Members Of The Parliament Of Great Britain

"The question which the House would have to decide was, whether a system had been created under which all countries might live in that peace which it was the great object of the confederacy to establish. A difference of sentiment on some points of the arrangements could be no impeachment of the wisdom of the whole. Perfection belonged to no work of human beings, even when many years were devoted to it; much less when its completion was accelerated by the necessity of circumstances. On this general principle he applauded and was prepared to maintain the proceedings of the Congress at Vienna."

"These arguments about natural defences and strategic boundaries are pushed too far. Real defence and security comes from the guarantee which is given by the fact that they cannot touch you without declaring war on all those interested in maintaining things as they are."

"Great Britain has perhaps equal Power with any other State to oppose Herself to a practical and intelligible Danger, capable of being brought home to the National Feeling:—When the Territorial Balance of Europe is disturbed, she can interfere with effect, but She is the last Govt. in Europe, which can be expected, or can venture to commit Herself on any Question of an abstract character."

"In this country at all times, but especially at the present conjuncture, when the whole Energy of the State is required to unite reasonable men in defence of our existing Institutions, and to put down the spirit of Treason and Disaffection which in certain of the Manufacturing Districts in particular, pervades the lower orders, it is of the greatest moment, that the public sentiment should not be distracted or divided, by any unnecessary interference of the Government in events, passing abroad, over which they can have none, or at best but very imperfect means of controul."

"It is impossible not to feel the appeal; and if a statesman were permitted to regulate his conduct by the counsels of his heart instead of the dictates of his understanding, I really see no limits to the impulse, which might be given to his conduct, upon a case so stated. But we must always recollect that his is the grave task of providing for the peace and security of those interests immediately committed to his care; that he must not endanger the fate of the present generation in a speculative endeavour to improve the lot of that which is to come."

"There probably never was a statesman whose ideas were so right and whose attitude to public opinion was so wrong. Such disparity between the grasp of ends and the understanding of means amounts to a failure in statesmanship."

"It will naturally occur to every virtuous and generous mind, and to none more probably than to the Emperor of Russia's own,—indeed it is the first impression which presents itself to every reflecting observer when he contemplates the internal state of European Turkey—viz. : Is it fit that such a state of things should continue to exist? Ought the Turkish yoke to be for ever rivetted upon the necks of their suffering and Christian subjects; and shall the descendants of those, in admiration of whom we have been educated, be doomed in this fine country to drag out, for all time to come, the miserable existence to which circumstances have reduced them?"

"It provided specifically against an infraction on the part of France of the state of possession then created: It provided against the Return of the Usurper or any of his Family to the throne: It further designated the Revolutionary Power which had convulsed France and desolated Europe, as an object of it's constant solicitude, but it was the Revolutionary power more particularly in its Military Character actual and existent within France against which it intended to take Precautions, rather than against the Democratic Principles, then as now, but too generally spread throughout Europe."

"In this Alliance, as in all other human Arrangements, nothing is more likely to impair, or even to destroy its real utility, than any attempt to push its duties and its obligations beyond the Sphere which its original conception and understood Principles will warrant.—It was an Union for the re-conquest and liberation of a great proportion of the Continent of Europe from the military domination of France; and having subdued the Conqueror, it took the State of Possession, as established by the Peace, under the protection of the Alliance.—It never was, however, intended as an Union for the Government of the World, or for the Superintendence of the Internal Affairs of other States."

"It was not merely a question whether the Bourbon family, which had already given so many benefits to France, and among them, that best of all benefits, peace, should continue to reign in France, but whether tyranny and despotism should again reign over the independent nations of the continent? Whether as applied to this country, we should enjoy the happy state that we had bought with our blood after a long struggle, or whether we should once more revert to that artificial system which, during that struggle, we were compelled to maintain? Upon these points there could exist only one feeling, and his lordship trusted that Providence would ordain only one result."

"It is a great misfortune. The man is irreplaceable, especially for me... Castlereagh was the only person in his country who had experience in foreign affairs."

"I cannot praise Castlereagh enough. His attitude is excellent and his work as direct as it is correct. I cannot find a single point of difference with him and assure you that his mood is peaceful, peaceful in our sense."

"You will fully appreciate the Parliamentary importance of not having imputed to us that Louis XVIII., by being made an Ally against Buonaparte, has been made master of the confederacy for his own restoration. His Majesty cannot wish us to feel more decisively the importance of his restoration than we do; and most assuredly every effort will be made so to conduct the war so as to lead to this result, but we cannot make it a sine qua non. Foreign Powers may justly covenant for the destruction of Buonaparte's authority as inconsistent with their own safety, but it is another question avowedly to stipulate as to his successor. This is a Parliamentary delicacy."

"The Allies had made war, not for the sake of subjugating any power, but for the sake of preserving the whole of Europe from subjugation; they had succeeded in their object; and they had endeavoured to give to the different powers of the European commonwealth a protection from that danger by which they had already been destroyed."

"It is not, however, by one or two isolated successes that Lord Castlereagh's foreign policy ought to be tried. It is best judged by its general results. During the war his aim was to overthrow Napoleon, and to reduce France within her ancient limits. After the war his aim was to uphold the balance of power, and so to secure lasting peace to Europe. When the direction of England's foreign policy passed from his hands, both objects had been attained... For forty years the peace of Europe flourished undisturbed by one single conflict between any of the five great Powers who adjusted their differences at Vienna... Europe has not enjoyed so long a repose from the curse of war since the fall of the Roman empire. Such an achievement is an ample justification of the acts of the Congress of Vienna and of the minister who bore so large a part in shaping its decrees."

"Just and passionless."

"It is not insurrection we now want in Italy, or elsewhere—we want disciplined force, under Sovereigns we can trust."

"If we are to undertake the job, we must leave nothing to chance. It must be done upon the largest scale... [Y]ou must inundate France with force in all directions. If Bonaparte could turn the tide, there is no calculating upon his plan; and we must always recollect that Poland, Saxony, and much Jacobinism, are in our rear."

"I still feel great doubts about the acquisition in sovereignty of so many Dutch colonies. I am sure our reputation on the Continent, as a feature of strength, power, and confidence, is of more real moment to us than an acquisition thus made. The British merchants ought to be satisfied, if we secure them a direct import."

"It is impossible not to perceive a great moral change coming on in Europe, and that the principles of freedom are in full operation. The danger is, that the transition may be too sudden to ripen into anything likely to make the world better or happier. We have new constitutions launched in France, Spain, Holland, and Sicily. Let us see the result before we encourage farther attempts. The attempts may be made, and we must abide the consequences; but I am sure it is better to retard than accelerate the operation of this most hazardous principle which is abroad."

"I hope you will be able to make M. de Blacas and those about the king understand, that John Bull fights best, when he is not tied, and that, altho' as a line of policy we can with good management connect the support of the Bourbons with the avowed object of the war, we never could sustain as a principle, that we were committed irrevocably to His Majesty to make this a sine qua non under every possible circumstance. Such an engagement would defeat its own purpose by rendering that questionable, which if done voluntarily, would command a general concurrence."

"The steadiness of this country in the war will depend upon our making it clear that the Continent has voluntarily decided to seek its safety in arming."

"I much suspect neither Austria nor Prussia, and certainly none of the smaller Powers, have any sincere desire to bring the present state of things to a speedy termination: so long as they can feed, clothe, and pay their armies at the expense of France, and put English subsidies into their pockets besides, which nothing can deprive them of, previous to the 1st of April, 1816, but the actual conclusion of a treaty with France, you cannot suppose they will be in a great hurry to come to a final settlement, since the war may be said to have closed."

"No doubt, the prevailing sentiment throughout Germany is in favour of territorially reducing France. After all the people have suffered, and with the ordinary inducements of some fresh acquisitions, it is not wonderful that it should be so; but it is one thing to wish the thing done, and another to maintain it when done; and, in calculating the chances of the latter, we ought to be aware that none of these Powers can, for any time, keep up war establishments, or, having once laid them down, find the means of speedily resuming them; and that, if the course adopted materially increases the chances of early war with France, these acquisitions may be of short duration, whilst our chances of an interval of peace will be diminished, and we may be obliged, in order to keep France within any bounds, to take the weight of the war, in a pecuniary sense, upon ourselves."

"I feel no wrath against the people. I am only doing my duty."

"The present Confederacy may be considered as the union of nearly the whole of Europe against the unbounded and faithless ambition of an individual Napoleon]. It comprehends not only all the great monarchies, but a great proportion of the secondary Powers. It is not more distinguished from former Confederacies against France by the number and magnitude of the Powers engaged than by the national character which the war has assumed throughout the respective states. On former occasions it was a contest of sovereigns, in some instances perhaps, against the prevailing sentiment of their subjects; it is now a struggle dictated by the feelings of the people of all ranks as well as by the necessity of the case. The sovereigns of Europe have at last confederated together for their common safety, having in vain sought that safety in detached and insulated compromises with the enemy. They have successively found that no extent of submission could procure for them either safety or repose, and that they no sooner ceased to be objects of hostility themselves, than they were compelled to become instruments in the hands of France for effectuating the conquest of other unoffending states. The present Confederacy may therefore be pronounced to originate in higher motives and to rest upon more solid principles than any of those that have preceded it, and the several Powers to be bound together for the first time by one paramount consideration of an imminent and common danger."

"As opposed to France, a peace concluded in concert, though less advantageous in its terms, would be preferable to the largest concessions received from the enemy as the price of disunion. The great object of the Allies, whether in war or negotiation, should be to keep together, and to drive back and confine the armies of France within the circle of their own immediate resources. This alone can bring down the military force of the enemy to its natural level, and save Europe from being progressively conquered with its own spoils."

"To suppose that the Powers on the side of Germany might be induced to sign a peace, leaving Great Britain and the nations of the Peninsula to carry on the war, or that the enemy being expelled from the Peninsula, Spain might sheath the sword, leaving the Continental Powers to sustain the undivided shock of French power, is to impute to them all a total blindness to their common safety. Were either of these interests to attempt to shelter themselves in a separate peace, it must leave France master of the fate of the other, and ultimately of both. It is by the war in Spain that Russia has been preserved, and that Germany may be delivered; it is by the war in Germany that Spain may look to escape the subjugation that otherwise ultimately await her. So long as both manfully contend in the field against France, neither can be absolutely overwhelmed, and both, upon every sound principle of military calculation, must by perseverance triumph. To determine to stand or fall together is their only safety, and to effect this the confederates must be brought to agree to certain fixed principles of common interest."

"If Buonaparté succeeded in re-establishing his authority in France, peace must be despaired of; at least such a peace as we had recently the hope of enjoying. The question now was, whether Europe must once more return to that dreadful system which it had so long pursued; whether Europe was again to become a series of armed nations, and whether Great Britain among them was to abandon that wholesome state into which she was now settling, to resume her station as a military people, and again to struggle for the independence of the world? These were questions of no small magnitude, depending upon events now in issue, depending upon a new and an unexpected contest, in which the liberties of mankind were once more assaulted and endangered."

""The great Lord Mansfield"...is more worthy of honour and reverence than most of those who are his neighbours among the monuments in Westminster Abbey. What glory to have found the law of evidence of brick and left it of marble! I pulled down the volume of Burke for his encomium on Mansfield, as one whose ideas went to the growing melioration of the law by making its liberality keep pace with justice and the actual concerns of the world—not restricting the infinitely diversified occasions of man, and the rules of natural justice, within artificial circumscriptions, but conforming our jurisprudence to the growth of our commerce and our empire."

"An estimated value is a precarious measure of justice, compared with the specific thing."

"A man wants no protection when his conduct is strictly right."

"Whatever is contrary, bonos mores est decorum, the principles of our law prohibit, and the King's Court, as the general censor and guardian of the public manners, is bound to restrain and punish."

"Tut, man, decide promptly, but never give any reasons for your decisions. Your decisions may be right, but your reasons are sure to be wrong."

"The last end that can happen to any man, never comes too soon, if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his country: for liberty is synonymous to law and government."

"Anciently, the Courts of justice did sit on Sundays."

"As mathematical and absolute certainty is seldom to be attained in human affairs, reason and public utility require that judges and all mankind in forming their opinions of the truth of facts should be regulated by the superior number of the probabilities on the one side or the other whether the amount of these probabilities be expressed in words and arguments or by figures and numbers."

"I see through your whole life, one uniform plan to enlarge the power of the crown, at the expense of the liberty of the subject. To this object, your thoughts, words and actions have been constantly directed. In contempt or ignorance of the common law of England, you have made it your study to introduce into the court, where you preside, maxims of jurisprudence unknown to Englishmen. The Roman code, the law of nations, and the opinion of foreign civilians, are your perpetual theme;—but whoever heard you mention Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights with approbation or respect? By such treacherous arts, the noble simplicity and free spirit of our Saxon laws were first corrupted. The Norman conquest was not compleat, until Norman lawyers had introduced their laws, and reduced slavery to a system.—This one leading principle directs your interpretation of the laws, and accounts for your treatment of juries."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.’"

"The giant race is extinct."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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