Prime Ministers Of The United Kingdom

"[W]e shall begin the exploitation of national resources like mines; or we shall begin the process of industrial reconstruction by agrarian policies which will bring the towns into contact with the country, re-populate the deserted villages, and re-till the waste fields."

"[I]n the slums of the manufacturing towns and in the hovels of the countryside he has become a legendary being—the personification of all that thousands of downtrodden men and women hope and dream and desire. Like Lenin...he is the focus of the mute hopes of a whole class."

"The books that influenced me most were Hugh Miller's, particularly his "Schools and Schoolmasters." Also the "Waverley Novels," in conjunction with Scottish History, opened out the great world of national life for and led me on to politics. But Hugh Miller had more influence upon me than any other."

"Malcolm MacDonald, son of the Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, invited Ralph and me to meet his father and spend the night at Chequers. We met the Prime Minister along the road as he was taking his constitutional walk in his plus-fours, his scarf, his cap, his pipe and walking stick, a typical country squire, the last person to look like a leader of the Labour Party. My first impression was of a gentleman of great dignity, extremely conscious of the burden of premiership, with a noble countenance which was not without humour. The first part of the evening was somewhat restrained. But after dinner we went to the famous historical Long Room for coffee, and after viewing the original Cromwellian death mask and other historical objects we got down to a cosy chat. I told him that since my first visit there was a great deal of chance for the better. In 1921 I had seen much poverty in London, grey-haired old ladies sleeping on the Thames Embankment, but now those old lades were gone; no more were derelicts sleeping there. The shops looked well stocked and the children well shod, and that, surely, must be to the credit of the Labour Government."

"The England of 1844 did not break out into revolt; Chartism did not develop into socialism... The class war created trade unionism; the working classes became citizens; law, morality, the force of combination, lifted to some extent the pall of darkness which hung over the land. The Marxian today still wonders why England fell from grace. Neither Marx nor Engels saw deep enough to discover the possibilities of peaceful advance which lay hidden beneath the surface. Their analogies misled them."

"The State does not concern itself primarily with man as possessor of rights, but with man as the doer of duties. A right is the opportunity of fulfilling a duty, and it should be recognised only in so far as it is necessary to the performance of duty... Nor should the State grant the "right" to the franchise unless by doing so it is promoting its own ends...as man approaches the fullness of liberty which he can enjoy only when he is perfect, his rights become more ample... The State regards the man as a carrier of human life between the Past and the Future, and assigns to him the work of realising the Future from the Past. It shows him the path."

"When Mr. Lloyd George talked...about unemployment he forgot that he was the cause of it. Unemployment...and the increased cost of living were all due to causes that had been begun during Mr. Lloyd George's régime. Mr. Lloyd George went to Paris to try to make good the nonsensical pledges he gave in 1918, and supported a Peace Treaty which had been the cause very nearly of Britain's bankruptcy, and certainly the bankruptcy of many other nations. He, and he alone, was responsible for that... Everything that had happened had been the outcome of Mr. Lloyd George's blunderings, and he was using the calamities of his own policy as a reason why they should send him back to office."

"He was a free-trader, because he felt it was the best, with all its drawbacks. There were higher wages in protected America, but there was corrupt politics. Protection in America meant more sweating in America than free trade did in England. The very worst of conditions and slums in England were a paradise compared with the conditions of steel workers under protection in Pittsburg. The whole of the protection system was meant not for workers, wage-earners, or the wives of working men, but to make capitalists millionaires."

"We are here preparing, as I see it, this international armaments conference. That ought to be our project. If we can remove the obstacles in the way of that we shall have done a tremendous amount of work that, in its very nature, once it is done, is bound to be permanent, because the reason and morality of the world will stand by it so loyally."

"The substance of Germany's general case has a background of reason and human nature. I cannot be accused of ever having approached it in the "mind of Versailles," nor in the spirit of one who assumed that a powerful and a proud people could be kept subordinate by force (even by what seems to be an overwhelming force), nor have I ever seen anything but disaster issuing from and to the League of Nations if it is used by victors to perpetuate the position and mind they were in on the day of their victory... But, be that as it may, Germany has acted in such a way as to destroy the feeling of mutual confidence in Europe. It has broken up the road to peace and has beset it with terrors. It claims a measure of armed power which puts most of the nations of Europe at its mercy. Every reflecting and reasonable German must see the force of the point I am making. He must know in his heart that Berlin is not enough—that, in fact, it has upset very much more than it has pacified."

"I know that, when the troubled history of these times comes to be studied and recorded in the cold and just light of truth, all the blame will not lie at Germany's door. That will not save it, its methods and its self-will, as shown in these latter days, from the blame of destroying the chances of success in peacemaking which were once again presenting themselves to us, and of throwing the mind of Europe suddenly into anxiety and turning it back upon the fatal ways of militarism, thus compelling the nations of Europe to return for an evanescent comfort to increased military equipment."

"There is too much expected of parliament. Localities should manage their own affairs and unions of localities should be formed when necessary to look after common interests. Our county councils are excellent beginnings in this direction."

"The Labour party is no class champion. In politics it is frankly democratic, in economics it is co-operative... It was not bought into being to revenge the wage-earner and mercilessly smash the capitalist... Capitalist and labourer alike feel that some new order must evolve if England is to exist."

"Our loss of belief in the Liberal party is therefore owing to the fact that its day of historical fitness has passed away. The new problems of progress will demand treatment by men of different outlook, of a different political principle, of a different mental quality, of a new species of democratic sympathy. The mass of the Liberal party will no doubt continue progressive, but their organisation is not now the sole custodian of the progressive cause... The Independent Labour party is in the true line of the progressive apostolic succession. It alone is able to interpret the spirit of the time."

"The Hindu from his traditions and religion regards India not only as a political unit naturally the subject of one sovereignty, but as the outward embodiment, as the temple - nay even as the Goddess Mother of his spiritual culture.... India and Hinduism are organically related as body and soul."

"I cannot refrain from wishing you God-Speed in your election contest... [L]et the consequences be what they may, do not withdraw. The cause of Labour in Scotland and of Scottish Nationality will suffer much thereby. Your defeat will awaken Scotland and your victory will re-construct Scottish Liberalism. All success be yours, and the National cause you champion. There is no miner – and no other one for that matter – who is a Scotsman and not ashamed of it, who will vote against you in favour of an English barrister, absolutely ignorant of Scotland and of Scottish affairs."

"The end we have to strive for is complete democratic liberty in politics and complete freedom in industry from the tyranny of monopoly and the vagaries of capitalism. Or, employing words appropriate to the spirit of Socialism, we should say that the task of the practical democratic reformer is now to show how the work of democratic liberty, begun so well by the early Radicals but dropped by their modern representatives, is to be completed; how the golden bridge of palliatives between political and social democracy is to be built; and how the foundations of social democracy are to be laid."

"Mr. Rockefeller not only owns the Standard Oil supplies: he controls the railways, the banks, the shops...upon which his Trust depends. The Steel Corporation not only makes steel; it owns coal and iron fields, ore steamers, the Erie and Pittsburgh mineral railway, as well as the operatives in Homestead. We oppose the Trust, not as an organisation, but because it is controlled by individuals for their own ends...But the Trust points out the line of British advance. In this country, however, the introduction of the Trust should be marked by public ownership."

"Factory Laws, Fair Wages resolutions, Trade Unionism itself, are...all Protection – not the Protection of Mr. Chaplin, the landlord, nor of Mr. Chamberlain, the demagogue, but the Protection of the Socialist."

"I am in favour of arbitration—I see nothing else for the world. If we cannot devise a proper system of arbitration, then do not let us fool ourselves that we are going to have peace. Let us go back to the past, let us go back to competitive armaments, let us go back to that false, whited sepulchre of security and of military pacts—there is nothing else for us—and let us prepare for the next war, because that is inevitable."

"[Trade unions should identify] with something higher and wider than trade union industrial demands. It must set these demands into a system of national well-being; the wage earner must become the citizen: the union must become the guardian of economic justice."

"The most secure nation in the whole of Europe, until it roused suspicions and fears against itself, was Germany. The German people who believe stories of encirclement cannot help recognising that their latest policy of military expansion, together with the circumstances of its declaration—an army greater than that of any other nation in Europe, an air force already declared equal to ours, a fleet that would be equal to the French and superior to the Italian—must rouse fear and unsettlement in the mind of every nation at which it can strike, and inevitably force the sound pacific idea of general collective security into the dangerous form of military alliances. The nations which were backward in making their contributions are now congratulating themselves that they waited for Germany to make its contribution first."

"Lower forms merge into higher forms, one species with another, the vegetable into the animal kingdom; in human history one epoch slides into another...Socialism, the stage which follows Liberalism, retains everything of value in Liberalism by virtue of its being the hereditary heir of Liberalism."

"I do think...that the way the Daily News and the Westminster Gazette behaved [during the election] was contemptible. We expect nothing better from the Daily Mail and such miserable products. The result, however, of the whole fight has been to dig both deeply and broadly a ditch between Liberalism and Labour. From all over the country I hear from my friends who fought that the Liberal fight was dirtier than the Tory, and I have seen leaflets like that issued by [Sir Henry] Webb who fought [Hugh] Dalton in Cardiff, which are simply amazing in their dishonesty. The line he took was that whilst we pitied the poor German who was being asked to pay £2,000,000,000 we had no qualms in imposing a Capital Levy upon Englishmen to the extent of £3,000,000,000."

"MacDonald simply couldn't understand why he had been deserted by his former close friends. He felt that he had departed from none of his Socialist principles and had been true to the conceptions which had guided them through his political life."

"The Gladstone of Labour."

"We do not believe that military alliances are going to bring security. We believe that a military alliance in an agreement for security is like a grain of mustard seed—small to begin with. That is the essential seed of the agreement, and that seed with the years will grow and grow and grow, until at last the tree that has been produced from it will overshadow the heavens, and we shall be back exactly in the military position in which we found ourselves in 1914."

"Mr. Lloyd George's campaign in its gross demagogic vulgarity has also increased both the number and the value of the reasons why we should have nothing whatever to do with his Party."

"My first grave doubts as to German diplomacy arose when Germany left the League of Nations for reasons which I have never been able to appreciate, except upon assumptions which meant that the German Government was indifferent to the pacification of Europe."

"The League takes upon itself as its first task the creating once again of the European system, and that European system never will exist until our late enemies have ceased to be our enemies and have come in to take their cooperative part in that system."

"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."

"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.’"

"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.""

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"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?"

"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."

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

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

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"[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."

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

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