"As you know many people have dreamed dreams since the War ended. It's partly the fault of the British nation—and of the Americans; we can't exonerate them from blame either—that this idea of “representative government” has got into the heads of nations who haven't the smallest notion of what its basis must be. ... I doubt if you would find it written in any book on the British Constitution that the whole essence of British Parliamentary government lies in the intention to make the thing Work. We take that for granted. We have spent hundreds of years in elaborating a system that rests on that alone. It is so deep in us that we have lost sight of it. But it is not so obvious to others. These peoples—Indians, Egyptians, and so on—study our learning. They read our history, our philosophy, and politics. They learn about our Parliamentary methods of obstruction, but nobody explains to them that when it comes to the point, all our Parliamentary parties are determined that the machinery shan't stop. “The king's government must go on,” as the Duke of Wellington said. But their idea is that the function of opposition is to stop the machine. Nothing easier of course, but hopeless."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomUniversity of Cambridge facultyBritish peersPhilosophers from ScotlandPoliticians from Scotland
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Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC (25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) was a British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 until 1905. The author of several influential works of philosophy, he was one of the most intellectual prime ministers of the 20th century. As Foreign Secretary he authored the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.
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