People From London

"A country is signally blessed above others, which can grow ."

"I have before proved the nation to be in the possession of a vast income, highly sufficient for all demands, to possess a vigorous agriculture, flourishing manufactures, and an extended commerce, in a word, to be a great industrious country. Now I conceive that it is impossible to prove such points, without proportionably proving the kingdom to be a populous one."

"A vast change had taken place in English social life within two generations... View the navigation, the roads, the harbours and all other public works. Take notice of the spirit with which manufactures are carried on. Move your eye which side you will, you behold nothing but great riches and yet greater resources."

"I thought that health was a manifestation of the way we organize society, and that by asking about health in society, we're asking about society itself."

"When people would come in with non-specific problems and we never quite got to the root of a medical diagnosis, it always seemed to me they were expressing problems in living, and that one needed to look at their problems in living, and how they manifested themselves in physical problems."

"The family image, the family tradition, was that my parents were poor immigrants into East London, and that they thought that education was vitally important. But they both left school at fourteen, and so I grew up with the idea that, but for the opportunity, my parents would have been educated. That they were giving me this opportunity, and by golly, I better take advantage of it."

"I used to think that medicine and particularly surgery is just failed prevention. That if we could treat these people properly and, particularly, if we could do something about prevention, we could empty the hospital wards. It was probably false, but that's what I used to think."

"It has seldom been sufficiently considered that in the adoption of those repressive measures which have been singled out for special abuse by the hostile critics of Lord Liverpool, Government was face to face with seditions and insurrectionary plots which culminated in a scheme for the assassination of the whole Cabinet. I see little or no justification for the various Arms Bills and Crimes Bills, and other precautionary measures which have been demanded for Ireland, which did not equally exist for the Six Acts. Governments are answerable for the preservation of peace and the security of life and property; and I doubt whether impartial men, after the experience of the last ten years, would be disposed to judge as harshly of these measures as was the fashion forty years ago, when public danger of this kind had come to seem almost like a dream."

"Ld. Mulgrave told me in the morning that nothing was fixed about the Foreign office, and that Ld. Liverpool was too good a War Secretary to be spared there."

"Lord Liverpool was an essentially fair-minded man, of great common-sense and great business capacity. He had not the genius which discerns from afar the signs of the times and treats present evils by the light of them; but he did what more brilliant men might have failed to do. He held together, for ten or twelve years, a Cabinet composed of very discordant materials, and was thus enabled to secure for his Government the support of both the old Conservative Tories and the younger advocates of Reform, who began to grow impatient of abuses. Without some such combination it is doubtful how far the country could have been governed at all during the critical period which followed the conclusion of the war. His high character, tact, moderation, and perfect disinterestedness secured for us a strong Government at the time when it was most wanted, and this, at all events, is a claim upon our gratitude which is never likely to be disputed."

"How, for instance, could the Protestant succession be maintained without a Protestant parliament? Such were his reasons for resisting the higher claims of the Catholics; but, with the same sentiments be would give his concurrence to the present measure. He apprehended from it none of the dangers which he had alluded to in the former case. Nay, he even believed, that the granting of such privileges to the Catholics of England, would strengthen the Protestant establishment, as a cause of discontent would thus be removed—as a reproach perpetually thrown in their teeth would be taken away—and as, by conceding these little things, they acquired strength to resist greater encroachments."

"I cannot in a letter enter into all the particulars, but be assured the Government hangs by a thread. The Catholic question in its present state, combined with other circumstances, will, I have little doubt, lead to its dissolution in the course of this session."

"Lord Liverpool was a very timid man: never sufficiently regarded—he carried the country through the most formidable war in which it was ever engaged. No use in having your general if Liverpool had not raised taxes."

"He thought that, in order to maintain the Protestant ascendancy, it was necessary to have a Protestant parliament, a Protestant council, and Protestant judges."

"To conclude: we wish that the King of France would hang or shoot Buonaparte, as the best termination of the business; but if this is impracticable, and the allies are desirous that we should have the custody of him, it is not unreasonable that we should be allowed to judge of the means by which that custody can be be made effectual."

"On the present occasion, they had the fullest proof (if they believed the report) of a treasonable conspiracy in the metropolis, to overturn, by a general insurrection, the laws, the government, and the constitution of the kingdom. It was also, a matter of perfect notoriety, that the same system was spread over a great part of the country. There was a double engine at work; the operation of the one, was evidently aiming at what every person must agree would overthrow the constitution; the operation of the other (he alluded to the Spenceans) was calculated to produce a complete convulsion in the elements which composed the system of social life."

"Notwithstanding, however, all this successful mystification, the Arch-Mediocrity who presided, rather than ruled, over this Cabinet of Mediocrities, became hourly more conscious that the inevitable transition from fulfilling the duties of an administration to performing the functions of a government could not be conducted without talents and knowledge. The Arch-Mediocrity had himself some glimmering traditions of political science. He was sprung from a laborious stock, had received some training, and though not a statesman, might be classed among those whom the Lord Keeper Williams used to call "statemongers." In a subordinate position his meagre diligence and his frigid method might not have been without value; but the qualities that he possessed were misplaced; nor can any character be conceived less invested with the happy properties of a leader. In the conduct of public affairs, his disposition was exactly the reverse to that which is the characteristic of great men. He was peremptory in little questions, and great ones he left open."

"He felt all the importance of the measure that was now proposed: but he would not allow any imputations that might be insinuated to preclude him from discharging what he conscientiously believed to be his duty. His only object was, to support the throne, to support the constitution and to protect the peace, the happiness, and the confidence of every private man in the kingdom; his only view was, to preserve our morals, our religion, our establishments, and to secure to every man the tranquil enjoyment of his fireside. He asked of parliament to entrust the Prince Regent's ministers with that power for a short time—a most odious one, he agreed—and one which ought not to be confided to any man, or to any set of men, except in cases of the last necessity, except in such cases as, he apprehended, now justified him in calling for it."

"The usefulness and importance of a system of national accounts can most readily be appreciated by returning to origins of the method and at the same time considering the actual necessity of this type of analysis. This new analytical technique was first introduced in Great Britain during the Second War. John Maynard Keynes was at that time an expert adviser to the Treasury on problems of war finance, and his assistants included Richard Stone. Keynes took as his starting point a balance between total current resources (including real gross national product) on the supply side and total consumption, investments and expenditure for the war effort on the demand side. Richard Stone's experiments in the systematic processing of the copious flood of statistical material in the form of national accounts moved Keynes to exclaim: "We are in a new era of joy through statistics". Stone's ideas on the design of national accounts were from the beginning aimed at full integration of national accounts for the various sub-sectors which between them represented the entire national management of resources. Every item of income and expenditure on one side of an account must recur as the opposite item - expenditure and income respectively - in another account. An integral system of accounts included, for example, household income and expenditure, the expenditure and revenues of the enterprise sector (expenditure, for example, including wage payments), national saving and investment, public sector spending and revenues and, finally, balances of payments vis-à-vis other countries. This double-entry accounting provided opportunities of cross-checking statistics for the numerous transactions. Figures from different sources had to tally."

"Stone was by no means the first economist to produce national income accounts. Simon Kuznets, for example, had already done so for the United States. Stone’s distinctive contribution was to integrate national income into a double-entry bookkeeping format. Every income item on one side of the balance sheet had to be matched by an expenditure item on the other side, thus ensuring consistency. Stone’s double-entry method has become the universally accepted way to measure national income."

"No, youth is not the age of pleasure; we then expect too much, and are therefore exposed to daily disappointments and mortification. When we are a little older, and have brought down our wishes to our experience, then we become calm and begin to enjoy ourselves."

"France is your natural enemy; she is more so as a republic than as a monarchy. We know less at what point a nation will stop than a king."

"In 1945, the war ended and I was chosen to be the first director of the newly-established Department of Applied Economics in Cambridge. Between leaving the government service and taking up my new post, I had a break of about three months which I spent at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. I intended to use my time there writing up my ideas on a social accounting system for the measurement of economic flows, a thing I had wanted to do for years but had not had time for during the war. What happened was that, in Princeton, I met , the Director of Intelligence at the League of Nations, who wanted a paper on the problems of defining and measuring the national income and related totals for consideration by the League's Committee of Statistical Experts. He asked me if I would undertake the work and naturally I accepted. I soon had a memorandum ready and it was discussed in Princeton while I was still there by a subcommittee convened by Loveday. Their report was eventually published by the United Nations in Geneva in 1947 under the title, Measurement of National Income and the Construction of Social Accounts, with my memorandum as an appendix."

"History has hardly done justice to Liverpool's solid though not shining talents. That he was for nearly fifteen years head of an administration which concluded successfully the French war, carried the country through the perils which followed upon the peace of 1815, and brought it to the eve of the great reform period, and that during all that time his ministry, even when it consisted of two hostile and irreconcilable parties, was rarely in danger from its opponents, is proof conclusive that, although neither an impressive orator nor a great statesman, he had consummate tact, an infallible instinct for the practical solution of difficulties, unfailing temper, and eminent talents as a man of business and a public official."

"From 1931 to 1935, I was an undergraduate at Cambridge in my father's old college, Gonville and Caius, which was particularly strong in medicine and the law. However, after two years of law I switched to economics, much to my father's disappointment. At that time the world was in the depth of the great depression and my motive for wanting to change subject was the belief, bred of youthful ignorance and optimism, that if only economics were better understood, the world would be a better place."

"Where a government was established, it must proceed upon one of two principles; either to frame it in concert with permanent and immutable laws, or in connexion with laws that might be altered and modified according to particular exigencies? The former system, he apprehended, would not be very conducive to the happiness of mankind; on the other hand, if as much liberty were granted to the subject as could be conceded consistently with the safety of the state; there must be a power somewhere competent to the temporary suspension of that liberty, when such a measure becomes necessary for the protection of it ultimately."

"There is no hope, as far as I can see, of pushing the postulates of economic theory back to a set of irreducible axioms."

"Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference."

"In the first place, economic theory provides a comparatively detailed specification of the demand relationships for individual consumers' goods, but is by no means so specific about the system into which these relationships fit. It would be possible to close the system in very many ways, and the precise way selected would influence the regression estimates in a model involving simultaneous equations."

"A choice may have to be made between a biased estimator which is believed to be relatively accurate and an unbiased estimator which is demonstrably highly inefficient, and it is by no means obvious that the latter is always to be preferred."

"We usually find a considerable degree of correlation between indicators and also between different sets of weights that we should ever think of using. Consequently we are likely to find that alternative index numbers using different weights show similar and often approximately proportionate movements. That this is so in most economic applications is due to the nature of the actual world and not simply to the formal characteristics of index number techniques."

"The object of this paper is fivefold. The first objective is to derive a practical system of demand equations which possess properties usually considered desirable from the standpoint of elementary economic theory. The second is to consider the statistical problems involved in applying the system of equations. The third is to analyse the pattern of demand for consumers' goods in terms of this system on the basis of annual data relating to the United Kingdom over the years 1920-38. The fourth is to compare the results of this system, and systems like it, with the actual state of demand in 1900. Finally, the fifth is to compare the post-war structure of demand with what might be expected from the inter-war relationshipp under free-market condition."

"In the second place, a system would involve more variables than those which may be supposed to enter into demand relationships, and so the preliminary work of estimating the necessary time series would also be increased. In the third place, in the simultaneous method of estimation the estimates of the original parameters come to depend on most of the remaining estimates, and so it is quite likely that they will have large sampling variances."

"The usefulness of observation and measurement in testing economic theories arises because the theorems of economics are supposed to relate to the actual world... Any economic theorem rigorously deduced from given postulates may be regarded as a hypothesis about the actual world which xperience may show to be false."

"Both in 1806 and in 1809 he might have been Prime Minister had he chosen. But he recoiled from the first place, nor did he finally accept it till he saw that without him the Tory Party must be broken up, and the Whigs admitted in a body. Thus, he was not a man either to originate a great policy, to make personal enemies, or to be mixed up in political intrigues and back-stairs conspiracies. His career, accordingly, was deficient in all those elements which excite wonder and curiosity. No "revelations," no scandals, no racy anecdotes were to be expected from his private papers. There were no aspersions on his character which his family might have been eager to refute; no passages in his career which might seem to require vindication. Thus, many of the ordinary motives to which he publication of political biographies and the private papers of deceased statesmen may reasonably be attributed, were in his case wanting. And the literary warfare which usually follows such productions, and keeps alive the memory of men not above mediocrity, has not yet been kindled by the quiet virtues of Lord Liverpool."

"Lord Liverpool, however, is much more entitled to the gratitude and admiration of posterity than some statesmen who have enjoyed much more of it. He was one of that class of Ministers whom we should be very glad to see more numerous: patient, prudent, and patriotic; careless of his own fame, so that those measures were pursued which he considered for the public good; shunning rather than courting popular applause; and by his clear common sense, his unselfishness, and his equanimity, solving problems and surmounting difficulties which more brilliant men are wont either to create or to exasperate."

"I have tried to make clear in this brief sketch of the nature of deductively formulated theories, at least as they occur in economics, that, although their origin lies in common observation and introspection, nevertheless they are capable of a purely mathematical development through the exact statement of a of a set of postulates which, however, since they must inevitably contain assumptions about human behaviour, require to be tested by reference to actual events."

"Although he came to the United States frequently and for several decades lived part of each year at the in New York, Mr. Waugh was not particularly famous in this country, except for the 1956 Island in the Sun. The colorful story of love, murder and political intrigue on the imaginary Caribbean island of Santa Maria was a book-club selection, was condensed in and was sold to the movies for a that starred , , , and ."

"A good deal of fun is involved in the launching of a . It is exciting to see one's name placarded all over London; there was a bigger space for posters in the front of then. Bus after bus announced my story."

"In Russia love was regarded with suspicion as a deterrent to the social obligations of the Soviet citizen."

"I returned to civilian life, agreeing with , that the first duty of a wine was to be red, adding my own corollary that its second duty was to be ."

"I am prepared to believe that a slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does to the soul."

"... I am not a very serious person. I am a storyteller and an entertainer, the direct descendant of those wandering s who in the Middle Ages were classified as rogues and vagabonds. The stock of the status of the novelist may have gone up in recent years, and there are a number of novelists who seem to claim a position of a prophet, a leader, an advisor, one of the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, but I think when one comes to the last analysis, that our ancestor is rather than , ... and I myself certainly think of myself and my brother storytellers not so much as leaders of men into action as the idle singers of an empty day"

"are not a profitable form of writing; their sale is usually small but they have for the author the satisfaction of possessing reference value. They hold their place on library shelves and are consulted by the student and the traveller long after novels that enjoyed a brief bright summer are utterly forgotten, I do not suppose that it would pay a publisher to reissue today 's English in the West Indies, 's Cradle of the Deep, or 's If Crab No Walk, but those three books provide indispensable research material. It is of value to learn how certain places struck people twenty, fifty, eighty years ago."

"As military regulations state that it is the duty of every to make immediate and strenuous effort to escape, and as every man is at heart an adventurer, it is not surprising that our languid community was from time to time regaled by the rumours of impending sorties."

"To the as to the Arabs, a sleek, well-fed appearance was something to be proud of, a proof of prosperity and success. It was assumed that any man who could afford to would "do himself well." A thin man was either unhealthy or poor—both of which were crimes in the 1870s."

"I had reached shortly after breakfast. Letters of introduction had gone ahead of me, and within three hours I was sipping a very dry martini on the balcony of a bungalow situated on the far side of the mountain range that divides the island. A thousand feet below me 'the bright blue meadow a bay' washed in varying shades of green and turquoise against a long . Beyond it stretched an archipelago of islands, some British, some American, some a bare grazing ground for goats."

"... Maugham would not have been the writer he became had his marriage been a success. Nor would Evelyn. He made his first trip to in the autumn of 1930; for six years he was on the move. Until his marriage had been annulled he could not remarry. Those six years of travel gave him the material he needed. He could not have taken a wife upon those travels, certainly not , who was delicate in health. A novelist to get the material he needs must travel alone or with another man. Had the Evelyns’ marriage been a success, he would, with his absorption in the world of fashion, have concentrated on social satires that might well have become brittle and superficial. Did She-Evelyn subconsciously realize that? Her marriage to was short-lived, but she was genuinely in love with him at the beginning. Would she, though, have been prepared to let herself fall in love with him — there is always a point at which one can draw back — had she not felt that since the success of Decline and Fall she was cast in the wrong role? The “he-Evelyn, she- Evelyn, ‘Orphans of the Storm’ Idyll” had been one thing; it was quite another to be the wife, companion, confidante, counselor, and bastion of a great man of letters — the role that Laura Herbert was to fill later, so gladly, so proudly, so lovingly, and with so triumphant a success."

"My friends used to wonder how I could afford to do so much travelling. But actually travel was an economy for me. I did not have to indulge in costly entertaining. My social life was provided by the ships in which I travelled, and in the islands that I visited I was a guest more often than often than a host. I never during 1951 had a substantial credit balance at my bank more than once I received one of those notes so typical of English banking, 'Your account appears to be £23. 11.6. We shall be glad to received your instructions in this matter.' But I was never insolvent."

"There comes some time an end to all things, to the good and to the bad."