observers, to a far higher level than politicians like Burke or like Fox, who, with abilities perhaps not inferior, sacrificed incomparably more to their principles. But yet with all his faults he was a very great man—far surpassing both in mental and moral altitude the other politicians of his generation. As a war minister his greatness was beyond question, and almost beyond comparison."

"The greatest War Minister of modern times."

"The success of our arms was perhaps owing less to the skill of his dispositions than to the national resources and the national spirit. But that the national spirit rose to the emergency,—that the national resources were contributed with unexampled cheerfulness,—this was undoubtedly his work. The ardour of his spirit had set the whole kingdom on fire. It inflamed every soldier who dragged the cannon up the heights of Quebec, and every sailor who boarded the French ships amidst the rocks of Britanny."

"Thus, then, after such long gestation, and so many throes and struggles, came to light the first administration of Chatham,—the greatest and most glorious, perhaps, that England had ever yet known—an administration not always, indeed, free from haste or error in its schemes, and no doubt owing their success in part to the favour of Fortune and to the genius of Generals; but still, after every allowance that can be justly required, an administration pre-eminently strong at home and victorious abroad—an administration which even now is pointed at with equal applause by contending and opposite parties, eager to claim its principles as their own."

"With all his faults we shall want Mr Pitt, if such a complicated, such an extensive war is to be carried on. I know nobody who can plan or push the execution of any plan agreed upon in the manner Mr Pitt did."

"Pitt did not flinch from the contemplation of the violent aggression required by such an active and expanding commercial imperialism, and such an open avowal of England's aspirations bred its own elation... It was Chatham, ignorant of men, ignorant of politics, who knew with utter certainty England's destiny and showed her the way to it."

"Pitt was at home with men like his grandfather, men who believed that England's greatness and prosperity depended on aggression, on seizing and holding on to the world's trade... In the late thirties and early forties Pitt had spent much time studying the statistics of French commerce and industry, which had bred the conviction that France was the greatest danger England had to face, and the only rival worth considering in the race for overseas trade... Two aims, he thought, should dominate English policy – supremacy at sea and the capture of French trading posts."

"The memory of that great and glorious minister, who, to all succeeding ages, will be quoted as an illustrious example, how one great man, by his superior ability, could raise his drooping country from the abyss of despair to the highest pinnacle of glory, and render her honoured, respected, revered, and dreaded by the whole universe."

"In the last decade of the colonial period the ideal of the man of public virtue was made real in the person of William Pitt. The cult of this noblest of Whigs, "the Genius of England and the Comet of his Age" was well advanced toward idolatry at least five years before the Stamp Act. The greatest of "the great men of England", the last and noblest of the Romans, was considered the embodiment of virtue, wisdom, patriotism, liberty, and temperance... Pitt, "glorious and immortal", the "guardian of America", was the idol of the colonies. His eloquent arguments against taxation without representation were repaid in full measure by a grateful people. Ships, towns, and babies bore the proud name of Pitt; preachers, orators, and poets celebrated his Roman virtues."

"Look at the great personage who dominates English politics through the whole middle period of that century, the elder Pitt. His greatness is throughout identified with the expansion of England; he is a statesman of Greater Britain. It is in the buccaneering war with Spain that he sows his political wild oats; his glory is won in the great colonial duel with France; his old age is spent in striving to avert schism in Greater Britain."

"When all due allowance is made for Pitt's shortcomings, however, and credit given to others where it is due, the fact remains that he was a great war minister. His theatrical posturings and belligerent rhetoric were exactly what the country needed, a vision of itself greater than that projected by his predecessors as prime minister, the pacific Walpole, the able but self-effacing Pelham, the timid and neurotic Newcastle... In the last analysis Pitt's greatness can only be measured against the rival alternatives, and here he was a giant among pygmies."

"Mr. Pitt has the finest Genius, improv'd by Study, and all the ornamental Part of Classical Learning. He came early into the House of Commons, where he soon distinguish'd himself; lost a Cornecy of Horse, which was then his only subsistence; and in about twenty years, has raised himself to be first Minister, and the most powerful Subject in this Country. His Eloquence is nervous, natural, correct, and elegant. He has an astonishing Clearness, and Facility of Expression, and has an Eye as significant as his Words. He is not always a fair or conclusive Reasoner, but commands the Passions with Sovereign Authority; and to inflame or captivate a popular Assembly, is a consummate Orator. Tho his Passions are strong, and fiery, they are all obedient to his unbounded Ambition. He has courage of every sort, cool or impetuous, active or deliberate... [E]ven his Enemies must allow that he has the Firmness, and activity of a great Minister: that he has hitherto conducted the War with Spirit, Vigor, and tolerable Success: and tho some favorite Schemes have been visionary and impracticable, they have at least been more honorable, & less dangerous, than the passive, unperforming Pusillanimity, of the late Administration."

"Mr Pitt, on entering upon administration, had found the nation at the lowest ebb in point of power and reputation. His predecessors, now his coadjutors, wanted genius, spirit and system... France, who meant to be feared, was feared heartily... They were willing to trust that France would be so good as to ruin us by inches. Pitt had roused us from this ignoble lethargy."

"The admirers of Mr Pitt extol the reverberation he gave to our councils, the despondence he banished, the spirit he infused, the conquests he made, the security he affixed to our trade and plantations, the humiliation of France, the glory of Britain carried under his administration to a pitch at which it never had arrived—and all this is exactly true."

"When Pitt left office the Pope of Rome said that he esteemed it the highest honour to be born an Englishman. In Africa we had taken away all the French possessed; in Europe our troops had beaten the flower of their armies, while our expeditions had insulted their coasts from Dunkirk to Bordeaux and had even occupied a parcel of France; on the high seas our fleets were supreme. In America we had won a continent, in India we were masters of Bengal, and in other parts had no European rivals left—victories which ensured that in these two vast portions of the world the Protestant Anglo-Saxon—not the French Roman Catholic—civilisation should thereafter prevail. And in spite of the long war the commerce on which England's greatness then chiefly rested had never been so flourishing. To Pitt all this was due."

"[W]e sensibly felt the manifold good effects of your truly patriot and singularly wise and upright administration. To this we must attribute the rescuing Britain from the shameful infection of that pestilential, ministerial panic, which called foreign mercenaries to the defence of a Country, by her native force, when properly exerted, more than a match for half the powers of Europe. To your steady virtues, we stand indebted for freeing our Mother Country from the reproach of calling foreign troops to defend her from a threatened invasion, and for chastising the insolence of the vaunting invader, by inspiring the councils and arms of Britain with that ancient true National spirit, which, when duly exerted, ever has, and ever must render the British name terrible to her foes in the utmost extremities of the globe."

"That the thanks of...the City of York...be presented to the Right Honourable William Pitt, for the signal advantages this nation has derived from his upright, wise, and vigorous administration; to which, under Providence, we owe the revival of the ancient British spirit, the acquisition of the most valuable and important conquests, and the abolition of party distinctions. The loss of so able, so disinterested a Statesman, who so happily united the characters of the great Minister and the true Patriot, cannot but be deeply regretted at this critical conjuncture by every well-wisher to his King and Country."

"Our toast in general is,—Magna Charta, the British Constitution,—PITT and Liberty forever!"

"Erected by the King and Parliament As a Testimony to The Virtues and Ability of WILLIAM PITT EARL OF CHATHAM During whose Administration In the Reigns of George II and George III Divine Providence Exalted Great Britain To an Height of Prosperity and Glory Unknown to any Former Age Born November 15, 1708; Died May 11, 1778"

"The corresponding Society, except about six members, consists of the most dispicable and brutal of mobs. Men whose ignorance and savage barbarity renders them fit only for being tools—indeed, they are the common day laborers about town. This party, perfectly distinct in its nature from the opposition, has done more to ruin its cause, than Pitt and his party ever could have foreseen."

"What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable."

"The English Bar is in a very great degree tedious, and, to say the least of it, somewhat uncertain. I look forward with no small horror to five years' dull, unvaried drudgery, which must be undergone to obtain the privilege of drudging still harder, among a set of disagreeable people of brutal manners and confined talents."

"The more I see and hear, the more I conceive some clear, short, and firm declaration of the party necessary, separating ourselves (without offensive expressions) from the Radicals, and avowing our loyalty, but at the same time our determination to stand by the constitution, and to oppose all illegal attempts to violate it, and all new laws to alter its free nature."

"There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country."

"Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave."

"In my mind, he was guilty of no error he — was chargeable with no exaggeration — he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve men into a box."

"Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties"

"The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill."

"[He said] that might, slumbering in the arms of temperate freemen, which, though he hoped the fatal experiment never would be tried, he had a confident persuasion would, if it ever should become necessary, be uplifted as manfully as it was by their forefathers, when they marshalled the way, through blood and danger, to a free constitution... Of powers thus exercised, and for so hallowed a purpose, we have now a glorious example in a neighbouring nation, which has now made your case its own, and which, after long being, as some say, your enemy, has now become your competitor in the glorious race of liberty, which, roused by unbearable oppression, groaning—but that freemen will not groan—has risen in its might, and driven, as your forefathers drove, a tyrant from the throne which he had polluted, and from a capital which he had stained with the blood of free and innocent citizens. From this castle-yard, at the close of the American war, burst forth a flame in favour of parliamentary reform, which, spreading over the country, eclipsed, during the system of terror and persecution, by fires of a less pure and holy nature, quenched by the blood shed in the name of liberty by those who called themselves its votaries in France, has at length, now that peace has been restored to us, burst forth again with renovated splendour to illuminate your hearts, and with such vigour as will ultimately destroy the abuses of your country. I hail its progress with joy and rapture! Be it mine to fan the flame, &c.!"

"Do you think that a reporter has a right to supply or suppress any part of a judgment?"

"We, with all our monarchical principles—for I will not call them prejudices—we, with all our aristocratic feelings, for I will not call them superstitions—we, with all our natural abhorrence of the levelling system and a democratic form of government, were impatient of beholding a great and rising empire, founded by monarchical England's sons, a republic—a level republic—in the veins of whose members flowed the blood of aristocratic England. We saw those republican principles rooted and planted deep in the hearts and feelings of 3,000,000 of Englishmen—we saw them ruling, and conquering, and flourishing, without a king to govern, without a prelate to bless, without a noble to adorn them—we saw all this effected at the point of the sword after a series of defeat, disaster, and disgrace to the British arms. No wonder, then, that all strong feelings and deeply-rooted prejudices were called into fierce action so often as the successes of America were remembered—so often as the name of the new republic was pronounced."

"The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people."

"The Judge has not organs to know and to deal with the text of the foreign law, and therefore requires the assistance of a foreign lawyer who knows how to interpret it."

"A contract executed without any part performance."

"Equity has not relieved against gross improvidence."

"The Sovereign can only act by advisers, and through the instrumentality of those who are neither infallible nor impeccable— answerable, indeed, for all that the irresponsible Sovereign may do, but liable to err through undue influence, and to be swayed by improper motives."

"The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!"

"Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration."

"Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence."

"Death was now armed with a new terror."

"The great unwashed."

"Sometimes rhetorical phrases are applied even by eminent Judges to propositions of law. In Lord Dungannon v. Smith Lord Brougham in eloquent language declared it as "one of the corner stones of the law," and I understand the Lord Chancellor in the same case to have considered the decision in Jee v. Audley to be "one of the landmarks.""

"Lord Grey's first offer to Brougham was Attorney-General. Brougham took the letter and quietly tore it in two and threw it under his feet; that was his whole reply. He then reiterated his notice for Reform, and Lord Grey took fright, and would have given him the Rolls, but the king, forewarned, would not do that; and so he became Chancellor."

"The management of our press [for the 1807 election] fell into the hands of Mr. Brougham. With that active and able man I had become acquainted through Mr. Allen in 1805. At the formation of Lord Grenville's Ministry, he had written at my suggestion a pamphlet called The State of the Nation... His early connection with the Abolitionists had familiarized him with the means of circulating political papers, and given him some weight with those best qualified to co-operate in such an undertaking. His extensive knowledge and extraordinary readiness, his assiduity and habits of composition, enabled him to correct some articles, and to furnish a prodigious number himself."

"Brougham's success at the bar is prodigious; much more rapid and extensive than that of any barrister since Erskine's starting."

"To be sure, he has done wonders this session. A mere tongue, without a party and without a character, in an unfriendly audience, and with an unfriendly Press, never did half so much before. As Sydney Smith says, "verily he hath a devil.""

"If left out he would indeed be dangerous; but if taken in he would simply be destructive. We may have little chance of being able to go on without him, but to go on with him would be impossible."

"Brougham...became...the educator and radicalizer of his party."

"[On 3 February 1824] Mr. Brougham pronounced a tremendous philippick against their present designs, and former conduct. Excelling, as that learned gentleman's oratory does, in bitterness of sarcasm, and severity of attack, he seems on this occasion to have outdone all his former efforts of a similar kind. His words inspired in the breasts of his hearers the same indignation with which his own was evidently animated, and the House resounded with cheers at every pause, whilst he was dragging each separate Sovereign of the Allies before the tribunal of a free and popular assembly, to answer for their attempts to crush by mere physical force the just liberties of the world."

"The cause of law reform in England for the last forty years can never be disjoined from the name of Henry Brougham."

"What a pity that he who steals a penny loaf should be hung, whilst he who steals thousands of the public money should be acquitted!"

"It is very odd that in England, where we execute so many, we do not prevent crimes."

"Government will always be conducted for the benefit of those who govern. If the few alone govern, the interests of the few only will be provided for; if the people themselves have a share in the government, the interests of the many will be consulted."

"I am in my politics for reform and nothing but reform."

"The natural balance of the constitution is this—that the Crown should appoint its ministers, that those ministers should have the confidence of the House of Commons, and that the House of Commons should represent the sense and wishes of the people. Such was the machinery of our government; and if any wheel of it went wrong, it deranged the whole system. Thus, when the Stuarts were on the throne, and their ministers did not enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons, the consequence was tumult, insurrection, and civil war throughout the country. At the present period, the ministers of the Crown possess the confidence of the House of Commons, but the House of Commons does not possess the esteem and reverence of the people. The consequences to the country are equally fatal. We have seen discontent breaking into outrage in various quarters—we have seen every excess of popular frenzy committed and defended—we have seen alarm universally prevailing among the upper classes, and disaffection among the lower—we have seen the ministers of the Crown seek a remedy for these evils in a system of severe coercion—in restrictive laws—in large standing armies—in enormous barracks, and in every other resource that belongs to a government which is not founded on the hearts of its subjects."

"It is my persuasion, that the liberties of Englishmen, being founded upon the general consent of all, must remain upon that basis, or must altogether cease to have any existence. We cannot confine liberty in this country to one class of men: we cannot erect here a senate of Venice, by which a small part of the community is enabled to lord it over the majority; we cannot in this land, and at this time make liberty the inheritance of a caste. It is the nature of English liberty, that her nightingale notes should never be heard from within the bars and gratings of a cage; to preserve any thing of the grace and the sweetness, they must have something of the wildness of freedom. I speak according to the spirit of our constitution when I say, that the liberty of England abhors the unnatural protection of a standing army; she abjures the countenance of fortresses and barracks; nor can those institutions ever be maintained by force and terror that were founded upon mildness and affection. If we ask the causes, why a system of government, so contrary to the spirit of our laws, so obnoxious to the feelings of our people, so ominous to the future prospects of the country, has been adopted, we shall find the root of the evil to lie in the defective state of our representation. The votes of the House of Commons no longer imply the general assent of the realm; they no longer carry with them the sympathies and understandings of the nation. The ministers of the Crown, after obtaining triumphant majorities in this House, are obliged to have recourse to other means than those of persuasion, reverence for authority, and voluntary respect, to procure the adherence of the country. They are obliged to enforce, by arms, obedience to acts of this House—which, according to every just theory, are supposed to emanate from the people themselves."

"May you remember, that the liberty which was acquired for you by your ancestors will be required of you by your descendants: then will you agree to a temperate and timely reform, reconcile the different classes of society, and prevent a convulsion which may involve all in one common ruin."

"Who the devil will coalesce with people that don't coalesce with themselves."

"[A proverb is] one man's wit, and all men's wisdom."

"Allow me to imagine, for a moment, a stranger from some distant country, who should arrive in England to examine our institutions.... He would have made himself acquainted with its fame in history, and above all, he would have been told, that the proudest boast of this celebrated country was its political freedom.... What then would be his surprise, if he were taken by his guide, whom he had asked to conduct him to one of the places of election, to a green mound and told, that this green mound sent two Members to Parliament—or, to be taken to a stone wall, with three niches in it, and told that these three niches sent two Members to Parliament—or, if he were shown a green park, with many signs of flourishing vegetable life, but none of human habitation, and told that this green park sent two Members to Parliament? But his surprise would increase to astonishment if he were carried into the North of England, where he would see large flourishing towns, full of trade and activity, containing vast magazines of wealth and manufactures, and were told that these places had no Representatives in the Assembly which was said to represent the people."

"Our opponents say, our ancestors gave Old Sarum Representatives, therefore we should give Old Sarum Representatives.—We say, our ancestors gave Old Sarum Representatives, because it was a large town; therefore we give Representatives to Manchester, which is a large town. I think we are acting more as our ancestors would have acted, by letting in Representatives for our great commercial and manufacturing towns, than by excluding such Representatives."

"Wherever the aristocracy reside, receiving large incomes, performing important duties, relieving the poor by charity, and evincing private worth and public virtue, it is not in human nature that they should not possess a great influence upon public opinion, and have an equal weight in electing persons to serve their country in Parliament. Though such persons may not have the direct nomination of members under this Bill, I contend that they will have as much influence as they ought to have. But if by aristocracy those persons are meant who do not live among the people, who know nothing of the people, and who care nothing for them—who seek honours without merit, places without duty, and pensions without service—for such an aristocracy I have no sympathy; and I think, the sooner its influence is carried away with the corruption on which it has thriven, the better for the country, in which it has repressed so long every wholesome and invigorating influence."

"Will this House say, "We will keep our power, keep it how we may; we regard not the petitions of the people, and are ready to abide by all the consequences of our refusal"?"

"To establish the Constitution on a firm basis, you must show that you are determined not to be the representatives of a small class, or of a particular interest; but to form a body, who, representing the people, springing from the people, and sympathising with the people, can fairly call on the people to support the future burdens of the country, and to struggle with the future difficulties which it may have to encounter."

"Our prospects are obscured for a moment, but, I trust, only for a moment; it is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation."

"I wish I knew what to do to help your country. But, as I do not, it is of no use giving her smooth words, as O’Connell told me, and I must be silent."

"I confess, that on the general subject my views have in the course of twenty years undergone a great alteration. I used to be of opinion that corn was an exception to the general rules of political economy: but observation and experience have convinced me that we ought to abstain from all interference with the supply of food. Neither a government nor a legislature can ever regulate the corn market with the beneficial effects which the entire freedom of sale and purchase are sure of themselves to produce."

"Let us, then, unite to put an end to a system which has been proved to be the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among the people. But if this end is to be achieved, it must be gained by the unequivocal expression of the public voice....The Government appear to be waiting for some excuse to give up the present Corn Law. Let the people, by petition, by address, by remonstrance, afford them the excuse they seek."

"Party has no doubt its evils; but all the evils of party put together would be scarcely a grain in the balance, when compared to the dissolution of honourable friendships, the pursuit of selfish ends, the want of concert in council, the absence of a settled policy in foreign affairs, the corruption of separate statesmen, the caprices of an intriguing Court, which the extinction of party connection has brought and would again bring upon this country."

"[I]t may be easily imagined that when those who are best off, in the most prosperous years, earn scarcely sufficient, those who had then been on the brink of famine, must have been unable to resist the flood of destitution and wretchedness which has over-whelmed them by the failure of the potato crop. Such has been unfortunately the case in the present year, during the visitation of a calamity which is, perhaps, almost without a parallel, because it acts upon a very large population, a population of nearly 8,000,000—for the Irish have gradually increased to that amount—while the famine is such as has not been known in modern times; indeed, I should say it is like a famine of the thirteenth century acting upon the population of the nineteenth."

"Sir, it has always been my view that you never could effectually raise education in this country till you raised the condition and prospects of the schoolmaster; that view I have often expressed in this House. Whether I have been in or out of office, I have always thought that the drudgery of teaching without a sufficient reward, and with no prospect of future advantage, was such that men of talents and abilities, even although trained to it, could not but leave such a pursuit in great numbers for other and more profitable occupations; and this is not only my view, but one which I have found confirmed by all who are practically connected with the working of education. I have heard complaints without number that, after the training had been carried to a certain extent, and the schoolmasters established, the best of them, seeing what were the rewards offered in this country to persons of intelligence and well instructed, soon found other occupations far more valuable than that of teaching. This, Sir, I consider to be a great misfortune. No profession, in my opinion, is more important than that of training the youth of the working classes of this country."

"It is quite true that landlords in England would not bear to be shot like hares or partridges by miscreants banded for murderous purposes. But neither does any landlord in England turn out fifty persons at once, and burn their homes over their heads, giving them no provision for the future. The murders are atrocious, but so are the ejectments. The truth is that a civil war between landlords and tenants [in Ireland] has been raging for 80 years, marked by barbarity on both sides. I am willing to finish the contest.... But if stringent laws are required, they must bear on both sides in the contest."

"[E]ight millions were advanced to enable the Irish to supply the loss of the potato crop and to cast about for some less precarious food.... The result has been that they have placed more dependence on the potato than ever, and have again been deceived. How can such a people be assisted? No one in their senses would think of repeating the outlay to lead to a similar improvidence."

"[T]he great difficulty of this year respecting Ireland is one which does not spring from Trevelyan or C. Wood but lies deep in the breast of the British people. It is this. We have granted, lent, subscribed, worked, visited, clothed the Irish,—millions of money, years of debates etc etc—the only return is calumny and rebellion. Let us not grant, lend, clothe etc etc anymore, and see what that will do. Such is the result which MacHale, J. O'Connell, and Smith O'Brien have brought us. Now without borrowing or lending we could have no great plan for Ireland and, much as I wished it, I have to see that it is impractical."

"The grand rule of doing to others as we wish that they should do unto us is more applicable than any system of political science. The honour of England does not consist in defending every English officer or English subject, right or wrong, but in taking care that she does not infringe the rules of justice, and that they are not infringed against her."

"I think it never can be assumed that a country in the position in which this country is can be secure from the danger of war. In the first place, we may have some aggression upon some of our possessions, or even upon our own country. In the next place, it is possible that we may have some dispute with respect to the rights of our subjects, or injury supposed to be inflicted upon them by subjects of other countries. In the third place, we are bound by treaty with respect to several of the countries of Europe to defend them, if attacked."

"[W]e are connected, and have been for more than a century, with the general system of Europe; and any territorial increase of one Power, any aggrandisement which disturbs the general balance of power in Europe, although it might not immediately lead to war, could not be matter of indifference to this country, and would, no doubt, be the subject of conference, and might ultimately, if that balance were seriously threatened, lead to hostilities. These are reasons, Sir, why we cannot believe ourselves altogether safe from the danger of war."

"If peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace."

"We have heard much of late—a great deal too much, I think—of the prestige of England. We used to hear of the character, of the reputation, of the honour of England. I trust, Sir, that the character, the reputation, and the honour of this country are dear to us all; but, if the prestige of England is to be separate from those qualities, if it is to be separate from the character, from the reputation, and from the honour of our country, then I, for one, have no wish to maintain it."

"To those who argue, as I have heard some argue—"It is true we have a bad case; it is true we were in the wrong, it is true we have committed injustice, but we must persevere in that wrong; we must continue to act unjustly, or the Chinese will think that we are afraid," I say, as has been said before, "Be just and fear not." Whatever we lose in prestige, of which I do not presume to be a judge, I am convinced that the character and the honour of this country will be raised higher by such a policy. Never will England stand higher in the world's estimation than when it can be said that, though troublesome and meddlesome officials prostitute her arms and induce a brave Admiral to commence hostilities which never ought to have been begun, yet the House of Commons, representing her people, have indignantly declared that they will be no parties to such injustice; and that neither for commercial advantages, nor for political advantages, nor for any other immediate advantages to their country, will they consent to stain that honour which, after all, has been and must be the sure foundation of her greatness."

"In 1780, in 1783, and in 1829, that which had been denied to reason was granted to force. Ireland triumphed, not because the justice of her claims was apparent, but because the threat of insurrection overcame prejudice, made fear superior to bigotry, and concession triumphant over persecution."

"Her Majesty's Government can see no sufficient ground for the severe censure with which Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia have visited the acts of the King of Sardinia. Her Majesty's Government will turn their eyes rather to the gratifying prospect of a people building up the edifice of their liberties, and consolidating the work of their independence, amid the sympathies and good wishes of Europe."

"For my own part, and speaking according to my limited vision, I do not believe those efforts of the Federals will be successful. No man can say that the North will subdue the South; but no man can say that the war is finally over, or that the independence of the Southern States is established....in this state of affairs I should say, that looking to the question of right, it would not be a friendly act towards the United States, it would not be to fulfil our obligations to a country with which we have long maintained relations of peace and amity—a great country which says it can still carry on the war—it would, I say, be a failure of friendship on our part if at this moment we were to interpose and recognise the Southern States."

"I rejoice heartily at the prospect of the negro vote."

"President Lincoln was a man who, though not conspicuous before his election, had since displayed a character of so much integrity, so much sincerity and straightforwardness, and at the same time of so much kindness, that if any one could have been able to alleviate the pain and animosities which prevailed during the period of civil war, I believe that President Lincoln was that person. It was remarked of President Lincoln that he always felt disinclined to adopt harsh measures; and I am told that the commanders of his armies often complained that when they had passed a sentence which they thought no more than just the President was always disposed to temper its severity. Such a man this particular epoch required."

"[H]is heart always beat for the honour of England."

"Mr. Delane is very angry because I did not kiss his hand instead of the Queen's."

"Many years ago the Political Economy Club of London came, as I was told, to a resolution that the emigration of two millions of the population of Ireland would be the best cure for her social evils. Famine and emigration have accomplished a task beyond the reach of legislation or government; and Providence has justly afflicted us by the spectacle of the results of the entire dependence on potato cultivation, and by the old fires of disaffection which had been lighted in the hearts of Irishmen, and are now burning with such fierceness on the banks of the Hudson and the Potomac. The census of 1834 gave the population of Ireland as 7,954,760; that of 1861, as 5,798,957. Thus two millions have been removed by the great famine of 1847-8 and the drain of emigration of the last twenty years."

"When Lord Grey came into office, and the Whigs, after sixty years of exclusion, began a new scheme of Irish policy, there were two prominent evils in the government of Ireland. The first was the corrupt and intolerant system of administration called Protestant Ascendancy; the second, the Irish Church Establishment. The first of these evils—called by Burke, Non regnum sed magnum latrocinium [not a kingdom but a grand theft]; and by Fox, a miserable monopolising minority—was quite as great a grievance to the people of Ireland as the second. It drove into rebellion such men as Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Emmets, and Wolfe Tone. By a series of what were called by Irish statesmen 'ripening measures,' the disaffected classes were irritated, goaded, spurred into insurrection; and when they had rebelled, were tortured, massacred, and shot, till the spirit of disloyalty, if not extirpated, was terrified and subdued. Hence a state of government, which was described by Lord Redesdale as one law for the rich and another for the poor, and both equally ill administered."

"The matter to be lamented was, that, by the unwise and narrow policy of the volunteers, the legislative independence of Ireland was confined to Protestants only; that, in the whole course of imperial policy, government by corruption was substituted for government by force; that at the Union the large and wise plans of Mr. Pitt were rejected, and the miserable monopolising minority had complete sway, dominion, and office, with the short interval of 1806, till 1830. To overthrow this vicious scheme of administration was the first duty of a liberal Government."

"The Roman Catholic Church has withstood in Europe and in Ireland the fiercest storms. In France it has survived Voltaire and Lepaux, the French Revolution and the Goddess of Reason; in England, Queen Elizabeth, William the Third, and the Penal Laws. In Ireland it still confronts us with four times as many adherents as all the Protestant churches. If we look to the fate of sovereigns, we find that James the Second forfeited the crown of England, and that Charles the Tenth sacrificed the crown of France, rather from devotion to the Church of Rome than from the failure of their political ambition."

"The case appears to me to be one between the honour of the Crown of this country and the election of General Grant as President of the United States. For my part, I prefer the honour of Her Majesty—I prefer the honour and reputation of this country—to any prospects of the re-election of General Grant."

"Belonging to the Whig party, the aim of that party has always been my aim — 'The cause of civil and religious liberty all over the world.' I have endeavoured, in the words of Lord Grey, to promote that cause without endangering the prerogatives of the Crown, the privileges of the two Houses of Parliament, or the rights and liberties of the people. According to my view, the Tory party cared little for the cause of civil and religious liberty, and the Radical party were not solicitous to preserve those parts of the Constitution which did not suit their speculative and theoretical opinions. To hold a middle way, to observe the precept of Dædalus and to avoid the fate of Icarus, is at all times difficult and in certain junctures perilous."

"For three hundred years the Protestant Established Church of Ireland has been the most odious and offensive emblem of the corruption and the intolerance of England. To have quietly removed this monopoly so offensive to the Irish nation, the target against which the arrows of Ireland's best archers were always aimed, without any of the rabbling which marked the expulsion of the English liturgy from Scotland, without disorder, without riot, is a great feat in the history of any statesman. No man can complain that he has been wronged, a nation may rejoice that she has been righted."

"I have seemed cold to my friends, but it was not in my heart."

"If you cannot afford to do justice speedily and well, you may as well shut up the Exchequer and confess that you have no right to raise taxes for the protection of the subject, for justice is the first and primary end of all government."

"What courage! There is not a man on the Tory benches around him but doesn't disapprove of every word he says."

"His life spanned the change from aristocratic to middle class England, from the England of broad acres to the England of factory chimneys. Russell was the man of the transition, the link between the old order and the new, belonging to the old order by birth, carried over to the new order by his ideas. He was the last great Whig; he became the first Liberal. Russell, more than any other single man created the Victorian compromise; he made the England we know, or knew rather, the England that is vanishing before our eyes."

"Russell was a tender-hearted man and was made wretched by the thought of all the suffering of the Irish, but he set his face against any measure of relief which would interfere with the workings of natural economic law."

"Lord John Russell—I believe you may take my word for it—has probably, from association, from tradition, from his own reading and study, and from his own just and honest sympathies, a more friendly feeling towards this question of Parliamentary Reform than any other man of his order as a statesman."

"Lord Russell had no fear of freedom. He could much more easily be persuaded to give up, and he would much more willingly abandon for ever the name of Russell than he would give up his hereditary love of freedom. The Government, which was led by Earl Russell in one House and by Mr. Gladstone in the other, was founded and acted upon the principle of trust and confidence in the people."

"My confidence in England rests partly on the honourable character of the statesmen to whose hands the reins of power are committed—on Lord John Russell and on Lord Palmerston. Lord John Russell, I will say it openly, at the risk of being considered more and more an Anglo-maniac, is the most liberal Minister in Europe."

"Busied with the tattle of valets and waiting-maids, you accidentally omitted in your Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe all notice of its most vast and most rising empire. This luckless production closed your literary career; you flung down your futile pen in incapable despair; and, your feeble intellect having failed in literature, your strong ambition took refuge in politics."

"Your aim is to reduce every thing to your own mean level—to degrade every thing to your malignant standard. ... In all your conduct it is not difficult to detect the workings of a mean and long mortified spirit suddenly invested with power,—the struggles of a strong ambition attempting, by a wanton exercise of authority, to revenge the disgrace of a feeble intellect."

"But, my Lord, how thunderstruck must be our visitor when he is told to recognise a Secretary of State in an infinitely small scarabæus;—yes, my Lord, when he learns, that you are the leader of the English House of Commons, our traveller may begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped—AN INSECT."

"Lord John Russell has that degree of imagination, which, though evinced rather in sentiment than expression, still enables him to generalise from the details of his reading and experience; and to take those comprehensive views, which, however easily depreciated by ordinary men in an age of routine, are indispensable to a statesman in the conjunctures in which we live. He understands, therefore, his position; and he has the moral intrepidity which prompts him ever to dare that which his intellect assures him is politic. He is consequently, at the same time, sagacious and bold in council. As an administrator he is prompt and indefatigable. He is not a natural orator, and labours under physical deficiencies which even a Demosthenic impulse could scarcely overcome. But he is experienced in debate, quick in reply, fertile in resource, takes large views, and frequently compensates for a dry and hesitating manner by the expression of those noble truths that flash across the fancy, and rise spontaneously to the lip, of men of poetic temperament when addressing popular assemblies. If we add to this, a private life of dignified repute, the accidents of his birth and rank, which never can be severed from the man, the scion of a great historic family, and born, as it were, to the hereditary service of the State, it is difficult to ascertain at what period, or under what circumstances, the Whig party have ever possessed, or could obtain, a more efficient leader."

"A great reputation built itself up on the basis of splendid public services for thirty years; for almost twenty it has, I fear, been on the decline. The movement of the clock continues, the balance weights are gone."

"[H]e had for the last few years done nothing, but injure a brilliant reputation."

"He brought into public life, and he carried through it unimpaired, the qualities which ennoble mankind—truth, justice, fortitude, self-denial, a fund of genuine indignation against wrong, and an inexhaustible sympathy with human suffering."

"The sham power Lord John Russell periodically wielded was not only sustained by the influence exerted by the family of the Duke of Bedford, whose younger son he was, but also by the absence of all the qualities which generally fit a person to rule over others. His Lilliputian views on everything spread to others like a contagion and contributed more to confuse the judgment of his hearers than the most ingenious misrepresentation could have done. His real talent consists in his capacity to reduce everything that he touches to his own dwarfish dimensions, to diminish the external world to an infinitesimal size and to transform it into a vulgar microcosm of his own invention. His instinct to belittle the magnificent is excelled only by the skill with which he can make the petty appear great."

"Colonial reforms, educational schemes, the "liberties of the subject", public press and public meetings, enthusiasm for war and yearning for peace—all of them were but false pretences for Lord John Russell. The whole man is one false pretence, his whole life a lie, all his activity a continuous chain of petty intrigues for the achievement of shabby ends—the devouring of public money and the usurpation of the mere semblance of power. No one has ever illustrated more strikingly the truth of the biblical words that no man can add one cubit unto his stature. Placed by birth, connections, and social accidents on a colossal pedestal, he always remained the same homunculus—a dwarf dancing on the tip of a pyramid. History has, perhaps, never exhibited any other man—so great in pettiness."

"As long as the abolition of slavery was not openly announced, as he thought it ought to have been, as one of the main objects of the war on the part of the Federals, he felt no warm sympathy with their cause. But after President Lincoln's proclamation it was quite different, and no man rejoiced with deeper thankfulness than he did at the final triumph of the Northern States, for no man held slavery in more utter abhorrence."

"Heard poor old Ld Russell was dead, having died last night. He had been ill for the last 3 weeks, & his memory quite gone. He was nearly 86. A man of much talent, who leaves a name behind him, kind, & good, with a great knowledge of the constitution who behaved very well, on many trying occasions; but he was impulsive, very selfish (as shown on many occasions, especially during Ld Aberdeen's administration) vain, & often reckless & imprudent. He was a link with the past, & was one of my first Ministers 41 years ago."

"He who knows the world will not be too bashful. He who knows himself will not be impudent."

"Do not endeavour to shine in all companies. Leave room for your hearers to imagine something within you beyond all you have said. And remember, the more you are praised, the more you will be envied."

"You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all. But let all you tell be truth."

"Insult not another for his want of a talent you possess: He may have others which you want."

"Praise your friends, and let your friends praise you."

"If you give a jest, take one. Let all your jokes be truly jokes. Jesting sometimes ends in sad earnest."

"If a favour is asked of you, grant it if you can. If not, refuse it in such a manner as that one denial may be sufficient."

"Wit without humanity degenerates into bitterness. Learning without prudence into pedantry."

"In the midst of mirth, reflect that many of your fellow creatures round the world are expiring; and that your turn will come shortly. So will you keep your life uniform and free from excess."

"Love your fellow creature, though vicious. Hate vice in the friend you love the most."

"Reproof is a medicine like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered it will do harm instead of good."

"Nothing is more unmannerly than to reflect on any man's profession, sect, or natural infirmity. He who stirs up against himself another's self-love, provokes the strongest passion in human nature."

"Be careful of your word, even in keeping the most trifling appointment. But do not blame another for a failure of that kind till you have heard his excuse."

"Never offer advice but where there is some probability of its being followed."

"If a great person has omitted rewarding your services, do not talk of it; perhaps he may not yet have had an opportunity, for they have always on hand expectants innumerable, and the clamorous are too generally gratified before the deserving; besides, it is the way to draw his displeasure upon you, which can do you no good, but make bad worse. If the services you did were voluntary, you ought not to expect any return, because you made a present of them unasked; and a free gift is not to be turned into a loan, to draw the person you have served into debt. If you have served a great person merely with a view to self-interest, perhaps he is aware of that, and rewards you accordingly: nor can you justly complain: he owes you nothing; it was not him you meant to serve."

"Fools pretend to foretell what will be the issue of things, and are laughed at for their awkward conjectures. Wise men being aware of the uncertainty of human aflairs, and having observed how small a matter often produces a great change, are modest in their conjectures."

"Never fish for praise; it is not worth the bait."

"Do well, but do not boast of it; for that will lessen the commendation you might otherwise have deserved."

"To offer advice to an angry man, is like blowing against a tempest."

"Make your company a rarity, and people will value it. Men despise what they can easily have."

"Value truth, however you come by it. Who would not pick up a jewel that lay on a dunghill?"

"The beauty of behaviour consists in the manner more than the matter of your discourse."

"There is no occasion to trample upon the meanest reptile, nor to sneak to the greatest prince. Insolence and baseness are equally unmanly."

"Do not sit dumb in company; it will be ascribed either to pride, cunning, or stupidity: give your opinion modestly, but freely; hear that of others with candour; and ever endeavour to find out, and to communicate truth."

"If you have seen a man misbehave once, do not from thence conclude him a fool; if you find he has been in a mistake in one particular, do not at once conclude him void of understanding : by that way of judging, you can entertain a favourable opinion of no man upon earth, nor even of yourself."

"In mixed company, be readier to hear than to speak, and put people upon talking of what is in their own way; for then you will both oblige them, and be most likely to improve by their conversation."

"Too much company is worse than none."

"Learning is like bank-notes: prudence and good behaviour are like silver, useful upon all occasions."

"Deep learning will make you acceptable to the learned; but it is only an obliging and easy behaviour, and entertaining conversation, that will make you agreeable to all companies."

"Men repent speaking ten times, for once that they repent keeping silence. It is an advantage to have concealed one's opinion; for by that means you may change your judgment of things (which every wise man fmds reason to do) and not be accused of fickleness."

"There is hardly any bodily blemish which a winning behaviour will not conceal, or make tolerable; and there is no external grace which ill-nature or affectation will not deform."

"If you mean to make your side of the argument appear plausible, do not prejudice the people against what you think truth by your passionate manner of defending it."

"There is an affected humility more unsufferable than downright pride, as hypocrisy is more abominable than libertimsm. Take care that your virtues be genuine and unsophisticated."

"Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago."

"If you want to gain any man's good opinion, take particular care how you behave the first time you are in company with him; the light you appear in at first, to one who is neither inclinable to think well nor ill of you, will strongly prejudice him either for or against you."

"Good humour is the only shield to keep off the darts of the satirical railer: if you have a quiver well stored, and are sure of hitting him between the joints of the harness, do not spare him; but you had better not bend your bow than miss your aim."

"The modest man is seldom the object of envy."

"Be sure of the fact before you lose time in searching for a cause."

"If you have a friend that will reprove your faults and foibles, consider you enjoy a blessing which the king upon the throne cannot have."

"In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent: so you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery."

"What may be very entertaining in company with ignorant people may be tiresome to those who know more of the matter."

"There is no method more likely to cure passion and rashness, than the frequent and attentive consideration of one's own weaknesses: this will work into the mind an habitual sense of the need one has of being pardoned, and will bring down the swelling pride and obstinacy of heart, which are the cause of hasty passion."

"If you happen into company where the talk runs into party, obscemty, scandal, folly, or vice of any kind, you had better pass for morose or unsocial, among people whose good opinion is not worth having, than shock your own conscience by joining in conversation which you must disapprove of."

"If you would have a right to account of things from illiterate people, let them tell their story in their own way; if you put them upon talking according to logical rules, you will confound them."

"I considered, that history is the inexhaustible mine, out of which political knowledge is to be brought up."

"If there be, in any region of the universe, an order of moral agents living in society, whose reason is strong, whose passions and inclinations are moderate, and whose dispositions are turned to virtue, to such an order of happy beings, legislation, administration, and police, with the endlessly various and complicated apparatus of politics, must be in a great measure superfluous. Did reason govern mankind, there would be little occasion for any other government, either monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. But man, whom we dignify with the honourable title of Rational, being much more frequently influenced, in his proceedings, by supposed interest, by passion, by sensual appetite, by caprice, by any thing, by nothing, than by reason; it has, in all civilized ages and countries, been found proper to frame laws and statutes fortified by sanctions, and to establish orders of men invested with authority to execute those laws, and inflict the deserved punishments upon the violators of them. By such means only has it been found possible to preserve the general peace and tranquillity. But, such is the perverse disposition of man, the most unruly of all animals, that this most useful institution has been generally debauched into an engine of oppression and tyranny over those, whom it was expresly and solely established to defend. And to such a degree has this evil prevailed, that in almost every age and country, the government has been the principal grievance of the people, as appears too dreadfully manifest, from the bloody and deformed page of history. For what is general history, but a view of the abuses of power committed by those, who have got it into their hands, to the subjugation, and destruction of the human species, to the ruin of the general peace and happiness, and turning the Almighty's fair and good world into a butchery of its inhabitants, for the gratification of the unbounded ambition of a few, who, in overthrowing the felicity of their fellow-creatures, have confounded their own?"

"That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them."

"All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people. Power in the people is like light in the sun: native, original, inherent, and unlimited by anything human. In governors it may be compared to the reflected light of the moon, for it is only borrowed, delegated, and limited by the intention of the people; whose it is, and to whom governors are to consider themselves aa responsible, while the people are answerable only to God; — themselves being the losers, if they pursue a false scheme of politics."

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion."

"I will dwell a little longer on his character; for it was of a very extraordinary composition. He began to make a considerable figure very early. … He had a wonderful faculty in speaking to a popular assembly, and could mix both the facetious and the serious way of arguing very agreeably. He had a particular talent to make others trust to his judgment, and depend on it: and he brought over so many to a submission to his opinion, that I never knew any man equal to him in the art of governing parties, and of making himself the head of them. He was, as to religion, a deist at best."

"For close designs and crooked counsels fit, Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit, Restless, unfixed in principles and place, In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy-body to decay And o'er informed the tenement of clay. A daring pilot in extremity, Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high, He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please, Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son, Got, while his soul did huddled notions try, And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy. In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolved to ruin or to rule the state."

"Shaftesbury had, in reality, no intention of permanently subverting the independence of the individual members or of establishing a dictatorship based on popular support. He was forced to use the people in order to maintain pressure on the King, he had to establish close relations with the radicals, but he did not intend to share power with them. He used the most unscrupulous methods—subsidising perjurers and an inflammatory press, appealing to the masses with a daring and an ability unmatched in the next century and a half, because of the long odds which he faced. The party which he developed might appear to be revolutionary and unprecedented (with the ominous exception of Pym's), Shaftesbury might seem to be a real demagogue, a veritable Tribune of the people, but his ultimate objectives were essentially conservative. His theoretical proposals for the reform of the representative system, involving a drastic reduction in the size of the electorate, would have strengthened the independence of the individual member and established an oligarchy even more secure than that which was to rule in the eighteenth century."

"Not merely were the Whigs forced into total submission and inactivity in the years after 1683, but after 1688 those who called themselves Whigs explicitly repudiated Shaftesbury's example. To them, in retrospect, he appeared to have been a dangerous incendiary, another Pym. They revered Russell and Sidney as martyrs put to death by a tyrant, but they would not acknowledge Shaftesbury as their political ancestor. The frequent changes in his long career pointed to insincerity and opportunism, and his final conversion seemed to have been a tactical change of front rather than a genuine change of heart. It was not an accident that Shaftesbury had to wait so long for a biographer and apologist; he retained too much of the character of the age and circumstances which had produced Pym and Cromwell."

"I wish I could...give you a full notion of the idea which Mr. Locke had of that nobleman's merit. He lost no opportunity of speaking to it, and that in a manner which sufficiently showed he spoke from his heart... In short, Mr. Locke, so long as he lived, remembered with much delight the time he had spent in my Lord Shaftesbury's conversation; and never spoke of his known abilities with esteem only, but even with admiration."

"A person came to make him a visit whilst he was sitting one day with a lady of his family, who retired upon that to another part of the room with her work, and seemed not to attend to the conversation between the Earl and the other person, which turned soon into some dispute upon subjects of religion; after a good deal of that sort of talk, the Earl said at last, "People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion." Upon which says the lady of a sudden, "Pray, my lord, what religion is that which men of sense agree in?" "Madam," says the Earl, "men of sense never tell it.""

"My principles are, as I believe, the Whig principles of the revolution. The main foundation of them is the irresponsibility of the crown, the consequent responsibility of ministers, and the preservation of the power and dignity of parliament as constituted by law and custom. With a heap of modern additions, interpolations, facts and fictions, I have nothing to do."

"[T]he possession of great power necessarily implies great responsibility."

"If I'd been Lord Grey, I would have knocked him down."

"It is...in my humble opinion, not a desirable thing for us to be dependent for our nourishment on foreign supplies, and I think it would be wise even to sacrifice something of commercial prosperity to the national safety and independence. This...is my strong feeling, and I have great doubt whether our commerce has not been increased by our agricultural prosperity. I entirely agree...that any change in the present system would be an evil."

"I now, my Lords, frankly declare that I resume office unequivocally and solely for this reason—that I will not abandon my Sovereign in a situation of difficulty and distress, and especially when a demand is made upon her Majesty, with which I think she ought not to comply—a demand, in my opinion, my Lords, inconsistent with her personal honour, and which, if acquiesced in, would make her reign liable to all the changes and variations of political parties, and render her domestic life one constant scene of unhappiness and discomfort."

"[T]hough I am ready to consider any measure for the purpose of alleviating that distress, I can never hold forth that this can be produced by changes in the Constitution, or by changing the persons who administer the public affairs. I am greatly opposed to this, because, if the existence of national distress is to be looked on as a reason for organic changes in the Constitution, or in the individuals who compose the Government, there is an end of all stability in public affairs. In every state of the country, I fear it will not be difficult to make out such a case of poverty and suffering, as may upon such principles support an argument for great and immediate alteration. We have lived lately in a time of great change and of many new measures. It is supposed that these measures have produced disappointment, and that the Catholic Emancipation, for instance, has not ended in the tranquillity which was expected from it, and that the Reform-bill has not improved the condition or situation of the people at large, and that those who have recommended these measures do not enjoy with the country the same popularity that they formerly did. How this may be, I know not. But this I do know, that if there is disappointment, it does not arise from the vicious principles, or the ill-working of the measures themselves but from the wild, unfounded, exaggerated expectations of their effects which were indulged in and anticipated. A man does not know himself, nor is he a safe judge of his own conduct. But I believe myself never to have contributed to the raising of these wild and illusory hopes. What I have not done before, I will not do now, because I feel certain that measures from which great, extended, and permanent benefit is intended, will be very likely to terminate in failure, and consequently in general discontent."

"I say, Archbishop, all this reforming gives a deuced deal of trouble, eh? eh? I wish they'd let it all alone...I say, Archbishop, what do you think I'd have done about this slavery business, if I'd had my own way? I'd have done nothing at all! I'd have left it all alone. It's all a pack of nonsense! Always have been slaves in all the most civilised countries; the Greeks and Romans had slaves; however, they would have their fancy, and so we've abolished slavery; but it's a great folly."

"Agitate, agitate, agitate."

"By the bye, there is one thing we haven't agreed upon, which is, what we are to say. Is it to make our corn dearer or cheaper, or to make the price steady? I don't care which: but we had better all be in the same story."

"I wish I were as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything."

"I don't like the middle classes, the higher and lower classes, there's some good in them; but the middle class are all affectation and conceit and pretence and concealment."

"What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass."

"At our Cabinet on November 26 [1838]...Palmerston afterwards brought forward the question of augmenting the Navy. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer looked black at a proposal entailing a necessity for more money and new taxes; but Lord Melbourne said we must come to that some day or the other, and we should not be justified in exposing our shores and our arsenals to the insults and outrages of a Russian fleet. Such an attack might appear to be a mad project; but it was never safe to suppose men incapable of mad projects, and even the unopposed appearance of a Russian fleet in the narrow seas would degrade England in our own eyes and in the eyes of all the world... Lord Melbourne then assumed a tone not usual with him, and said he considered England to have been under the special protection of Providence at certain periods of her history, several of which he mentioned, from the dispersion of the Spanish Armada to the retirement of the French squadron in Bantry Bay; but Melbourne added that "no man ought to count upon such interposition of Divine favour, and use no human effort.""

"The upper classes were utterly pagan. Their clear and courageous testimony remains in those immortal words of Lord Melbourne, who had led the young queen to the throne and long stood there as her protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into private life——"."

"When the King sent for him [Melbourne] he told Young "he thought it a damned bore, and that he was in many minds what he should do—be Minister or no." Young said, "Why, damn it, such a position never was occupied by any Greek or Roman, and, if it only lasts two months, it is well worth while to have been Prime Minister of England." "By God that's true," said Melbourne; "I'll go.""

"Melbourne's excellent scholarship and universal information remarkably display themselves in society, and he delivers himself with an energy which shows how deeply his mind is impressed with literary subjects."

"Melbourne is a gentleman, liberal and straightforward, with no meanness, and incapable of selfish trickery and intrigue, but he is habitually careless and insouciant, loves ease, and hates contests and squabbles, and though he would never tell a lie, he has probably not that stern and rigid regard for truth which would make him run any risk rather than that of concealing anything or suffering a false impression to be formed or conveyed with respect to any matter he might be concerned in."

"Melbourne swore that Henry VIII was the greatest man who ever lived, and Allen declared if he had not married Anne Boleyn we should have continued Catholics to this day, both of which assertions I ventured to dispute. ... Melbourne loves dashing opinions."

"Yesterday at Holland House; nobody there but Melbourne. We were talking of Reform, and Lord Holland said, "I don't know if we were right about Reform, but this I know, that if we were to propose it at all, we were right in going the lengths we did, and this was Canning's opinion." Melbourne said, "Yes, I know it was, and that was mine, and that was the reason why I was against Reform.""

"Melbourne, to do him justice, is destitute of humbug, does not see things through the medium of his wishes or prejudices, but thinks impartially, and says what he thinks."

"There has been a curious scene with Melbourne at Windsor, which was told me by Jocelyn, who was present. It was at dinner, when Melbourne was sitting next to the Queen. Some allusion was made to passing events and to the expected measure, when Melbourne suddenly broke out, "Ma'am, it is a damned dishonest act." The Queen laughed, and tried to quiet him, but he repeated, "I say again it is a very dishonest act," and then he continued a tirade against abolition of Corn Laws, the people not knowing how to look, and the Queen only laughing. The Court is very strong in favour of Free Trade, and not less in favour of Peel."

"Grey...asked me if Melbourne could be persuaded to change his office for Privy Seal and let Richmond into the Home office. His motive for wishing it was alleged indolence in Melbourne. I combated the grounds and told him a dislike to meddling legislation and his [Melbourne's] careless nonchalant Manner might give him the character of an indolent man with the inobservant, but those who had business with the office did not find him so. He did uncommonly well there and I strongly deprecated his removal even if he wished it."

"He [the Duke of Wellington] said that he was quite sure that the Queen would find Lord Melbourne an honourable man, and one in whom Her Majesty might put confidence; that he was a man apt to treat matters too lightly, or, as he expressed it, apoco curante, but in the main an honest and an honourable man."

"The reasons Melbourne lasted so long in the upper echelons of government was that although by birth, breeding and conviction he was an archetypal Whig, he made such consistently Tory noises that he retained the confidence of Parliament and country far longer than any genuine radical could have done."

"Viscount Melbourne declared himself quite satisfied with the Church as it is; but if the public had any desire to alter it, they might do as they pleased. He might have said the same thing of the Monarchy, or of any other of our institutions; and there is in the declaration a permissiveness and good humour which in public men has seldom been exceeded. Carelessness, however, is but a poor imitation of genius, and the formation of a wise and well-reflected plan of Reform conduces more to the lasting fame of a Minister than that affected contempt of duty which every man sees to be mere vanity, and a vanity of no very high description. But if the truth must be told, our Viscount is somewhat of an impostor. Every thing about him seems to betoken careless desolation: any one would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness; that he was always on the heel of pastime; that he would giggle away the Great Charter, and decide by the method of tee-totum whether my Lords the Bishops should or should not retain their seats in the House of Lords. All this is the mere vanity of surprising, and making us believe that he can play with kingdoms as other men can with nine-pins. Instead of this lofty nebulo, this miracle of moral and intellectual felicities, he is nothing more than a sensible honest man, who means to do his duty to the Sovereign and to the Country: instead of being the ignorant man he pretends to be, before he meets the deputation of Tallow-Chandlers in the morning, he sits up half the night talking with Thomas Young about melting and skimming, and then, though he has acquired knowledge enough to work off a whole vat of prime Leicester tallow, he pretends next morning not to know the difference between a dip and a mould. In the same way, when he has been employed in reading Acts of Parliament, he would persuade you that he has been reading Cleghorn on the Beatitudes, or Pickler on the Nine Difficult Points. Neither can I allow to this Minister (however he may be irritated by the denial) the extreme merit of indifference to the consequences of his measures. I believe him to be conscientiously alive to the good or evil that he is doing, and that his caution has more than once arrested the gigantic projects of the Lycurgus of the Lower House. I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings, and to brush away the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he has reared; but I accuse our Minister of honesty and diligence; I deny that he is careless or rash: he is nothing more than a man of good understanding, and good principle, disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political Roué."

"The Queen don't like his [Robert Peel] manner after—oh! how different, how dreadfully different, to that frank, open, natural and most kind, warm manner of Lord Melbourne."

"Melbourne's career was made possible only by his temperament. He possessed that acute intelligence which sees the good and bad on either side, and which naturally inclines to moderation. The great master of men, the leader of forlorn hopes, cannot succeed without a grain of stupidity. He cannot reach the pinnacle of courage or conviction if he understands the reason of his adversary's action as well as of his own. Melbourne's strength was his weakness also. He knew so much that he was too often reduced to a condition of stable equilibrium."

"Above all, his knowledge and interest were not limited by politics. There was no province of human skill or intelligence which he did not regard with an eager curiosity. He was deeply read in many literatures. He had studied the poets and historians of Greece and Rome with an acute understanding. He could illustrate the events of his own day by the experience of Thucydides. He scorned translations, and read Herodotus, for example, in the original, with great profit to himself. And he could discourse with a ready eloquence of what he knew. None of those who frequented Holland House shone in conversation with a radiance equal to Melbourne's."

"His contempt of fuss persuaded him to wear a cloak of carelessness. He refused to detect a gravity in trivial things. He persistently esteemed politics at their proper value. It was not his habit to pretend that an Act of Parliament would bring into being a new heaven and a new earth. This habit irritated his more pompous colleagues, and being known to the world brought him into an unmerited discredit. Men lacking in humour were busy with reproach against a philosophic temper which they could not understand."

"The truth is, he hated humbug and hypocrisy wherever he found them, and his sense of picturesqueness persuaded him very often to overstate his case. But this over-statement was but another expression of his virtue and honesty; and though England has known some greater Ministers than Melbourne, she has put her trust in few innately wiser or more simply devoted to her interests."

"He was not a friend to Paine's doctrines, but he was not to be deterred by a name from acknowledging that he considered the rights of man as the foundation of every government, and those who stood out against those rights as conspirators against the people. The dearest right of Englishmen was to the possession of their constitution, while it was maintained on its true principles; but if it was abused, the effect must infallibly be to inflame men's minds, and ministers alone would be responsible for the consequences which might ensue. If the people complained of grievances, let those grievances be removed, and their discontents would cease. If the people were put in possession of their rights, there would be no longer any fear of internal or foreign danger... The retreat of the duke of Brunswick, which he, along with his right hon. friend, and every friend of freedom, considered as matter of joy and exultation, had indeed thrown them into confusion."

"Bad as I am thought, I cannot express the horror I feel at this atrocity."

"Mr. Grey said, that he was prepared to defend the country, not only against an invasion of a foreign enemy, wishing to inculcate their own dangerous principles, which were clearly most subversive of civil society, but he would defend it, at the risk of his life, against the subjects of any government, if it was the best that human wisdom could devise; he did not however think it was candid, or by any means conciliatory, in the right hon. gentleman, on every occasion that presented itself to introduce the words "just and necessary" war. He declared he was much obliged to an hon. gentleman who had done him the honour to remember his words. He had declared, and he would declare again, that he would rather live under the most despotic monarchy, nay, even under that of the king of Prussia, or the empress of Russia, than under the present government of France. He wished the chancellor of the exchequer had descended a little from his high and haughty tone of prerogative, and had informed the House, in plain, simple, intelligible language his real opinion of the legality of the measure which ministers had thought to pursue with respect to voluntary subscriptions. As for himself, he would insist, that to raise money without the authority of parliament, for any public purpose whatsoever, was illegal; and if right hon. gentleman should insist on contrary, it would give a deeper wound the constitution than any that it had received even from that right hon. gentleman."

"What was the conduct of the minister in the year 1782, when his pretended sincerity for a parliamentary reform had been defeated in that House, by a motion for the order of the day? He had abandoned it for ever. William Pitt, the reformer of that day, was William Pitt the prosecutor, aye, and persecutor too, of reformers now... What was object of these people? "Their ostensible object," said the minister, "is parliamentary reform; but their real object is the destruction of the government of the country." How was that explained? "By the resolutions," said the minister, "of these persons themselves; for they do not talk of applying to parliament, but of applying to the people for the purpose of obtaining a parliamentary reform." If this language be criminal, said Mr. Grey, I am one of the greatest criminals. I say, that from the House of Commons I have no hope of a parliamentary reform; that I have no hope of a reform, but from the people themselves; that this House will never reform itself, or destroy the corruption by which it is supported, by any other means than those of the resolutions of the people, acting on the prudence of this House, and on which the people ought to resolve. This they only do by meeting in bodies. This was the language of the minister in 1782."

"Mr. Grey was much obliged to his hon. friend for submitting the motion to the House. The length of time during which the nation had groaned under such vexatious and tyrannical institutions, was with him a reason why they should exist no longer, and he wished Mr. Curwen to move for a committee to inquire into the state of the game laws."

"What I most heartily wish for is, a union between the two countries: by a union I mean something more than a mere word—a union, not of parliaments, but of hearts, affections, and interests—a union of vigour, of ardour, of zeal for the general welfare of the British empire. It is this species of union, and this only, that can tend to increase the real strength of the empire, and give it security against any danger. But if any measure with the name only of union be proposed, and the tendency of which would be to disunite us, to create disaffection, distrust, and jealousy, it can only tend to weaken the whole of the British empire. Of this nature do I take the present measure to be. Discontent, distrust, jealousy, suspicion, are the visible fruits of it in Ireland already: if you persist in it, resentment will follow; and although you should be able, which I doubt, to obtain a seeming consent of the parliament of Ireland to the measure, yet the people of that country would wait for an opportunity of recovering their rights, which they will say were taken from them by force."

"We are referred to the period the Revolution [of 1688]. We are told to be contented with those securities for our liberties which our ancestors provided... It is pleaded as an invincible bar to any improvement proposed in favour of the people, though it is not allowed the smallest authority when it is opposed to an enlargement of power: when the crown is to be invested with any new prerogatives, the ancient landmarks may be removed without a scruple, but they are sacred against the best founded claims of the people... The point now is, to inquire, whether, in the course of human affairs, and the changes which time and events have produced, the principle of freedom has preserved those bulwarks and securities with which it was the object of the Revolution to invest it? Whether the crown has not gained a degree of influence beyond the regulated portion assigned by the establishments of our ancestors, and which either has been, or threatens to become, injurious to cause of liberty and to the of the empire?"

"Has, then, the influence of the crown increased since the Revolution? Down to the period of 1782 I believe the fact will not be much disputed. It was upon the notoriety of the fact, and the bad consequences it had produced, that the motions of the right hon. gentleman in favour of reform were founded. That it has increased, I think every impartial man must be compelled to admit... If, then, while the influence of the crown has so manifestly advanced, while the cause of liberty has remained the same, or has sustained a diminution of its strength, can it be said that we are standing upon the establishment of the Revolution, and adhering to the principles which it ascertained? It is, then, upon this ground of experience and the evidence of facts, upon proof of positive inconvenience and real declination from its original purity, that I should propose to recall our constitution to its true principles and to amend the system of our representation."

"I have from the beginning been adverse to distant expeditions for the purpose of expanding our colonial possessions. They are necessarily attended with a further division of our force, and with a diminution of our means of acting in Europe. Whilst we are acquiring colonies, the enemy is subjugating the Continent; and though I am by no means disposed to raise doubts of our ability to maintain the contest in this manner, I cannot help fearing the effect of any system which might enable the French, either completely to subdue the remaining Powers of the Continent, or to engage them in opinion against this country... In Europe the most formidable danger exists. It is there that every effort should be made to stop the career of the enemy. Our interest and our reputation are equally at stake. Our allies have a right to look to us for support, and our honour requires that we should not appear to be wanting to the common cause. With a view, therefore, to a continuance of the war on the Continent, I am strongly of opinion that we should immediately collect and prepare for embarkation the largest possible British force that can be made applicable to such a service."

"[The Spanish news] really keeps me awake at night and in the day I can think of nothing else. I did not think it possible that anything could have made me regret being out of office, but I now wish I was in a situation, in which it might be possible to assist this glorious cause."

"To assist the Spaniards is morally and politically one of the highest duties a nation ever had to perform."

"Wellesley's success...appears to have been nothing more than an affair of a rear-guard, and is ridiculously magnified."

"I think I entirely agree with you on the subject of Portugal; all the probabilities were, and in my opinion still are, against eventual success there. I have no faith even in the promised victory... I could not deny that such a success would be worth the sacrifices we had made for it. But a doubtful or indecisive victory, and protracted operations, I should think little less ruinous (I am not sure they would not be more so) than an immediate defeat."

"Earl Grey rose, and said, that the motion of the noble lord had his most entire and full assent... [H]e could not sit silent on the occasion, impressed as he was with feelings of gratitude and admiration towards that great commander who was the subject of this vote, and deriving a just national pride from the consideration, that the honour of the country had been so greatly exalted by the conduct of that distinguished general and his brave army... [T]he apparent contrast, or contradiction, as some might call it, between the sentiments which he had now delivered, and the opinions which he had expressed on former occasions... [U]pon the whole it appeared manifest, that by the most exemplary and patient perseverance under unfavourable circumstances, and at the moment of action by the skilful combination of force and the most determined courage, a great success had been achieved, and as much honour done to the British army as any victory could have accomplished."

"[T]he French are on the point of making a great effort in Portugal...which Lord Wellington...will find himself unable to resist. But even if such an effort could not take place or should not succeed, I am convinced the period when we shall be obliged to give up the contest from an absolute inability to support the expense, is fast approaching."

"[Accounts from Russia lead me to conclude,] as you probably have done, that no reasonable hope of success is to be entertained in that quarter."

"With all the uncertainty of the success of the next campaign, and with the absolute certainty that we are now making our last effort...I should be willing to conclude a peace, which compared with our situation a year ago would be most advantageous, though it may be one to which, with our resources entire, I should not have been willing to submit."

"It is impossible not to admire his ability, resource, and fortitude, in presenting himself everywhere to repel the dangers which assail him."

"I cannot agree with you that the money in Spain has been ineffectual in producing the better hope which now exists... I still think that our opinions at the beginning and in the progress of the Spanish contest were well warranted by such data as we then had to reason upon... But I cannot say that as things have turned out, contrary certainly to any expectations, the event of the Spanish war has not been both honourable and advantageous to this country."

"I have written with a very confused head from the affects of laudanum."

"[T]his indeed is one of the most mischievous effects of the proceedings of the Radicals, that by abusing popular privileges they establish precedents for abridging them. My views of the state of the country are more and more gloomy. Everything is tending, and has for some time been tending, to a complete separation between the higher and lower orders of society; a state of things which can only end in the destruction of liberty."

"Look at the men themselves who lead in this cause. Is there one among them with whom you would trust yourself in the dark? Can you have, I will not say, any confidence in their opinions and principles, but any doubt of the wickedness of their intentions? Look at them, at their characters, at their conduct. What is there more base, and more detestable, more at variance with all tact and decency, as well as all morality, truth, and honour? A cause so supported cannot be a good cause. They may use Burdett as an instrument for a time, and you also if you place yourself in their trammels, but depend upon it, if a convulsion follows their attempt to work upon the minds of the people, inflamed as they now are by distress, for which your reform will afford a very inadequate remedy, I shall not precede you many months on the scaffold, which you will have assisted in preparing for us both."

"The noble lord who moved the address had, in the course of his speech, warned the House not to let an anxiety for liberty lead to a compromise of the safety of the state. He, for his part, could not separate those things. The safety of the state could only be found in the protection of the liberties of the people. Whatever was destructive of the latter also destroyed the former... The discontent existing in the country had been insisted on as a ground for the adoption of some measures... But there was another axiom no less true—that there never was an extensive discontent without great misgovernment... When no attention was paid to the calls of the people for relief, when their petitions were rejected and their sufferings aggravated, was it wonderful that at last public discontents should assume a formidable aspect?"

"Their lordships had some experience in that House two years ago, when restrictive laws were passed and when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended... The effect of these measures was, in his opinion, the cause of a great portion of the discontent which now prevailed. After all the experience which they had had, there was no attempt at conciliation, no concession to the people; nothing was alluded to but a resort to coercion... The natural consequence of such a system, when once begun, was that it could not be stopped: discontents begot the necessity of force; the employment of force increased discontents: these would demand the exercise of new powers, till by degrees they would depart from all the principles of the constitution... Could government rest with confidence upon the sword for security? It was impossible that a government of such a nature could exist in England...without that spirit which the knowledge of the advantages they enjoyed under their constitution infused, all their energies would flag, and all their feelings by which their glory as a nation had been established, would be utterly dissipated."

"The claim set up was nothing less than the right of a general superintendence of the states of Europe, and of the suppression of all changes in their internal government, if those changes should be hostile to what the Holy Alliance called the legitimate principles of government... Every reform of abuses, every improvement in government, which did not originate with a sovereign, of his own free will, was to be prevented. Were this principle to be successfully maintained, the triumph of tyranny would be complete, and the chains of mankind would be riveted for ever... He was one of those old-fashioned politicians who thought that every great political change might be traced to previous misgovernment... Let their lordships look to the revolution of 1688, and then he would ask them, if it could have been carried into effect without the combinations of those great men, who restored and secured our religion, our laws, and our liberties, and without such mutual communications among them as would bring them under the description of a sect or party?"

"I am a great lover of morality, public and private, but the intercourse of nations cannot be strictly regulated by that rule."

"I am indeed convinced that the more the bill is considered, the less it will be found to prejudice the real interests of the aristocracy."

"This is indeed a maxim of general application... Nations cannot be governed by the obligations of friendship which prevail among individuals in private life... There can be, in the eyes of a philosophical statesman neither national enmities, nor national friendships."

"Charles Grey was the most consistent political failure of his age. When he became prime minister in 1830, aged 66, he had sat in parliament for 44 years, yet had spent only 15 months in office. Finally, he had his chance. Given power at last, he used it to destroy the political system that had excluded him for so long. And that had excluded his uncles, cousins and aunts: in all, it was claimed that Grey named 20 of his relatives to appointments, sinecures or pensions during the ministry of 1830–34, from which they netted a cool £202,892 6s 2d... Since G. M. Trevelyan published his classic biography in 1920, Grey has been splendidly debunked by modern scholarship. Instead of the logical and long-planned culmination of Grey's career, the 1832 Reform Bill now stands as the short-term product of political contingency. As late as February 1830, he warned his elder son not to get involved with parliamentary reform: "You cannot rely on the support of the people.""

"During his last illness [in 1845], when no longer able to walk, he used to be wheeled about the house in a chair, and on one occasion, when stopping, as he often did, before Mr. Fox's bust, and speaking of the influence he had held over him, he added, ‘Yet he did not always use it as he might of done—one word from him would have kept me out of all the mess of the “Friends of the People,” but he never spoke it.’ When I remarked that, considering he only advocated as one of that Society the principles to which he had given effect as Minister, this was hardly to be regretted, he replied, ‘that might be true, but there were men joined with them in that Society, whose views, though he did not know it at the time, were widely different from his own, and with whom it was not safe to have any communication.’"

"Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honour. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone, culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigour of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost."

"Grey was the very type of the old whig nobleman, punctiliously honourable and high-minded, and devoted to the constitution and to popular liberty as he understood them. At the same time his views were narrow, he was personally diffident and timorous in reform, and even less democratic than many of his opponents. (For his general opinions and comments on passing events see LE STRANGE'S Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey, 1824–34, London, 1890, a collection of his letters to the wife of the Russian ambassador, with whom he maintained a most intimate friendship.) At the time when, after his long exclusion from office, he became prime minister, he had outlived the power of feeling or inspiring enthusiasm; but it was perhaps fortunate that at a moment of so much popular excitement the ministry was led by so cold a man. He was a great orator and a great debater, and, like all great orators, was very nervous just before rising to deliver his greatest speeches. He was exceedingly ready in apprehending complicated statements of fact, and in bringing them home to his hearers."

"Grey was an ambitious man who always wished to lead, but his overt ambition during his youth made him unpopular. He lacked the warmth of personality that made Fox revered by his followers. Grey was respected but rarely loved. His achievements were few, but they were significant. He helped to keep liberal principles alive during the years of conflict with revolutionary France, and in 1832 he safeguarded the continuity of the British constitution into an era of increasingly rapid social and political change. In character he was a man of contradictions, headstrong but easily discouraged by failure, imperious but indecisive, cautious and introspective. He was at his best when in office, for he sought fame and reputation: in opposition he often became despondent. He was a man of principle and integrity, though not always successful in execution. His bearing and attitudes were aristocratic, and his instincts were fundamentally conservative. He was a whig of the eighteenth-century school, most at home among his deferential clients, tenants, and labourers at Howick, and he never came to terms with the new industrial society which was coming into being during his later years. It is greatly to his credit that his Reform Act, whatever its conservative purpose, smoothed the path for that new society to establish its dominance without destroying the old."

"Courts of equity have always considered it of the greatest possible importance that parties should not sleep on their rights."

"A master should be paid liberally, in order to secure a person properly qualified."

"The duty of relieving his fellow creature in distress is imposed on the Christian irrespective of religious doctrines and tenets, and notwithstanding that the object of charity may worship God in an erroneous manner, but in that which he believes to be most acceptable to his Creator."

"If a client be present in Court, and stand by and see his solicitor enter into terms of an agreement, and makes no objection whatever to it, he is not at liberty afterwards to repudiate it."

"The decisions of the House of Lords are binding on me and upon all the Courts except itself."

"The plaintiff cannot dive into the secret recesses of his (the defendant's) heart."

"If a man who makes to another person, upon a solemn occasion, an assertion, upon which that person acts, he lies under an obligation to make good his assertion."

"The Court exercises its jurisdiction for the enforcement of the truth, and makes a man's acts square with his words, by compelling him to perform what he has undertaken."

"There is no magic in words."

"The public can have no rights springing from injustice to others."

"Clubs are very peculiar institutions. They are societies of gentlemen who meet principally for social purposes, superadded to which there are often certain other purposes, sometimes of a literary nature, sometimes to promote political objects, as in the Conservative or the Reform Club. But the principal objects for which they are designed are social, the others are only secondary. It is, therefore, necessary that there should be a good understanding between all the members, and that nothing should occur that is likely to disturb the good feeling that ought to subsist between them."

"It is essential, when persons in trade come into this Court, that they should remember that the administration of equity is founded on perfect truth, and that if persons attempt to mislead the public by stating that which is not true, this Court will restrain them upon a clear case being made out against them."

"There is no point on which a greater amount of decision is to be found in Courts of law and equity than as to what is reasonable; for instance, reasonable time, reasonable notice, and the like. It is impossible a priori to state what is reasonable in such cases. You must have the particular facts of each case established before you can ascertain what is meant by reasonable time, notice, and the like."

"Amendments ought not to be made, except in cases where the alteration is of such a nature as that no one can be misled by it."

"Inconvenience arising from the operation of an Act of Parliament can be no ground of argument in a Court of law."

"No man can come into a British Court of justice to seek the assistance of the law who founds his claim upon a contravention of the British laws."

"In matters where a company is not restrained by Parliament they have a right to make reasonable regulations; but it will always be a question whether their regulations are reasonable or not."

"When Courts adopt a fiction they must necessarily support it."

"The act of a single Judge, unless adopted by the Court to which he belongs, is of no validity. As the Courts do not sit in vacation, many things are done by the Judges individually; but their acts, when recognised, become the acts of the Court."

"It is true that Courts of equity, in administering justice, sometimes go further than the Courts of law."

"I will not say that a witness shall not be asked to what may tend to disparage him: that would prevent an investigation into the character of the witness, which may often be of importance to ascertain. I think those questions only should not be allowed to be asked which have a direct and immediate effect to disgrace or disparage the witness."

"That it hath been the constant opinion of all ages, that the Parliament of England had an unquestionable Power to Limit, Restrain and Qualify the Succession as they pleased, and that in all Ages they have put their power in practise; and that the Historian had reason for saying, That seldom or never the third Heir in a right Descent enjoy'd the Crown of England."

"The preservation of every Government depends upon an exact adherance unto its Principles, and the essential Principle of the English Monarchy, being that well proportioned distribution of Powers, whereby the Law doth at once provide for the Greatness of the King, and the Safety of the People; the Government can subsist no longer, than whilst the Monarch enjoying the Power which the Law doth give him, is enabled to perform the part it allows unto him, and the People are duly protected in their Rights and Liberties."

"[I]f they mean by these Lovers of Commonwealth Principles, Men passionately devoted to the Publick Good, and to the common Service of their Country, who believe that Kings were instituted for the good of the People, and Government ordained for the sake of those that are to be governed, and therefore complain or grieve when it is used to contrary ends, every wise and honest Man will be proud to be ranked in that number."

"An honest Jury will thankfully accept good Advice from Judges, as they are Assistants; but they are bound by their Oaths to present the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, to the best of their own, not the Judges, knowledge."

"Whosoever hath learnt that, the Kings of England were, ordained for the good Government of the Kingdom in the Execution of the Laws, must needs know, that the King cannot lawfully seek any other benefit in judicial proceedings, than that common Right and Justice be done to the People according to their Laws and Customs."

"Moreover all humane Laws were ordained for the preservation of the Innocent, and for their sakes only are punishments inflicted; that those of our own Country do solely regard this, was well understood by Fortescue, who saith. Indeed I could rather with Twenty Evildoers to escape death through pitty, than one man to be unjustly condemned. Such Blood hath cried to Heaven for Vengeance against Families and Kingdoms, and their utter destruction hath ensued. If a Criminal should be acquitted by too great lenity, caution, or otherwise, he may be reserved for future Justice from Man or God, if he doth not repent; but 'tis impossible that satisfaction or reparation should be made for innocent Bloodshed in the forms of Justice."

"[T]he King's going to a foreign Power, and casting himself into his hands, absolves the People from their Allegiance. He sent an Ambassador to Rome, received a Nuntio from thence, received a foreign Jurisdiction, and set up Romish Bishops in England, that the Popish Religion might intervene with the Government, thereby to subject the Nation to the Pope, as much as to a foreign Prince."

"That King James the Second by going about to Subvert the Constitution, and by Breaking the Original Contract between King and People, and by Violating the Fundamental Laws, and Withdrawing himself out of the Kingdom, hath thereby Renounced to be a King according to the Constitution, by Avowing to Govern by a Despotick Power, unknown to the Constitution, and Inconsistent with it; he hath Renounced to be a King according to the Law, such a King as he Swore to be at his Coronation; such a King to whom the Allegiance of an English Subject is due; and hath set up another kind of Dominion, which is to all Intents an Abdication, or Abandoning of his Legal Title, as fully as if it had been done by express Words. And, my Lords, for these Reasons, the Commons do insist upon the Word Abdicated, and cannot agree to the Word Deserted."

"[T]he greatest Man in the whole Commonwealth of Letters (meaning my Lord Somers)."

"[His name is surrounded] with a mild but imperishable glory, which, in contrast to our dark ignorance respecting all the particulars and details of his life, gives the figure altogether something of the mysterious and ideal."

"I never desire to be thought a better whig than Lord Somers, or to understand the principles of the Revolution better than those, by whom it was brought about, or to read in the Declaration of Right any mysteries unknown to those whose penetrating style has engraved in our ordinances, and in our hearts, the words and spirit of that immortal law."

"[T]he greatest distinction which Somers acquired at the bar, previous to the Revolution, was on the trial of the Seven Bishops. The proposal, that he should be one of their counsel, rather shocked some of the Right Reverend defendants, who at last, driven to question the prerogative of the Crown when directed against the exclusive immunities of the Church, had often preached the doctrine of passive obedience, and had heard this rising young lawyer denounced as "nothing better than a Whig;" but "old Pollexfen insisted upon him, and would not be himself retained without him, representing him as the man who would take most pains, and go deepest into all that depended on precedents and records.""

"[H]e is generally acknowledged to have been a cultivated man of wide interests and an outstanding lawyer-statesman."

"[Somers was one of the] brightest ornaments of the bar in the late seventeenth century."

"Somers, the most distinguished Whig statesman of his generation."

"Somers, who was the leading figure in the Junto in William's reign and remained so for all but the last few years of Anne's, when his health broke down, was a man whose greatness had to be acknowledged even by the Tories. One of the most distinguished lawyers ever to sit on the Woolsack, he contributed the finest intellect in the party, and also qualities of integrity and moral strength in which some of his colleagues were at times deficient."

"[T]he greatest man among the members of the Junto, and, in some respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and as a writer. His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence. He had left a great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, during four years, been always heard with delight; and the Whig members still looked up to him as their leader, and still held their meetings under his roof. In the great place to which he had recently been promoted, he had so borne himself that, after a very few months, even faction and envy had ceased to murmur at his elevation. In truth, he united all the qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive, quick and acute, diligence, integrity, patience, suavity. In council, the calm wisdom which he possessed in a measure rarely found among men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle."

"[Pitt said] he saw combinations of great Lords against him but for his part he would go his own way; that he was a British subject and he knew he stood upon British ground; that he had learnt his maxims and principles under the great Lord Cobham and the disciples of the greatest lawyers, generals and patriots of King William's days: named Lord Somers and the Duke of Marlborough."

"Somers was a statesman. He was a Whig, unwavering in his allegiance to Revolution politics. Much of the discussion of the time turned on the succession and divine right. Somers maintained that of course people could change their rulers if they were tyrannical. History supported their claim. ... In none of the tracts nor any of those utterance which have come down to us does Somers appear radical in his ideas. ... He was interested in just and modest government by King, Lords and Commons. ... In everything we know about Somers we see the statesman and the temperate supporter of a constitution which secured lives, liberties and properties, provision for common benefit, freedom for all men accused of sins against society. Such sentiments must always be an honour to the Whig tradition."

"Dr. Bathurst always boasted with singular satisfaction, the education of so learned and eloquent a lawyer, so sincere a patriot, and so elegant a scholar, as lord Somers."

"Instead of returning formal thanks for the honour you have conferred upon me, let me bind myself to new duties in your service; to strain every nerve to effectuate a modification of the Law of Poynings, also to secure this country against the illegal claims of the British Parliament; and as a foundation to propose (if it seems the general sense, and if no person of more experience undertakes it,) immediately after the recess, "A Declaration of the Rights of Ireland.""

"Before you decide on the practicability of being slaves for ever, look to America. Do you see nothing in that America but the grave and prison of your armies? and do you not see in her range of territory, cheapness of living, variety of climate, and simplicity of life,—the drain of Europe? Whatever is bold and disconsolate, sullen virtue and wounded pride; all, all to that point will precipitate; and what you trample on in Europe will sting you in America. When Philadelphia or whatever city the American appoints for empire, sends forth her ambassadors to the different kings in Europe, and manifests to the world her independency and power; do you imagine you will persuade Ireland to be satisfied with an English Parliament making laws for her; satisfied with a refusal to her loyalty, of those privileges which were offered to the arms of America?"

"Let me conclude by observing, that you have the two claims before you; the claim of England to power, and of Ireland to liberty: and I have shown you, that England has no title to that power to make laws for Ireland; none by nature, none by compact, none by usage, and none by conquest; and that Ireland has several titles against the claims of England;—a title by nature, a title by compact, and a title by divers positive acts of parliament; a title by charter, and by all the laws by which England possesses her liberties;—by England's interpretation of those laws, by her renunciation of conquest, and her acknowledgment of the law of original compact."

"Yet while I think retrenchment absolutely necessary, I am not very sure that this is just the time to make it in the army,—now when England has acted justly, I will not say generously,—now when she has lost her empire—when she still feels the wounds of the last unhappy war, and comforts herself only with the faithful friendship of Ireland."

"I would now wish to draw the attention of the House to the alarming measure of drilling the lowest classes of the populace, by which a stain had been put on the character of the Volunteers. The old, the original Volunteers had become respectable, because they represented the property of the nation: but attempts had been made to arm the poverty of the kingdom. They had originally been the armed property of Ireland. Were they to become the armed beggary! Will any man defend this? These measures I lament and condemn, because they have been called the measures of the people of Ireland; but the people have not been guilty, and are incapable of being guilty of such vanities."

"We could not mean, by that vote, that the present pension list was no grievance, for there was no man in debate hardy enough to make such an assertion; no man considers what that pension list is; it is the prodigality, jobbing, misapplication, and corruption, of every Irish minister since 1727."

"The Roman Catholics whom I love, and the Protestants whom I prefer, are both, I hope, too enlightened to renew religious animosity. I do not hesitate to say I love the Roman Catholic—I am a friend to his liberty—but it is only in as much as his liberty is entirely consistent with your ascendancy, and an addition to the strength and freedom of the Protestant community. These being my principles, and the Protestant interest my first object, you may judge that I shall never assent to any measure tending to shake the security of property in this kingdom, or to subvert the Protestant ascendancy."

"I sit down re-asserting my sentiments, which are, that the removal of all disabilities is necessary to make the Catholic a freeman, and the Protestant a people."

"We have a monarchy, the best form of government for rational and durable liberty."

"We admire the wisdom which at so critical a season has prompted your Majesty to come forward to take a leading part in healing the political dissentions of your people on account of religion. We shall take into our immediate consideration the subject graciously recommended from the throne; and at a time when doctrines pernicious to freedom and dangerous to monarchial government are propagated in foreign countries, we shall not fail to impress your Majesty's Catholic subjects with a sense of the singular and eternal obligation they owe to the throne and to your Majesty's royal person and family."

"Sir, this bill I pronounce to be an anti-whig and anti-constitutional measure, and the boldest step that ever yet was made to introduce a military government."

"But, that these measures, this general plan of conduct should be pursued by Ireland, with a fixed, steady, and unalterable resolution, to stand or fall with Great Britain. Whenever Great Britain, therefore, should be clearly involved in war, it is my idea that Ireland should grant her a decided and unequivocal support; except, that war should be carried on against her own liberty."

"I conceive the continuance of Lord Fitzwilliam as necessary for the prosperity of this kingdom. His firm integrity is formed to correct; his mild manners to reconcile, and his private example to discountenance a progress of vulgar and rapid pollution; if he is to retire, I condole with my country. For myself, the pangs on that occasion I should feel, on rendering up my small portion of ministerial breath, would be little, were it not for the gloomy prospects afforded by those dreadful guardians which are likely to succeed. I tremble at the return to power of your old task-masters: that combination which galled the country with its tyranny, insulted her by its manners, exhausted her by its rapacity, and slandered her by its malice. Should such a combination, once inflamed, as it must be now by the favour of the British court, and by the reprobation of the Irish people, return to power, I have no hesitation to say that they will extinguish Ireland, or Ireland must remove them."

"Try this plan. Reform the Parliament; let the King identify with his people; there is his strength; let him share with them, or rather let them share with him, the blessings of the constitution; as they have given him the powers of government, let him restore to them the rights of self-legislation; without that they have no liberty, and without full and free representation in the Commons they have not that; they have the name indeed, but they have not the substance."

"What is your plan? There are but two measures in the country, reform or force. We have offered you the former; you seem inclined to the latter. Let us consider it: "To subdue, to coerce, to establish unqualified submission;" an arduous, a precarious undertaking! Have you well weighed all its consequences? Is there not much of passion in your judgment? Have you not lost your temper a little in the contest? I am sure you have shown this night symptoms of irritation—a certain impatience of the complaints of the people. So it was in the American business. Nothing less in that contest than their unconditional submission. Alas! what was the consequence? As far as you have tried your experiment here, it has failed; the report shows you it has failed. It has increased the evil it would restrain; it has propagated the principle it would punish; but if repeated and invigorated you think it will have more success; I apprehend not. Do not you perceive, that instead of strengthening monarchy by constitutional principles, you are attempting to give it force by despotic ones? That you are giving the new principle the advantage of success abroad and of suffering at home, and that you are losing the people, while you think you are strengthening the throne; that you have made a false alliance with unnatural principles, and instead of identifying with the people, you identify with abuses?"

"The object, you said, was separation, so here the reform of parliament, you say, and Catholic emancipation are only pretexts; the object, you say, is separation, and here you exact unconditional submission—"YOU MUST SUBDUE BEFORE YOU REFORM." Indeed! Alas! you think so; but you forget you subdue by reforming; it is the best conquest you can obtain over your own people; but let me suppose you succeed, what is your success?—a military government, a perfect despotism, an hapless victory over the principles of a mild government and a mild constitution! a Union! but what may be the ultimate consequence of such a victory? A separation!"

"The thing he proposes to buy, is what cannot be sold—LIBERTY! For it, he has nothing to give: every thing of value which you possess, you obtained under a free constitution; part with it, and you must be not only a slave but an idiot."

"The Parliament of Ireland—of that assembly I have a parental recollection. I sate by her cradle, I followed her hearse. In fourteen years she acquired for Ireland what you did not acquire for England in a century—freedom of trade, independency of the legislature, independency of the judges, restoration of the final judicature, repeal of a perpetual mutiny bill, habeas corpus act, nullum tempus act—a great work! You will exceed it, and I shall rejoice. I call my countrymen to witness, if in that business I compromised the claims of my country, or temporised with the power of England; but there was one thing which baffled the effort of the patriot, and defeated the wisdom of the senate, it was the folly of the theologian."

"I am convinced that it is their policy, as well as their duty, and I am sure it is their disposition, to maintain a perpetual connexion with the British Empire. To keep clear of every association with wild projectors for universal suffrage and annual Parliaments, and continue to cultivate those gracious dispositions in the Royal Breast which had been early manifested in their favour, and to accept of emancipation upon the terms that are substantial and honourable. Pursuing such a principle, and with the temper and conduct which they are manifesting, and which I am proud to contemplate, they must succeed. They desire a privilege to worship their God according to the best of their judgment, and they have a right to do so with impunity, and without the interference of the state. I shall go to England for your question, and should the attempt prove less fortunate to my health, I shall be more than repaid by the reflection that I make my last effort for the liberty of my country."

"He entered the Imperial Parliament in 1805, and continued, with the exception of the question upon the renewal of the war in 1815, a constant and most powerful coadjutor of the Whig party, refusing office when they came into power upon Mr. Pitt's death, but lending them a strenuous support upon all great questions, whether of English policy or of Irish, and showing himself most conspicuously above the mean and narrow spirit that would confine a statesman's exertions to the questions which interest one portion of the empire, or with which his own fame in former times may have been more peculiarly entwined."

"Among the orators, as among the statesmen of his age, Mr. Grattan occupies a place in the foremost rank; and it was the age of the Pitts, the Foxes, and the Sheridans. His eloquence was of a very high order, all but of the very highest, and it was eminently original. In the constant stream of a diction replete with epigram and point—a stream on which floated gracefully, because naturally, flowers of various hues,—was poured forth the closest reasoning, the most luminous statement, the most persuasive display of all the motives that could influence, and of all the details that could enlighten, his audience."

"His speech was interwoven with expressions of loyalty to the King, and with sentiments of affection to and inseparable connection with Great Britain, of a disposition to give her every possible assistance, yet with a determination never to yield to the supremacy of the British Legislature."

"I am not afraid of the Right Honourable Member, I will meet him any where, or upon any ground, by night or by day.—I would stand poorly in my own estimation, and in my country's opinion, if I did not stand far above him.—I do not come here dressed in a rich wardrobe of words to delude the people—I am not one who has promised repeatedly to bring in a bill of rights, yet does not bring in that bill or permit any other person to do it—I am not one who threatened to impeach the Chief Justice of the King's Bench for acting under an English law, and afterwards shrunk from that business—I am not the author of the simple repeal—I am not one who, after saying the parliament was a parliament of prostitutes, endeavoured to make their voices subservient to my interest—I am not one who would come at midnight, and attempt by a vote of this House to stifle the voice of the people, which my egregious folly had raised against me—I am not the gentleman who subsists upon your accounts—I am not the mendicant patriot who was bought by my country for a sum of money, and then sold my country for prompt payment."

"The alteration of the Mutiny bill, which had been sent from hence, to a perpetual one, excited very general indignation; other impolitic acts were complained of. The spirit of the nation flamed higher than ever. Mr. Grattan not so much imbibing, as diffusing, a large portion of that spirit, and acting in concert with his friend, Lord Charlemont, moved a declaration of rights in favour of Ireland. The oration which he made on that occasion can never be forgotten by those who heard it. The language of Milton, or Shakespeare, can alone describe its effects."

"When he rose curiosity was excited, and one might have heard a pin drop in that crowded house. It required indeed intense attention to catch the strange and long deep-fetched whisper in which he began; and I could see the incipient smile curling on Mr. Pitt's lips, at the brevity and antithesis of his sentences, his grotesque gesticulations, peculiar and almost foreign accent, and arch articulation and countenance. As he proceeded, however, the sneers of his opponents were softened into courtesy and attention, and, at length, settled in delight and admiration. Mr. Pitt beat time to the artificial but harmonious cadence of his periods, and Mr. Canning's countenance kindled at the brightness of a fancy, which in glitter fully equalled, in real warmth and power far exceeded, his own. Never was triumph more complete."

"Among the many eccentricities that distinguished Mr. Grattan as an orator, nothing was more remarkable than this apparent contradiction. He was artificial in manner, in utterance, in pronunciation, and in style; and yet he breathed such a spirit of benevolence, such a warmth of feeling, and such sincerity of principle, into all his speeches, that, like Mr. Fox himself, he won as much on the affections as on the understanding of his audience. From this period he became a favourite of the House: they not only admired his orations, but revered the man. They treated him, even in the decline of his powers, with a deference and tenderness that nothing but a long tenor of honourable conduct and many proofs of an amiable disposition can command or deserve."

"The eloquence of Grattan, in his best days, was in some respects perhaps the finest that has been heard in either country since the time of Chatham. Considered simply as a debater, he was certainly inferior to both Fox and Pitt, and perhaps to Sheridan; but he combined two of the very highest qualities of a great orator to a degree that was almost unexampled. No British orator except Chatham had an equal power of firing an educated audience with an intense enthusiasm, or of animating and inspiring a nation. No British orator except Burke had an equal power of sowing his speeches with profound aphorisms and associating transient questions with eternal truths. His thoughts naturally crystallised into epigrams; his arguments were condensed with such admirable force and clearness that they assumed almost the appearance of axioms; and they were often interspersed with sentences of concentrated poetic beauty, which flashed upon the audience with all the force of sudden inspiration, and which were long remembered and repeated."

"Some of his best speeches combined much of the value of philosophical dissertations with all the charm of the most brilliant declamation. I know, indeed, none in modern times, except those of Burke, from which the student of politics can derive so many profound and valuable maxims of political wisdom, and none which are more useful to those who seek to master that art of condensed energy of expression in which he almost equalled Tacitus."

"O'Connell, comparing him to Pitt, said that he wanted the sustained dignity of that speaker, but that Pitt's speeches were always speedily forgotten, while Grattan was constantly saying things that were remembered. His speeches show no wit and no skill in the lighter forms of sarcasm; but he was almost unrivalled in crushing invective, in delineations of character, and in brief, keen arguments. In carrying on a train of sustained reasoning he was not so happy. Flood is said to have been his superior; and none of his speeches in this respect are comparable to that of Fox on the Westminster scrutiny."

"We are met on this melancholy occasion to celebrate the obsequies of the greatest man Ireland ever knew. The widowed land of his birth, in mourning over his remains, feels it is a nation's sorrow, and turns with the anxiety of a parent to alleviate the grief of the orphan he has left. The virtues of that great patriot shone brilliant, pure, unsullied, ardent, unremitting, glowing. Oh! I should exhaust the dictionary three times told, ere I could enumerate the virtues of Grattan."

"Let us unite to put down bigotry—it is the cause of our country that is at stake; let us rally round that cause, and let our motto be Grattan and Ireland!"

"The elevation of his mind, the grandeur of his diction, the majesty of his declamation, the splendour of his imagery, and the soundness of his logic, displayed in turn the ascendancy of a genius whose sway was irresistible. He was fine and judicious in his panegyric; but his forte—that which seemed to conjure up and concentrate all his faculties—was the overwhelming, withering severity of his invective. It was like the torrent-lava, brilliant, inevitable, fatal. It required such qualifications to overcome the peculiarity of his appearance, and the disadvantages of his manner. Truly, indeed, might it be said of him as he said of Chatham, "he was very great, and very odd." For a time the eye dissented from the verdict of the mind; but at last, his genius carried all before it, and, as in the oracle of old, the contortions vanished as the inspiration became manifest."

"Burke told me that Grattan was a great man for a popular assembly, and now I believe it."

"The speech of Mr. Grattan was, I understand, a display of the most beautiful eloquence perhaps ever heard, but it was seditious and inflammatory to a degree hardly credible. The theory and positions laid down both in his speech and that of Mr. Flood amounted to nothing less than war with England."

"Henry Grattan was one of the most eloquent orators of his time—the golden age of oratory in the English language."

"P. Charles has repass'd the Rhine, and gone with his whole army into Bohemia. This may be bad for the King of Prussia, but it leaves us att the mercy of the French; and shews plainly, that without some stipulation by way of treaty, and with the Dutch being partys, we can have no certainty as to the operations of the present war. £150,000 is given in order to keep the Prince in Alsace; and he is gone before the Court of Vienna can receive the money, tho' not before we have paid it. The same will be the case with every sum of money we advance. The Allys will take it, and then act, as suits their own convenience and security best."

"I am not so apprehensive of the strength or zeal of the enemy, as I am fearful of the inability or languidness, of our friends. I see, the contagion spreads in all parts; and, if your Grace was here, you would scarce, in common conversation, meet with one man who thinks there is any danger from, scarce truth in an invasion, at this time. For my part, I have long dreaded it; and am now as much convinced as my late friend lord Orford was, that this country will be fought for some time before this year is over. Be that as it will, we must do our best."

"I wish it was in my power to keep touch with you all, but when I came into the Treasury I found a vast arrear and the expenses have increased, and the revenue diminished ever since, this I hope will plead my excuse."

"Peace is what I want, both for the sake of my king, my country, and myself. Peace will be had. I heartily wish it may be no worse, than what is represented in your paper. If so, I am sure it is to be defended; but if not so, it must be defended, and shall be, by me at least, if I have the honour to serve the king, at the time of trial."

"I did indeed disapprove of his complimenting H.R.H. and his Grace to their own destruction, and I think the events have shewn it, I mean by amusing them that this war could be carried on another year, that Holland would bring such an army into the field as would turn the balance in our favour, when he must know, if he knew anything at all, that they were no government, that they were a bankrupt people, and could not pay the very small sums they owe to us for our advanced payments for them. This I disliked, and this is the principle upon which I have acted."

"What does the king say? Does he make no observation upon that silence on all business, in the duke of Bedford's letters? I am sure he sees it, and, if he does not take notice of it, it proceeds from the apprehensions he has of another rupture; and, as I have long seen, quiet is what he loves better than all of us put together. If the idleness or ignorance of any one does not give him personal trouble, he will take no notice of it."

"I have promised the king, and I will keep my word, that I would never enter into any cabal again, to prevent his Majesty from either removing, or bringing into his service, any person he had either a prejudice to, or a predilection for."

"Surely, Sir, I am not to look upon every man as my enemy who differs from me in opinion upon any point of religion. This would be a most unchristian way of thinking; therefore I must think, that the Jews are in much the same case with the other dissenters from the church of England: we ought not to look on them as enemies to our ecclesiastical establishment, but as men whose conscience will not allow them to conform to it; therefore we may, in charity we ought to, indulge them so far as not to endanger thereby our ecclesiastical establishment; and from them we have less danger to fear than from any other sort of dissenters, because they never attempt to make converts, and because it would be more difficult for them to succeed in any such attempt."

"Gentlemen, the honour you have done me for many years in intrusting me with being your representative has dignified me to an advanced age in life, so that I may now sincerely say that I am grown old in your service, but I hope that, now that no other consideration will divert me from prosecuting every scheme to promote the trade of the County of Sussex which is a maritime and corn country: and the bounty for debenture to encourage the exportation of corn having been falsely reported to be taken off, I must beg leave to assure that no such thing was intended. Well must I consider what the consequence of such an act would be which must reduce the rent of lands a third in value, greatly lessening the estates of all landed gentlemen, impoverish gentlemen and yeomen of small fortunes, and farmers of long leases must be inevitably ruin'd. As trade and particularly the corn trade is the chiefe concern of the County of Sussex, it shall be my constant care to encourage and support the same be encouraging our farmers in their agriculture and extending our commerce abroad we have no reason to fear being what we ever have been, a rich and powerful people."

"The Memorial I have read, and doubt not its being a very proper one; I am no judge of the propriety of such draughts, especially in French, which language I understand very imperfectly. But that we must speak strong, and abide by what we say, I know very well."

"Pelham was a timid and peace-loving politician, without any commanding abilities or much strength of character. He was a good man of business, and both an able and an economical financier. His temper was somewhat peevish, but his manners were conciliatory, and his opinions were tolerant. Though not a brilliant orator, he was an able debater and an excellent parliamentary tactician. His speeches were marked by readiness and common-sense."

"It has been remarked by a firm friend of Mr. Pelham, that, in the House of Commons, his language was often timid and desponding; and that the candour and openness of his temper, led him occasionally to depreciate the resources of the country, and to magnify the strength of the rival power. On no occasion was this remark more strongly verified, than in this debate; for, though his general arguments against any intemperate provocation of France, while the two states seemed to be in perfect amity, were sound and unanswerable, yet it cannot be denied that he made too many concessions in favour of France, and said, what it did not become a British minister to admit, that England was unable to cope single-handed with the House of Bourbon."

"My brother has all the prudence, knowledge, experience and good intention that I can wish or hope in a man."

"In the beginning of March the ministry of Great Britain had been left without a head by the death of Mr. Pelham, which was not only sincerely lamented by his sovereign, but also regretted by the nation in general, to whose affection he had powerfully recommended himself by the candour and humanity of his conduct and character, even while he pursued measures which they did not entirely approve."

"I do not load you with personal assurances; but I never knew a time when I thought it more incumbent upon me to exert myself in support of the government; and I rejoice, for your sake and for my own, that affairs are put into your hands, where my private friendship, and my political opinion unite, in engaging me to do all I can, and call upon me to act in character; and how great had my difficulty been, if a contrary determination had put me under the necessity, of demurring between the support of the king, and reconciling my conduct with the measures of those, who are incapable of acting a right part, where interest, ambition, or vengeance, can at all influence their actions."

"I cannot conclude without congratulating your excellency upon the success of our negociation at Vienna. The honour and credit which our royal master has so justly acquired by having singly given peace to all Europe, and the particular advantages which his majesty's own people will receive by it, are too great for his majesty's faithful subjects or servants not to take all opportunitys of expressing their gratitude and acknowledgments for it; and if your excellency can be so happy as to satisfy the court of France, the work will be complete indeed; and therefore I most heartily wish you success in it."

"I hope our active Secretary will at last find out that dexterity with princes, to seem to promise all and intend nothing, will as little do as with private persons."

"I hope and believe you will receive, before you have this letter, an account of the signing the Definitive Treaty, and the accession of the court of Vienna; upon which near prospect, I most heartily congratulate you and my country. I feel the joy of an honest man upon it. I have the secret comfort of thinking that I have not only greatly, not to say almost singly, brought it about."

"You will not wonder that I have neither time nor spirits to write to you, having lost the best King, the best Master and the best Friend that ever subject had. God knows what consequences it may have."

"With all his faults we shall want Mr Pitt, if such a complicated, such an extensive war is to be carried on. I know nobody who can plan or push the execution of any plan agreed upon in the manner Mr Pitt did."

"His Majesty said he was sorry to lose him, and should always remember his services: that he feared the Duke's private fortune had suffered by his zeal for the House of Hanover: that his Majesty was desirous to make any amends in his power in any way that should be most agreeable: and added that it was a debt due to his Grace. The Duke answered that in office he had never considered the profit of employment: that out of office he could not bear the thought of being a burthen and charge on the Crown: that if his private fortune had suffered by his loyalty, it was his pleasure, his glory, and his pride: and that he desired no reward but his Majesty's approbation."

"But my own greatest debt to the Duke was the discovery of Namier... I was delighted above all in his portrayal of the great Duke of Newcastle, for me the very quintessence of the anti-hero, a personage of delightfully unglorious proportions."

"It moves one to compassion to think of the poor old Duke himself. A man once possessed of £25,000 per annum of landed estate, with £10,000 in emoluments of government, now reduced to an estate of scarcely £6,000 per annum, and going into retirement (not to say sinking into contempt) with not so much as a feather in his cap."

"The cause of his [William Pitt] quitting the Ministry was from a difference of opinion in a capital measure relative to Spain, as you know; the favourite united with the Minister of numbers [Newcastle], bore down the Minister of measures [Pitt], and by that means in effect removed him from the King's Council, and deprived him of the means of further serving the public."

"Lord Bute had the ill-natured arrogance to compliment him on his retirement: the Duke replied with a spirit that marked his lasting ambition, "Yes, yes, my Lord, I am an old man; but yesterday was my birth-day, and I recollected that Cardinal Fleury began to be prime minister of France just at my age.""

"My scheme is if possible to govern this country [Ireland] without a party and make those that receive favours from the Crown think themselves obliged to it and not to their party here: for as Lords Lieutenant are often changed, whoever has any favours to ask, endeavours to obtain it by the means of some powerful person here, and if they carry their point think themselves more obliged to the person that recommended them than they are to the government that has given it them."

"My view is to reduce the power of that office [Speaker of the Irish House of Commons] and to suffer no person or party to grow so powerful as to presume to dictate to government, and in order to do so, I would break the present parties and then keep a strict eye to prevent any others from growing too powerful."

"The plan is undoubtedly the best that could be formed, the only difficulty will be to make it hold...the utmost of my abilities are to see an administration settled that will endeavour with firmness and unanimity to extricate this country out of the dangerous situation it is in at present."

"Devonshire had been a moderate among men of great political passion. If scarcely a spectator in the play of events, he had never bestrode the stage. His death, coming just after those of Hardwicke and Legge, deprived the Whigs of three material men. Given health, he might have returned to office in the Crown's restless pursuit of ministers up to 1770. He had been a man with a concern for king and country. He died the acknowledged leader of the Whigs."

"Unfortunately there was no really effective secondary leaders to deputize for Pitt. The obvious man for the role, the eminently sensible and highly respected Duke of Devonshire, had died in 1764, a mortality which...left a marked gap in the ranks of the Minority...[and] effectively destroyed a generation in the 'Old Whig' leadership."

"[The Duke of Devonshire is] the great engine, on whom the whole turns at present."

"He was eminently a fit man for the post; his rank as a born leader of the whigs, his experience in the House of Commons, and his popularity in Ireland all recommended him, and he was sworn in as first lord of the treasury on 16 Nov. 1756. He was not, however, a success in his new capacity; his leader of the House of Commons, Sir Thomas Robinson, only excited the risibility of Pitt, and Pitt himself soon recognised the necessity of making up his differences with the Duke of Newcastle. In May 1757, therefore, Devonshire...resigned to the Duke of Newcastle, and was appointed lord-chamberlain of the household, a post which he held until 1762."

"The Marquis [of Hartington] was more fashioned [than his father], but with an impatience to do everything, and a fear to do anything, he was always in a hurry to do nothing. His discretion was so great that he would sooner whisper to a man's prejudice, than openly deliver a harmless opinion; and these whispers had the more effect as he was too civil ever to own himself an enemy. Nor was this all malice; if he had had reflection enough to design all the mischief he did he would have been less capable of doing it. They are the tales of the gentle and the good that stab."

"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."

"[W]ithout flattery to your Grace, I must look and ever shall upon you and your connections as the solid foundations on which every good, which has happened to this country since the Revolution, have been erected... What a medley of government is probably soon to take place & when it does what an alarm will ensue!"

"I was from beginning to end, in a most violent agitation and was obliged to speak notwithstanding, three times. I got a good draft of Madeira before I went to the House."

"Alarms begin to operate a little. The fond hopes of instantaneously subduing America are very much subsided. The Conduct of France begins to be deemed liable to suspicion."

"I confess I agree too much with my friend the Duke of Richmond, in thinking that all is over for this country. I nevertheless do feel most strongly that there is a duty, which I perhaps most particularly owe, to the Persons of those who not only encouraged & incited me, but also whose Principles deserve a better fate, than to be buried in the Ruins of their Country. I confess I feel a sollicitude even for myself—I would wish to have it to say, & I would wish to have it remember'd & recorded, that to the last moment we struggled in Behalf of this poor infatuated Country. I am clear, that nothing can possibly effectually avail, unless this country itself recollects & reassumes its genuine principles."

"I REJOICE very much in the spirit which now seems rising in all parts of this country. Yorkshire has done itself great honour in taking the lead, and I am happy that so much sense and discretion prevailed in the outset of the business at the meeting of York... My mind, I confess, is by no means at ease in regard to certain rumours respecting some vague and crude propositions, which I am told are likely to be brought forth. I don't like the idea of tests, and especially on vague and unexplicit propositions. The being elected a representative, if it implies a trust, is most highly honourable, but if it is to lock up your reasoning faculties of deliberating and judging, and is to tie you up beforehand, and preclude you from acting according to your conscience at the moment, I think it would be a disgraceful bondage, and what many men of the nicest sense of honour cannot submit to."

"There is still one speculation on the proposition of a more equal representation which from its magnitude is indeed a most grave, solemn, and important object of consideration. The proposition, I mean, is that as matters now are, the people, as they are called, are not represented. It is held, that retaining the right of voting to freeholders in a county, is an arbitrary and unconstitutional assumption of power. The same opinions are held in regard to the now settled rights of voting in towns and boroughs. The assertion is, that all men (the whole people) should give their votes."

"I confess I have no idea of anything but confusion and weakness from annual parliaments. I by no means disagree to the idea of equitable reform, in regard to what are called rotten boroughs, &c."

"The grievances we feel, and the cause of our misfortune, arise from the corruption of men when chosen into Parliament. Cut off the ways and means of corruption, and the effect must and will naturally cease. Mr. Burke's plan cuts off thirty-nine offices tenable and now held by members of the House of Commons. It also cuts off eleven now held by Peers in the House of Lords. This, indeed, is striking in earnest at the influence of the Crown over persons in Parliament."

"I really feel more solid grounds of hope that the constitution, the liberty and happiness of this country may revive, than I ever expected to have done, for many years past. I think most seriously that if this county of York, at their next proceedings, adheres to the great objects of enforcing frugal expenditure, and striking at the root of corruption, by reducing the ways and means of influence in the Crown, success will attend their endeavours; but if various speculations are gone into, even though they might be partly well founded in principles, I fear, nay, indeed, I am certain, that there are so many visionary schemes and expedients by way of reforms on float, that a general confusion and disagreement will ensue."

"A man worthy to be held in remembrance, because he did not live for himself. His abilities, industry, and influence, were employed without interruption to the last hour of his life, to give stability to the liberties of his country, security to its landed property, increase to its commerce, independence to its public councils, and concord to its empire. These were his ends. For the attainment of these ends, his policy consisted in sincerity, fidelity, directness, and constancy. His virtues were his arts. In opposition, he respected the principles of Government; in Administration, he provided for the liberties of the people."

"He far exceeded all other statesmen in the art of drawing together, without the seduction of self-interest, the concurrence and co-operation of various dispositions and abilities of men, whom he assimilated to his character and associated in his labours. For it was his aim through life to convert party connection, and personal friendship (which others had rendered subservient only to temporary views and the purposes of ambition,) into a lasting depository of his principles, that their energy should not depend upon his life, nor fluctuate, with the intrigues of a Court, or with the capricious fashions amongst the people; but that by securing a succession in support of his maxims, the British Constitution might be preserved, according to its true genius, on ancient foundations, and institutions of tried utility."

"Rockingham was an old whig of sterling honesty who, during a long period of adversity, contended manfully against a corrupt system of government. He was, however, by no means a great statesman. His policy towards America and Ireland was mere opportunism. At the commencement of the Wilkes affair he erred by defect, and towards its close by excess, of zeal. In his just jealousy of the influence of the crown he showed a disposition to push economy to the verge of cheeseparing, while he ignored the far weightier question of the reform of the representative system."

"His parts were by no means great: he was nervous, and mere necessity alone made him at all a speaker in Parliament; where, though he spoke good sense, neither flattery nor partiality could admire or applaud. He was rather trifling and dilatory in business than indolent. Virtues and amiability he must have possessed; for his party esteemed him highly, and his friends loved him with unalterable attachment. In the excess of faction that we have seen, he was never abused; and no man in public life, I believe, had ever fewer enemies. His death may be more remembered than his actions would have been, and may have greater consequences than any plan of his would have had; for he countenanced a system rather than instigated it. Whoever is his successor will not be of so negative a character."

"Lord Sandwich having abused Lord Rockingham in the House of Lords, Lord Gower said to him, "Sandwich, how could you worry the poor dumb creature so!""

"I felt attaching the name of rebellion hastily, and traitors, to the Americans, and comparing them to the Scots at Derby—which was the language used—dangerous, and perhaps both imprudent and unjust."

"I endeavoured to distinguish the real ties by which America might be supposed to hold to this country, in order to obviate objections arising from a thousand false lights thrown out on the subject; acknowledging the power of parliament to be supreme, but referring the expediency of the act to be considered in a commercial view, regard being to be had to the abilities of the Americans to pay this tax, and likewise to the consequences likely to proceed, in any event, from the late violences. The prejudice against the Americans on the whole seemed very great."

"'Tis you, Sir, alone, in everybody's opinion, can put an end to this anarchy, if any thing can. I am satisfied your own judgment will best point out the time when you can do it with most effect. You will excuse me, I am sure, when I hazard my thoughts to you, as it depends greatly upon you, whether they become opinions; but, by all I find from some authentic letters from America, nothing can be more serious than its present state, and though it is my private opinion, it would be well for this country to be back where it was a year ago, I even despair of a repeal effecting that; if it is not accompanied with some circumstances of a firm conduct, and some system immediately following such a concession."

"After the dismission of the present worthy chancellor, the seals would go a begging; but he hoped there would not be found in the kingdom a wretch so base and mean spirited, as to accept of them on the conditions on which they must be offered."

"My lords; it is extremely evident, whether we commence a war with Spain, or tamely crouch under the insults of that haughty kingdom; it is extremely evident, whether we spiritedly draw the sword, or purchase an inglorious security by the sacrifice of our national honour, that we shall neither be united at home, nor respected abroad, till the reins of government are lodged with men who have some little pretensions to common sense and common honesty."

"He condemned, in general, the madness, injustice, and infatuation of coercing the Americans into a blind and servile submission."

"He considered the earl of Chatham yet as the greatest ornament of the two Houses, in which he had shone with such unrivalled lustre; the most efficient servant of the crown, and while he had life in him, the nerve of Great Britain. A plan from such a man, that had been mentioned with approbation by one of our most ancient and respectable colonies, Virginia; that contained the real substantial points, without subtlety or refinement, which this country ought to aim at, was, in his opinion, the most eligible."

"He would never, consent that America should be independent. The idea he ever entertained of the connection between both countries was, that they should have one friend, one enemy, one purse, and one sword; and that Great Britain should superintend the interests of the whole, as the great controuling power. That both countries should have but one will, though the means of expressing that will might be different, distinct, and varied. He contended, that all this might have, been procured not long since; and he still retained strong hopes that it could be effected, and that, too, without measures of blood. It was once optional, and still possible; and he would never adopt any scheme which would go to dissever our colonies from us; for as soon as that event should take place, then, added his lordship emphatically, "the sun of Great Britain is set, and we shall no longer be a powerful or respectable people, the moment that the independency of America is agreed to by our government!""

"The conduct, temper, and apparent disposition of the present ministers, were so strongly marked with infamy, weakness, and wickedness, that he would cheerfully co-operate with any set of men, to drag them from their present situations, and render them the objects of example, by punishing them in a manner suited to their crimes and notorious demerits."

"He would tell him what he meant by carrying the English constitution to America, and establishing it there, was the recovering the dependency of that country upon this. Not a corrupt or slavish dependency, calculated to enlarge the influence of the crown, already grown much too formidable for the honest purposes of a limited government, or procuring for ministers new sources of corruption, for dividing the prince and people from each other, and separating their interests, which can never be wisely or safely done, so long as even the forms of the constitution remain; but a fair, honest, wise, and honourable connection, in which the constitutional prerogatives of the crown, the claims of parliament, and the liberties, properties, and lives of all the subjects of the British empire, would be equally secured. Such an union, and no other than this, he would ever endeavour to bring about. Such an union he would ever contend for; and without such an union, he was of opinion, that this country could never exist, as an independent state, in respect of the other powers of Europe, nor as a free one, in respect of its own internal polity."

"Deprived of America, we must sink into a petty state, when compared to some of the great powers on the continent. Holding America in a state of unconstitutional subjection, we would shortly become slaves, or at least hold the mere shadow of our former liberties, at the will and pleasure of the crown, and its subordinate instruments. Having thus explained his present opinions and future apprehensions, he said, he would sit down with this open declaration, that he never would serve with any man, be his abilities what they might, who would either maintain it was right, or consent to acknowledge the independency of America."

"His lordship confessed, in respect to the recovery of North America, he had been a very Quixote, and expected, because he most anxiously wished, that our colonies might be prevailed upon to return to their former state of connection with this country. He had indeed pushed his expectations further and longer, he believed, than any impartial person, informed of all the circumstances both here and in America, the present administration excepted, ever had: but his hopes had long since vanished. He had waked from those dreams of British dominion, and every important consequence which he flattered himself might be derived from them."

"Much as he valued America; necessary as the possession of the colonies might be to the power, glory, dignity, and independence of Great Britain; fatal as her final separation would prove, whenever that event might take place; as a friend to liberty, as a reverer of the English constitution, as a lover of natural and political justice—he would be much better pleased to see America for ever severed from Great Britain, than restored to our possession by force of arms, or conquest. He loved his country; he admired its political institutions; but if her future greatness, power, and extent of dominion were only to be established and maintained on the ruins of the constitution, he would be infinitely better pleased to see this country a free one, though curtailed in power and wealth, than possessing every thing the most sanguine expectation could picture to itself, if her greatness was to be purchased at the expence of her constitution and liberties."

"His principles on the subject were well known; he had repeated them from year to year in their lordships' hearing, that he never would consent, under any possible given circumstances, to acknowledge the independency of America. He knew those ideas, both within and without doors, were in some measure unpopular, but he preferred the performance of his duty, and the discharge of his conscience, to every other consideration."

"What, then, is the result of this part of the treaty, so wisely, and with so much sincere love on the part of England clamoured against by noble lords? Why this. You have generously given America, with whom every call under Heaven urges you to stand on the footing of brethren, a share in a trade, the monopoly of which you sordidly preserved to yourselves, at the loss of the enormous sum of 750,000l. Monopolies, some way or other, are ever justly punished. They forbid rivalry, and rivalry is of the very essence of the well-being of trade."

"This seems to be the æra of protestantism in trade. All Europe appear enlightened, and eager to throw off the vile shackles of oppressive ignorant monopoly; that unmanly and illiberal principle, which is at once ungenerous and deceitful. A few interested Canadian merchants might complain; for merchants would always love monopoly, without taking a moment's time to think whether it was for their interest or not. I avow that monopoly is always unwise; but if there is any nation under heaven, who ought to be the first to reject monopoly, it is the English."

"Situated as we are between the old world and the new, and between the southern and northern Europe, all that we ought to covet upon earth is free trade, and fair equality. With more industry, with more enterprize, with more capital than any trading nation upon earth, it ought to be our constant cry, let every market be open, let us meet our rivals fairly, and we ask no more."

"Great moments have always produced great men, and great actions. The time of conflict is the time in which nature seems to delight in her grandest productions. From the Grecian republics, down even to our modern history, the most resplendent powers of man have been shown in the times of the greatest danger. The present, therefore, is a school for Frenchmen; every youth devotes himself to the cause of liberty, and thus actively engaged on the grand scene, all the powers of his soul take a warlike direction; it becomes a fashion, and the whole of the rising generation are educated in the military art; not, my lords, as our youth are educated to the military art, as one only of the professions in which they may rise to eminence or distinction, but the enthusiasm of war enters into the heart only from the enthusiasm of liberty; and the whole country is taught to feel that their only occupation, their only passion, ought to be arms, because their only good, their only blessing, is independence."

"He was of opinion that some precaution was necessary, and these admissions, he trusted, would at least be sufficient to exempt him from the charge of Jacobinism.—But the present bills appeared to him greatly to overshoot the mark. The circumstances did not warrant such an inroad on the constitution."

"Noble lords would do him the justice to recollect, that not one session had passed over since 1793, in which he had not, to use a vulgar but a strong expression, bored their lordships with his prophetic admonitions."

"The Marquis denied having recommended a change of Government; he only desired the present system should be changed for a constitutional system; and he would contend for a constitutional Government, even though it was the fashion for Ministers to insinuate, that those who recommended any change were Jacobins. He denied having any Jacobin principles about him, and asserted, he had always advised Ministers against Jacobin principles, because he was convinced they went to a community of goods, and other absurd and pernicious doctrines."

"Goldsmith the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers, in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne, at Drury Lane; I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him; he said to Goldsmith, that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly, what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself."

"He raised me from the bottomless pit of humiliation—he made me feel I was something."

"His manner was very imposing, very dignified, and he talked his vague generalities in the House of Lords in a very emphatic way, as if something grand were at the bottom, when, in fact, there was nothing at all."

"He was the only minister he ever heard of who did not fear the people."

"If lord Shelburne was not a Catiline, or a Borgia in morals, it must not be ascribed to any thing but his understanding."

"Lord Shelburne was the first great minister who comprehended the rising importance of the middle class; and foresaw in its future power a bulwark for the throne against "the Great Revolution families." Of his qualities in council we have no record; there is reason to believe that his administrative ability was conspicuous; his speeches prove that, if not supreme, he was eminent, in the art of parliamentary disputation, while they show on all the questions discussed a richness and variety of information, with which the speeches of no statesman of that age except Mr. Burke can compare."

"In regard to what you say about any intimate connexion between Lansdowne and me, I agree almost entirely with you, except perhaps that I do not give him the credit for sincerity in any system which you seem to do. I never can have a good opinion of him, and still less a great one. However, we are upon terms of the greatest civility, and it must be confessed that his conduct for these last three years has had an openness and consistency, which entitles him to every outward mark of respect, from those who think as we do."

"The Jesuit in Berkeley Square."

"His observations on publick life were often original and just, and on individual character shrewd, sagacious, and happy. Though he had studied nothing methodically, he had felt strongly, and thought deeply and intensely on many things. I have known few men whose maxims recur more frequently to my recollection, or are more applicable to the events of the world, and to the characters of those who rule it. Though there was, perhaps, not much candour or justice, there was yet elevation in his character, and I have observed traits of real magnanimity in his conduct."

"Indeed, he was, from conviction, sincerely averse to all commercial restraints and all religious intolerance. In his publick speeches he wanted method and perspicuity, and was deficient in justness of reasoning, in judgment, and in taste; but he had some imagination, some wit, great animation, and both in sarcasm and invective not unfrequently rose to eloquence."

"He was a great master of irony, and no man ever expressed bitter scorn for his opponents with more art or effect. His speeches were not only animated and entertaining, but embittered the contest, and enlivened the whole debate."

"His chief merits were courage, decision of character, and discernment in discovering the talents of inferiors. Want of judgment was his great defect. An imperious temper and suspicion, with its consequences, his ruling vices."

"The conversation held to you was perfectly in the character of the man [Shelburne], and I fancy your firmness and indifference would disconcert him not a little. The affected slight with which he mentioned Lord Carlisle, reminds me of an observation I had long ago made upon him, that his art had a strong twang of a boarding-school education. It resembles much more a cunning woman's than an able man's address."

"A man remarkable for duplicity will be always suspected whether deserving suspicion or no. Gainsborough drew Lord Shelburne's portrait: my Lord complained it was not like. The painter said "he did not approve it, and begged to try again." Failing this time, however, he flung away his pencil saying, "D— it, I never could see through varnish, and there's an end.""

"His falsehood was so constant and notorious, that it was rather his profession than his instrument. It was like a fictitious violin, which is hung out of a music shop to indicate in what goods the tradesman deals; not to be of service, nor to be depended on for playing a true note. He was so well known that he could only deceive by speaking truth. His plausibility was less an artifice than a habit; and his smiles were so excited that, like the rattle of the snake, they warned before he had time to bite. Both his heart and his face were brave; he feared neither danger nor detection. He was so fond of insincerity as if he had been the inventor, and practised it with as little caution as if he thought nobody else had discovered the secret."

"He not only had no principles, but was ready for any crime that suited his plans, which seemed drawn from histories of the worst ages—for he was rather a pedant in villany, than a politician who adapted himself to the times in which he lived. Thus a Catiline or a Borgia were his models in an age when half their wickedness would have suited his purpose better."

"The part which we had to act was unavoidable, and he had no hesitation in saying, that he should give his firm support to a war, the object of which was, to resist doctrines that, in his opinion, went to the overthrow, not merely of all legitimate government, of the security of nations, of peace and order, but even of religion itself, and of every thing for which society was instituted. He pledged himself, therefore, to the support of the war into which we were plunged; declaring, at the same time, that he should not consider this as tending to prevent him from inquiring scrupulously into the conduct of ministers in the way in which they should carry it on."

"As to what might be the power of the enemy, it was not, he thought, a question upon which they could now deliberate. If they were in the very zenith of their power, and attempted by the same means to propagate the same doctrines, he would be ready to incur all the dangers of the war; for he thought that we never were engaged in a war, upon the issue of which the very existence of the government of this country was so much at stake."

"The King...said...[he] thought the Duke of Portland weak and of no use, and that he was governed by the Bishop of Meath, who was an unsound man.—This is curious."

"The Duke of Portland waves the chancellorship of the duchy, and agrees to remain in the cabinet without office. Nothing could be kinder or handsomer than his whole conduct."

"Few statesmen have suffered more obloquy than the Duke of Portland. He was not a great man, and was a very poor orator, but he deserves to be remembered rather for his administration of the home department from 1794 to 1801 than for his two premierships. In his home secretaryship he showed himself a good administrator, tolerant in his exercise of great and extraordinary powers, careful in details, and yet not wanting in broad statesmanlike views. In private life he was in every way admirable."

"I have neither memory to retain, judgment to collect, nor skill to guide, their debates; nor can I boast of any thing that could entitle me to the favor of the Commons, but an unshaken fidelity to the Protestant succession."

"The President is as contemptible and subservient as ever."

"[L]et me humbly and earnestly, for God's sake, for the sake of your own glory, for the love of your king and your country, which I know is sincere and ardent in you; let me entreat your lordship to go to the king without loss of time, and say to him what your own honour and excellent understanding shall suggest to you upon the present occasion. You are unsuspected by him on all sides: he cannot in thought object any thing to you with relation to his son; you, and you only, have all the talents and all the requisites that this critical time demands to effectuate this great event, and save your country, if it be to be saved."

"My Lord Wilmington is about 65 years old, strong made, but of late much troubled with the stone. His stature is something more than of the middle sort and he is not corpulent though full fleshed. He is proud, though affable to those who visit him, and is rare of his speech, but then positive. He maintains no debates in the House of Peers, but never swerved from voting as the Ministry would have him, being very servile to his Majesty's inclinations. He has no great genius, but cannot want experience, having formerly been Speaker of the House of Commons, and for many years President of the Council, which post he executes notably well. He is extremely covetous, and formal in business, was never married, but has children unlawfully begotten, which he stifles the knowledge of as much as in him lies. He has no ambition, and has told me the true interest of England was to have no chief minister, but that every great office should be immediately dependent on the King and answer for itself. He also is for making the basis of the Government so broad, that many interests may be taken into it, but I believe he will be for leaving the King's power as great as he can contribute to make it."

"It is reported of Sir Spencer Compton, that when he was Speaker, he used to answer to a Member, who called upon him to make the House quiet, for that he had a right to be heard; "No, Sir, you have a right to speak, but the House have a right to judge whether they will hear you." In this he was certainly mistaken; the Member has a right to speak, and the House ought to attend to him, and it is the Speaker's duty to endeavour, for that that purpose, to keep them silent; but where the love of talking gets the better of modesty and good-sense, which sometimes happens, it is a duty very difficult to execute in a large and popular assembly."

"Sir Spencer Compton was at this time Speaker of the House of Commons, Treasurer to the Prince, and Paymaster to the army, he was a plodding, heavy fellow, with great application, but no talents, and vast complaisance for a Court without any address; he was always more concerned for the manner and form in which a thing was to be done than about the propriety or expediency of the thing itself; and as he was calculated to execute rather than to project, for a subaltern rather than a commander, so he was much fitter for a clerk to a minister than for a minister to a Prince; whatever was resolved upon, he would often know how properly to perform, but seldom how to advise what was proper to be resolved upon. His only pleasures were money and eating; his only knowledge forms and precedents; and his only insinuation bows and smiles."

"But as Sir Spencer Compton had conceived too strong hopes of being Sir Robert's superior ever to serve in the House of Commons quietly under him, and that it might be dangerous, consequently, to suffer him in the chair of a new Parliament, Sir Robert advised the making him a peer; accordingly he was created Baron of Wilmington... [H]e did not seem to feel the ridicule or the contemptibleness of his situation: that snowball levee of his, which had opened and that gathered so fast, melted away at as quick a pace; his visionary prospects of authority and grandeur vanished into air; and yet he seemed just as well satisfied to be bowing and grinning in the antechamber, possessed of a lucrative employment without credit, and dishonoured by a title which was the mark of his disgrace, as if he had been dictating in the closet, sole fountain of Court favour at home, and regulator of all the national transactions abroad."

"He was very able, however, in the chair, but had not the powers of speech out of it."

"This disquiet and habit of never finishing, which, too, proceeded frequently from his beginning everything twenty times over, gave rise to a famous bon mot of Lord Wilmington,—a man as unapt to attempt saying a good thing, as to say one. He said, "the Duke of Newcastle always loses half an hour in the morning, which he is running after the rest of the day without being able to overtake it.""

"See yon old, dull important Lord, Who at the long'd-for Money-Board Sits first, but does not lead: His younger Brethren all Things make; So that the T[reasur]y's like a Snake, And the Tail moves the Head."

"He should not do justice to his feelings, if he did not express to the House, and to his hon. friend, the satisfaction he had received from one of the most masterly and eloquent speeches he had ever heard; a speech which could not fail to reflect the greatest lustre upon his hon. friend, and entitled him to the thanks of that House, of the people of England, of all Europe, and of the latest posterity."

"You can hardly form to yourself an idea of the labour I have gone through; but I am repaid by the maintenance of peace, which is all this country has to desire. We shall now, I hope, for a very long period indeed enjoy this blessing, and cultivate a situation of prosperity unexampled in our history. The state of our commerce, our revenue, and, above all, that of our public funds, is such as to hold out ideas which but a few years ago would indeed have appeared visionary, and which there is now every hope of realizing."

"I bless God, that we had the wit to keep ourselves out of the glorious enterprize of the combined armies, and that we were not tempted by the hope of sharing the spoils in the division of France, nor by the prospect of crushing all democratical principles all over the world at one blow."

"All my ambition is that I may at some time hereafter, when I am freed from all active concern in such a scene as this is, have the inexpressible satisfaction of being able to look back upon it, and to tell myself that I have contributed to keep my own country at least a little longer from sharing in all the evils of every sort that surround us. I am more and more convinced that this can only be done by keeping wholly and entirely aloof, and by watching much at home, but doing very little indeed; endeavouring to nurse up in the country a real determination to stand by the Constitution when it is attacked, as it most infallibly will be if these things go on; and, above all, trying to make the situation of the lower orders among us as good as it can be made. In this view, I have seen with the greatest satisfaction the steps taken in different parts of the country for increasing wages, which I hold to be a point of absolute necessity, and of a hundred times more importance than all that the most doing Government could do in twenty years towards keeping the country quiet. I trust we may again be enabled to contribute to the same object by the repeal of taxes, but of that we cannot yet be sure. Sure I am, at least I think myself so, that these are the best means in our power to delay what perhaps nothing can ultimately avert, if it is decreed that we are again to be plunged into barbarism."

"The hands of Government must be strengthened if the country is to be saved; but, above all, the work must not be left to the hands of Government, but every man must put his shoulder to it, according to his rank and situation in life, or it will not be done."

"The spirit of the people is evidently rising, and I trust that we shall have energy enough in the country to enable the Government to assert its true situation in Europe, and to maintain its dignity."

"The assertion of the House of Commons, in which their lordships committee had unanimously concurred, was, that they were satisfied there was a design now openly professed and acted upon, which aimed at nothing less than a traitorous conspiracy for the subversion of the established laws and constitution of the kingdom, and to introduce that system of anarchy and confusion which had fatally prevailed in France; and he was sorry to say, that this had not been discouraged, on the contrary it had been encouraged in many instances, and that at a time when we were at war for the maintenance of every thing that was dear to us, and to every civilized nation in the world. From the first moment that those who brought on the revolution in France found themselves strong enough to avow their real principles and designs, their mischievous system commenced, and they began to disturb this and other countries, under the name of reform."

"Besides this, their lordships would perceive in these societies a studious imitation of the proceedings of the National Convention: they adopted all their phrases in speaking, and all their forms in transacting business. All this proved, to his mind, that their views were to familiarize the lower classes of the people of this country to these proceedings, in order to prepare them to come to a resolution, for the destruction of all rank, distinction, and order in society: every thing was to be swallowed up in the jacobinical term, citizen."

"We, in the present instance, should regard the fate of the monarchy of France as a lesson; therefore, though the individuals were insignificant in number, in talents, and in character, that was no reason for not checking their proceedings, for they might soon become dangerous if suffered to proceed."

"If we listen to the ideas of peace in the present moment (even supposing it were offered), it can be only because we confess ourselves unable to carry on the war. Such a confession affords but a bad security against the events which must follow, in Flanders, in Holland, and (by a very rapid succession) in this island."

"I have no other view of the contest in which we are engaged, nor ever have had, than that the existence of the two systems of Government is fairly at stake, and in the words of St. Just, whose curious speech I hope you have seen, that it is perfect blindness not to see that in the establishment of the French Republic is included the overthrow of all the other Governments of Europe."

"I can see no grounds, in the state of this country, to hope for such an exception in our favour, and I do verily believe that we must prepare to meet the storm here, and that we must not count upon the continuance of a state of domestic tranquillity which has already lasted so much beyond the period usually allotted to it in the course of human events. I trust that we shall at least meet it with more firmness than our neighbours, but even in order to do this, we ought not to blind ourselves at the moment of its approach. It seems too probable that it is decreed by Providence that a stop should be put (for reasons probably inscrutable to us) to the progress of arts and civilization among us. It is a melancholy reflection to be born to the commencement of such a scene, and to be called to bear a principal share in it, but I trust we may hope that our strength may be proportioned to our trial."

"[There is an] advantage, and even necessity, of uniting at this time in the public service the great bulk of the landed property of the country, and doing away all distinctions of party between those who wish the maintenance of order and tranquillity here."

"The treasonable speeches and writings which had of late been so assiduously disseminated at public meetings, most particularly called for the interference of parliament. As one of the king's servants, indeed, he might say as a member of that House, he felt it an indispensable duty to endeavour to check their flagitious tendency."

"He considered the present bill as part of a system for suppressing an evil, that not only threatened the security of the subject, but menaced the very existence of the constitution. The system to overthrow all order had been gradually proceeding for three years. The fact was notorious."

"In all periods of our history, instances were to be found of the evils arising from tumultuous assemblies; and experience must show, from the frequency with which they were now held, the absolute necessity for their suppression."

"It is a curious speculation in history to see how often the good people of England have played this game over and over again, and how incorrigible they are in it. To desire war without reflection, to be unreasonably elated with success, to be still more unreasonably depressed by difficulties, and to call out for peace with an impatience which makes suitable terms unattainable, are the established maxims and the regular progress of the popular mind in this country. Yet, such as it is, it is worth all the other countries of the world put together, so we must not too much complain of it."

"The task which is now left to us, is no doubt arduous and difficult. It would not be in the least so with a country united, and feeling its own strength: but to contend against dejection, cowardice and disaffection at home, aiding a powerful enemy from without, is not a light or easy matter. It must, however, be tried; for I have no conception that any other use can be made of this event by the Directory, than that of exacting from us concessions, which I trust neither the country nor Parliament will bring themselves to listen to."

"Ireland is our weakest point, and to that our attention must be most directed; for anything else I have very little apprehension."

"The Corresponding Societies in England had been mentioned. What those societies were, he need not remind their lordships: their publications, their meetings, their declarations, were in the memory of every man. A criminal had lately been convicted at Maidstone, of attempting to seduce the troops, and he was found to belong to these societies. A noble lord had told them, that even the United Irishmen would not have proceeded to the lengths they had done, without the encouragement of these societies. In one word, he could distinctly state, that, in every corner of the king's dominions, whatever sedition or treason could be found, whatever incitement to domestic tumult, whatever encouragement to foreign invasion, to these societies it was uniformly to be traced."

"We have gone through such scenes as this country has never before known; where we have been wanting in firmness, we have suffered for it; where we have shown courage adequate to the danger, God has borne us through it; and so I trust He will do. At all events, our lives, and honour, and the existence of our country, are staked upon the issue, and nothing but resolution can save us."

"We in truth formed our opinions on the subject together, and I was not more convinced than you were of the soundness of Adam Smith's principles of political economy till Lord Liverpool lured you from our arms into all the mazes of the old system. I am confident that provisions, like every other article of commerce, if left to themselves, will and must find their level; and that every attempt to disturb that level by artificial contrivances has a necessary tendency to increase the evil it seeks to remedy."

"You know, I believe, that it was always my opinion—and I think it is yours—that the Union with Ireland would be a measure extremely incomplete and defective as to some of the most material benefits to be expected from it, unless immediate advantage were taken of it to attach the great body of the Irish Catholics to the measure itself, and to the government as administered under the control of the United Parliament."

"He thought the terms fraught with degradation and national humiliation."

"We were enfeebled, but not broken down: we were lowered, but not debased. Some of our out-works had been demolished; many of them surrendered to the foe; but the citadel yet remained; and while it was defended by the noble courage of united Britons, it would bid defiance to attack. We should meet with mortifications and disappointments; but we should, he trusted, still preserve our honour, our constitution, and our religion."

"As to the state of public affairs, it seems to me that war is inevitable—that war, if it comes, must a little sooner or a little later, place the government in Pitt's hands; and that this ought to be the wish of every man, who thinks it at all material to himself, whether Bonaparte shall or not treat us in twelve months, precisely in the style he has now treated the Swiss."

"Obedience to the laws was very properly regarded as a principal source of improvement. He admitted that no country could be tranquil or prosperous, where the laws were not generally obeyed; but before they could expect that general obedience, the laws themselves ought to be made equal to all."

"The object of effecting a revolution in this country by inflaming the worst passions of the lowest orders of society has been unremittedly pursued for many years past. During the war its success was in great measure impeded by the large amount of military force then at the disposal of Government, by the extraordinary powers given by Parliament to the Crown, and by the great interest which the mass of our community took, and very justly, in the success of that contest. Since the peace the progress of these designs has been manifestly much more rapid. It has indeed been favoured, from time to time, by circumstances of temporary and local distress; but these have not been greater, they may be truly said to have been much less, than had before been frequently experienced without leading to any such results. So great a change as has been shown since the peace in the general temper and conduct of a large proportion of our population, has perhaps rarely occurred in any country. It seems no exaggeration to say, that if the promoters of general confusion can make as much new way in the next three or four years as they have done in the last, we must consider insurrection and civil bloodshed as inevitable; though even then we may hope that their issue would not be doubtful."

"The final resolution must be now taken, either to stop the evil here, or to acquiesce in its progress until it actually brings us to insurrection and civil war."

"As one of those who had always been favourable to the concession of the Catholic claims, he answered, that, from passing this bill, the greatest of all benefits would accrue—the benefit of doing justice."

"I cannot forbear writing one line to congratulate you and myself on the account which I have just now received, that the Bill for repealing the Roman Catholic disabilities is actually a part of the law of the land. I may now say that I have not lived in vain."

"The uncommon diligence which Mr. W. Grenville has continued to apply to his studies ever since he was settled here does him no small honour, and his pains are not lost. I have the happiness to see frequent proofs of the improvement he makes by them...they contain marks of various and well directed reading, of an habit of elegant observation &, which is more to the purpose than all the rest, of a good heart. His progress in the mathematical lecture is really astonishing, and if your lordship has any turn for that sort of study, you may be convinced of it by a continued dissertation in the way of analysis which he has written on the six first books of Euclid that would have done credit to a profess'd mathematician in the last age... From such a setting out one may without partiality expect more than common attainments."

"From a party point of view Grenville's career, taken as a whole, was inconsistent. This inconsistency of political conduct was due to his inbred alarm at the spread of revolutionary principles abroad, and his belief in the efficacy of repressive measures at home. It should, however, always be remembered, when Grenville's consistency is called in question, that he twice gave up office rather than sacrifice his principles on the subject of catholic emancipation, and that his views on that question practically excluded him from office during the rest of his political life."

"[T]he great staple of his discourse was argument, and this, as well as his statement, was clear and impressive, and, I may say, authoritative. His declamation was powerful, and his attacks hard to be borne. The industry with which he mastered a subject previously unknown to him, may be judged from his making a clear and impressive speech upon the change proposed in 1807 in the Court of Session; and no lawyer could detect a slip on any of the points of Scotch law which he had to handle."

"In the House of Lords, Lord Grenville moved the resolutions upon the Union with Ireland in a speech of four hours; putting the arguments on strong grounds of detailed political necessity."

"Sheridan said upon this occasion that he had known many men knocked their heads against a wall, but he had never before heard of any man who collected the bricks and built the very wall with an intention to knock out his own brains against it."

"For strength of reasoning, for the enlarged views of a great statesman, for dignity of manner, and force of eloquence, Lord Grenville's was one of the best speeches that I have ever heard delivered in Parliament."

"[I am struck by his] great attention, clearness and precision."

"I am convinced that the old and stubborn spirit of Toryism is at last yielding to the increased liberality of the age—that Tories of the old school—the Sticklers for inveterate abuses under the name of the wisdom of our ancestors, the "laudatores temporis acti," are giving way on all sides—that the spirit which supported the Holy Alliance, the friend of despotism rather than the advocate of struggling freedom, is hastening to the fate it merits, and that all its attendant evils are daily becoming matters which belong to history alone."

"We shall, doubtless, have divers declamations in praise of liberty, which no man wishes to gainsay; but the question is—is it from a state of liberty that Ireland is to be rescued? Is she not to be rescued from a state of great and severe tyranny? Is she not to be rescued from a state of anarchy, where life has no safety, and property no security? Liberty is something more than a name, and the benefits of liberty are the protection of life and property—the protection of every man in doing that which pleases himself, and is not detrimental to society. This is liberty and its benefits; and it is not liberty for a people to do justice neither to themselves nor to their neighbours, but to be subjected to the authority of self-constituted regulators."

"In me you will find one ready to assist in removing all blemishes and deformities from the best and holiest institutions of the country with the most uncompromising zeal—while, at the same time, I will oppose, with all the might and energy of which I am capable, those whose measures, whose objects, and whose intentions are not to reform, but to destroy. (Vehement and long-continued cheering.)"

"I will venture to give one word by way of advice, and to express a hope that the study of the ancient classics will not be abandoned when they are no longer compulsory. Believe me, that to the man who wishes to study politics, or the art of persuasion, nothing can be more necessary than to imbue his mind with the spirit of the ancient poets and historians, that he may be able to infuse into his own arguments and compositions, and to draw from that pure and crystal fountain, some of the copious diction, high sentiment, and masculine thought, which so eminently distinguished those great men, but whom there is no hope of successfully rivalling."

"But this he must say, and he said it in a voice of warning and counsel...that if they relaxed in their endeavours, if they became lukewarm in their support of the church; if, while they admitted, and supported, and encouraged the reform of the church and the removal of abuses, they relaxed and flinched from the first principles by which that church was maintained and upheld, they had an adversary ever vigilant to take advantage of the slightest concession, ever watching for an unwise admission, ever desirous to entrap them into the adoption of some insidious expression which would afterwards be used against them in a different sense, and ever ready to assault and to assail everything they held most sacred."

"[I]f you search the records of our history from the earliest times, you will find in the most distinct form, from the preambles of successive statutes in successive ages, that the principle which guided the Ministers of this country was, the principle of encouraging the domestic industry and protecting the agriculture of this country."

"My Lords, these are the aristocracy of this country to whom I allude. Reduce these men, and you inflict an irretrievable and irreparable injury upon the country. Lower them in the scale, and you have deranged the social machine beyond the power of correction. God forbid that the successful manufacturer or that the princely merchant should not take his place among the landed aristocracy of this country! Such infusions add fresh vigour and power to that class of the community; but depend upon it, if you sweep that class away at once with all the associations attached to their names, their families, their histories, and the previous associations which belong to the character of their families, and substitute a new body of capitalists, to come amidst an unattached tenantry, and a neighbourhood where no associations are connected with their names, their moral influence and effect will be irretrievably lost."

"Well, what are these real principles of free trade? They are, to dismiss every useless and unprofitable hand; they are to employ no men beyond those who are absolutely required to make a profit to their employer... I do not believe that under the pressure of the greatest difficulty the landlords of England as a body would adopt, even for their own protection, the cold and selfish and calculating doctrines of political economy and free trade."

"Now, destroy this principle of protection, and I tell you in this place that you destroy the whole basis upon which your Colonial system rests. My Lords, if you do not know the advantages of your Colonies, Napoleon Bonaparte knew them well. It is by your Colonial system, based upon the principles of protection, that you have extended your arms—I do not mean your military arms, I mean your commercial arms—to every quarter and to every corner of the globe. It is to your Colonial system that you owe it that there is not a sea on which the flag of England does not float; that there is not a quarter of the world in which the language of England is not heard; that there is not a quarter of the globe, that there is no zone in either hemisphere, in which there are not thousands who recognize the sovereignty of Britain—to whom that language and that flag speak of a home, dear, though distant, of common interests, of common affections—men who share in your glories—men who sympathize in your adversities, men who are proud to bear their share of your burdens, to be embraced within the arms of your commercial policy, and to feel that they are members of your great and imperial Zollverein."

"You are the trustees for far more than your personal interests; you are the trustees for your country, you are the trustees for posterity, you are the trustees for the Constitution of the Empire. My Lords, you each, and all of you, live amongst your neighbours, by whom you are looked up to as the guides for their political opinions; from you your neighbours take the colour of their opinions and their views; to you they look, to your opinions a respectful deference is paid, and it is you who have encouraged and promulgated the opinion that for the great interests of the country agricultural protection is essential."

"Peel's great error has always been disregarding the opinion of his party, whenever it did not exactly square with his own; and I am confident that no man in these days can hope to lead a party who cannot make up his mind sometime to follow it."

"It is a bungling fisherman who strikes at the first nibble; I shall wait till my fish has gorged the bait and then I am sure to land him."

"The time is very critical—the game is, I believe, in our hands; but in order to be played with ultimate success, it must be played honestly and manfully, and to take office with the purpose of throwing over, voluntarily, the main object of those who have raised us to it is to follow too closely an exemplar vitiis imitabile, to which I never can submit."

"Bored to the utmost power of extinction."

"[T]he true type of the British political nobleman is Lord Derby—eloquence, high feeling, and good intentions—but the ideas of a school-boy."

"Disraeli told me that Lord Stanley broke up Peel's Government in the first instance by saying, "It is no use arguing the matter. We cannot do this as gentlemen," meaning repeal the Corn-laws."

"One after one the lords of time advance,— Here Stanley meets,—how Stanley scorns, the glance! The brilliant chief, irregularly great, Frank, haughty, rash,—the Rupert of Debate! Nor gout, nor toil, his freshness can destroy. And Time still leaves all Eton in the boy;— First in the class, and keenest in the ring, He saps like Gladstone, and he fights like Spring! Ev'n at the feast, his pluck pervades the board. And dauntless game-cocks symbolize their lord."

"Stanley is a host in himself. He has marvellous acuteness of intellect and consummate power in debate. There is no subject which he cannot thoroughly master and lucidly explain. His voice and manner are so good that no one can hear him without listening to him. He is powerful both in attack and defence. But he is neither a great statesman nor the discreet leader of a party. Although he inspirits his followers, he does not fill them with confidence. I do not think that he is likely soon to be Prime Minister, or that he would long retain the post if by any chance he should once get possession of it."

"With respect to Lord Stanley, I take this opportunity to remark that although he gave offence now and then by a sort of schoolboy recklessness of expression, sometimes even of conduct, his cheerful temper bore him out, and made him more popular than others who were always considerate but less frank."

"Had studied him ever since he [Clarendon] was in the House of Lords. No generosity, never, to friend or foe; never acknowledged help; a great aristocrat, proud of family wealth. He had only agreed to this [the Reform Act] as he would of old have backed a horse at Newmarket; hated Disraeli, but believed in him as he would have done in an unprincipled trainer; he wins, that is all. He knows the garlic given, &c. He says to those without, "All fair, gentlemen.""

"The fourteenth Earl of Derby, an aristocrat of great wealth and social position, a celebrated Parliamentary debater and a tough political fighter, was the only possible Conservative leader after the schism of 1846, but he lacked the qualities of ambition and dedication normally necessary for successful party leadership."

"Allow me to mention a passage which Lord Derby read to me out of a letter to himself from Lady Jane Houston, who lives very near Huskisson... "Houston saw Huskisson yesterday, who talked to him of his return to office as of a thing quite certain, and of Edward Stanley doing so too. Indeed he spoke of the latter as quite the Hope of the Nation!" As the Hope of the Nation was present when this was read, it would not have been decent to laugh; but the little Earl gave me a look that was quite enough."

"Lord Malmesbury told me that Stanley, "who never pays compliments, you know, that's not his way," said it [Disraeli's speech] was one of the best things that was ever done."

"He astonishes me – his mind always clear – his patience extraordinary – he rises in difficulty, and his resources never fail."

"His fiery eloquence, his haughty courage, the rapidity of his intellectual grasp,—which probably never was surpassed; his capacity for labour, and his mastery of detail—which never were sufficiently appreciated, because the world was astonished by the celerity with which he despatched public affairs—all these combined to produce a man who must have become celebrated... He abolished slavery, he educated Ireland, and he reformed Parliament."

"Derby's reputation as a statesman suffers from the fact that he changed front so often. A whig, a Canningite, a strenuous whig leader, a strenuous conservative leader, the head of the protectionists, the opponent of democracy, and the author of the change which upset his own policy of 1832 and committed power to democracy in 1867, all these parts he filled in turn. He was not a statesman of profoundly settled convictions or of widely constructive views. He was a man rather of intense vitality than of great intellect, a brilliant combatant rather than a cautious or philosophic statesman. The work with which he was most identified, the re-creation of the conservative party after its disintegration on the fall of Peel, was Disraeli's rather than his own; and the charge of a timid reluctance to assume the responsibilities and toil of office is one that may fairly be made against him."

"Derby's personality was full of charm. He was handsome in person, with striking aquiline features; in manner he was somewhat familiar and off-hand, but beneath this facility lay an aloofness from all but social equals and intimates which stood considerably in his way as a party leader."

"When in office his application was indefatigable; nor was he insensible to the dignity of power. But he did not love politics for their own sake; and when he took office, did so rather from an over-ruling sense of duty than from any liking for his task. But he never neglected business; and the quickness of his parts enabled him to master details in a much shorter space of time than would have been required by ordinary men. His heart, however, was not upon the Treasury Bench; nor had he any taste for those strategical manœuvres which are as necessary in politics as in war. The soul of honour himself, he was incapable of suspecting either falsehood or trickery in others, and was, perhaps, a little impatient of the precautions which are necessary to counteract them."

"A little hesitation at the beginning of a speech is graceful; and many eminent speakers have practised it merely in order to give the appearance of unpremeditated reply to prepared speeches; Stanley speaks like a man who never knew what fear, or even modesty, was."

"[Lord Derby at Eton had] an iron will and unbounded self-confidence."

"The magnanimity of the emancipator of the slaves, the liberalism of the supporter of the Reform Bill, the generous sentiments actuating the advocate for the removal of disabilities from both Catholics and Dissenters, still, judging from the obvious policy of his cabinet, remain vital in the nature of the leader of the Derby government. His antagonists in discussion still find, no less, that there, in the midst of his varied oratorical powers, lurks yet the sting of sarcasm which extorted from O'Connell the designation of "Scorpion Stanley,"—an epithet, coming from the outspoken lips of Dan, complimentary rather than the reverse, remembering those other charming flowers of rhetoric flung about him with such lavish prodigality and such refined taste by the Liberator; such as "the base, bloody, and brutal Whigs," or, as "old buccaneering Wellington!""

"He explained with admirable clearness the insecure and alarming state of Ireland. He then went over, case by case, the more dreadful of the outrages which had been committed. He detailed, with striking effect, the circumstances attending the murder of a clergyman, and the agony of his widow, who, after seeing her husband murdered, had to bear the terror of running knocks at the door, kept on all night by the miscreants who had committed the crime. The House became appalled and agitated at the dreadful picture which he placed before their eyes; they felt for the sorrows of the innocent; they were shocked at the dominion of assassins and robbers. When he had produced a thrilling effect by these descriptions, he turned upon O'Connell, who led the opposition to the measure, and who seemed a short time before about to achieve a triumph in favour of sedition and anarchy. He recalled to the recollection of the House of Commons, that at a recent public meeting, O'Connell had spoken of the House of Commons as 658 scoundrels. In a tempest of scorn and indignation, he excited the anger of the men thus designated against the author of the calumny. The House, which two hours before seemed about to yield to the great agitator, was now almost ready to tear him to pieces. In the midst of the storm which his eloquence had raised, Stanley sat down, having achieved one of the greatest triumphs ever won in a popular assembly by the powers of oratory."

"[B]esides the Irish Coercion Bill, which he had carried by the force of his eloquence, he had to conduct through Parliament and defend, clause by clause, the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, and the Colonial Slavery Abolition Bill, two of the largest and most important measures that were ever proposed for the consideration of Parliament. He performed these tasks with infinite skill, readiness, and ability; and for my part I felt and expressed to my friend the Duke of Richmond, the opinion which I firmly entertained, that whenever Lord Althorp should retire, or, by his father's death, be removed to the House of Lords, Mr. Stanley would be fully qualified to assume his place as leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons."

"Lord Derby had no very consistent or thoroughgoing theory of politics, that he never gave himself the trouble to make one, that he would not improbably have been hampered and irked by one if he had had it."

"I think that Stanley, though brought up to think nominal Toryism pigheaded and foolish, was always a Tory at heart, and that the consequences of the Reform Bill made him, though he would not for a long time acknowledge it, a Tory in fact, on all, or almost all, points. But, in the first place, he had a mind very much averse from the metaphysics of politics, as, indeed, of all things, and never cared or dared to argue questions back to their first principles."

"It has been said of him that he was the only brilliant eldest son produced by the British Peerage for a hundred years. This is an exaggeration, but there can be no doubt as to the exceptional character of his abilities, and as to the brilliancy of the promise with which his friends regarded him."

"What is that fat gentleman in such a passion about?"

"But, mad with his love, To a precipice goes, Where a leap from above Would soon finish his woes."

"And sadly reflecting, That a lover forsaken A new love may get, But a neck when once broken Can never be set."

"But, bold, unconcerned At thoughts of the pain, He calmly returned To his cottage again."

"Of all the torments, all the cares, With which our lives are curst; Of all the plagues a lover bears, Sure rivals are the worst! By partners in each other kind Afflictions easier grow; In love alone we hate to find Companions of our woe."

"How great soe’er your rigours are, With them alone I’ll cope; I can endure my own despair, But not another’s hope."

"On 30 March 1790, Cornwallis sent a letter to Medows, the new Governor of Madras: So far am I from giving credit to the late Government for economy in not making the necessary preparations for war according to the positive orders of the Supreme Government, after having received the most gross insults that could be offered to any nation, I think it is very possible that every cash of that ill-judged saving may cost the Company a crore of rupees, besides which I still more sincerely lament the disgraceful sacrifice which you have made by that delay, of the honour of your country by tamely suffering an insolent and cruel enemy to overwhelm the dominions of the Rajah of Travancore which we were bound by the most sacred ties of friendship and good faith to defend.61"

"As Tippoo has on all occasions since the commencement of the war carefully avoided an action with the British armies of very inconsiderable numbers, and in particular could not venture to attack this army when a large part of it was employed in the siege of Bangalore, there is not the least probability that he will now hazard a battle with the strongest army that was ever brought in the field against him. It therefore falls to the share of the infantry to proceed with the artillery according to the plan which has been settled to attack Seringapatam and it is the duty of the cavalry to overrun the country, to cut off Tippoo’s communication with his capital and to prevent the approach of his small detachments of light horse to disturb the troops that will be employed in the siege. To answer these purposes I desire that you will immediately detach a body of His Highness’ [Nizam’s] cavalry . . . to drive the enemy’s small parties from the neighbourhood of the army and to intercept everything going to or coming out of Seringapatam . . . the detached corps should leave its heavy baggage with the army and move into the country as lightly equipped as possible which will enable it either to avoid with facility and detachments of the enemy that may be furnished with infantry and guns or to attack them with success if a favourable opportunity should offer."

"The arrival of Lord Charles Cornwallis, the First Marquis Cornwallis, marked possibly the toughest challenge that Tipu faced in his life. Cornwallis was fiercely patriotic, upright, fair and just in his dealings, except war with his enemies, when he forgot all tenets of mercy."