Prime Ministers Of The United Kingdom

"There are those who talk as if Irishmen were justified in disobeying the law because the law comes to them in a foreign garb. I see no reason why any local colour should be given to the Ten Commandments."

"[T]he energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish."

"The case which the French present to us with regard to the Left Bank of the Rhine is very forcible, but very one-sided. They draw a lurid picture of future Franco-German relations. They assume that the German population will always far outnumber the French; that as soon as the first shock of defeat has passed away, Germany will organise herself for revenge; that all our attempts to limit armaments will be unsuccessful; that the League of Nations will be impotent; and, consequently, that the invasion of France, which was fully accomplished in 1870, and partially accomplished in the recent War, will be renewed with every prospect of success."

"He did not believe that any such transaction could be quoted from the annals of our political or Parliamentary history. It stood alone—he did not wish to use strong language, but he was going to say—it stood alone in its infamy."

"[I]t is Authority rather than Reason to which, in the main, we owe, not religion only, but ethics and politics; that it is Authority which supplies us with essential elements in the premises of science; that it is Authority rather than Reason which lays deep the foundations of social life; that it is Authority rather than Reason which cements its superstructure. And though it may seem to savour of paradox, it is yet no exaggeration to say, that if we would find the quality in which we most notably excel the brute creation, we should look for it, not so much in our faculty of convincing and being convinced by the exercise of reasoning, as in our capacity for influencing and being influenced through the action of Authority."

"To secure order, freedom, and safety, for the minority as well as for the majority of the Irish people, and to do so as far as possible, by the administration of equal laws, should be the first object of any Ministry responsible for the government of that country. But I shall resist to the uttermost any attempt to loosen the connection, which has subsisted so long between Ireland and Great Britain, under whatever disguises that attempt may be made."

"...we are now in a position which we have not been within the memory of living men. (“Shame.”) Now, what does this imply? Everything depends upon the Navy. (Hear, hear.) We exist as an Empire only on sufferance unless our Navy be supreme (hear, hear), and I for one, ladies and gentlemen, am not content to exist on sufferance. (Cheers.)"

"Go about at this moment if you will and consult the statesmen and diplomatists of the lesser Powers, and I am perfectly confident that you will find among them an absolute unanimity of opinion that a struggle sooner or later between this country and Germany is inevitable. I do not agree with them, but that is their opinion. They have watched with the closest interest...and they have come to the conclusion, I believe utterly wrongly, that we are not alive to the sense of our responsibilities, and that nothing can stir us to a recognition of our position, and that, therefore, we are predestined to succumb in some great contest, the occasion for which nobody can foresee, to a country which does face facts, which is alive to its responsibility, and which talks little and does much. (Cheers.) And so far has this depreciatory view of the virility of the manhood of Great Britain gone that I have known Germans, not connected with the Government, but men of position and character, men engaged in great affairs, who if you talk to them about the adoption of Tariff Reform by this country, actually say,—“Do you suppose we should ever allow Great Britain to adopt Tariff Reform?” (Cheers.) I do not press private and irresponsible conversations more than they ought to be pressed, but the idea of any man of education and character outside this country should have the audacity to say that Great Britain is not to settle its own taxation according to its own ideas, makes my blood boil. (Cheers.)"

"No Continental country has ever been able to understand the temper of the British people, but, while I give them a note of warning of our foreign critics, let me say what is more to the point to my own friends, that unless they bestir themselves Great Britain will be in a position of peril which it has not known in the memory of their fathers, their grandfathers, their great grandfathers, and if that position of peril should issue in some great catastrophe...this country will not again easily arise. (Hear, hear.) I do not believe there is going to be war between this country and any great foreign Power. (Hear, hear.) Heaven knows I do not desire it, but I do not believe it. Please remember the absolutely only way in which you can secure the peace which you all desire is that you shall be sure of victory if war takes place. (Cheers.)"

"If Germany is going again to be a great armed camp, filled with a population about twice as great as that of any State in Europe; and if she is going again to pursue a policy of world domination, it will no doubt tax all the statesmanship of the rest of the world to prevent a repetition of the calamities from which we have been suffering. But the only radical cure for this is a change in the international system of the world—a change which French statesmen are doing nothing to promote, and the very possibility of which many of them regard with ill-concealed derision. They may be right; but if they are, it is quite certain that no manipulation of the Rhine frontier is going to make France anything more than a second-rate Power, trembling at the nod of its great neighbours in the East, and depending from day to day on the changes and chances of a shifting diplomacy and uncertain alliances."

"It is necessary for us as a nation not merely to be organized for war but to be organized for peace, not only to be an armed nation while other nations are armed but to have our industry, our productive capacity organized while other nations are organizing their industry and their productive capacity. (Cheers.)"

"It reminds me of Arthur Balfour when Brockdorff-Rantzau refused to stand when he was handed the Treaty [of Versailles]. “Did he remain seated?” said someone to Balfour. “I did not notice, I do not stare at a gentleman in distress.”"

"After his defeat in 1846 he made a bold attempt to prove that he had been a consistent Free Trader since 1841. And it is not surprising that this attempt to throw the responsibility of defection upon his Cabinet should have failed. If ever a statesman were pledged to a policy, Peel was pledged to the protection of the agricultural interest. "I believe that the abolition of the Corn Laws," said Peel in 1844, "would produce great confusion and distress"; and again, "I can say with truth I have not contemplated and do not contemplate an alteration in the present Corn Laws." Politicians have short memories; and not merely did Peel contemplate in 1845 the change that he had never contemplated in 1844, but in 1848, after the episode was closed, he asserted in a certain letter that the measures taken by his Cabinet in 1842 were preparatory to and intended to lead up to the Repeal of the Corn Laws."

"Sir Robert was long an energetic and consistent enemy to Catholic Emancipation. He resisted the arguments of colleagues and opponents alike. Not even the persuasive eloquence of Canning availed to move him. Nor had he formed his judgment hastily and without experience. He had been Chief Secretary in Ireland; he was familiar with the facts and prejudices of either side. And then, having remained upright for some seventeen years, he threw a political somersault, turned his head in the air, and landed on his feet a staunch supporter of the Catholic claims. What argument and reason could not achieve, was achieved in a moment by Canning's death and the Clare Election. For Peel, being first minister of the Crown, might now claim the glory of all his actions, and O'Connell's majority spoke with an eloquence denied to Canning. But the minister cannot be extricated from both horns of the dilemma. Either his sincerity or his prudence was at fault. It was he who had changed, not the situation; and, leaving out of the question the justice of the case, his party had a perfect right to resent what seemed a betrayal."

"He says no other Minister but Sir Robert Peel could have carried the repeal of the Corn Laws; that half the commercial men in the City would have been against it, had it been attempted by Lord John or anyone else; but their confidence in Sir Robert Peel's knowledge and sagacity is such that they say—‘Upon a question where so much is said on both sides, upon which our own minds are not made up, we feel that the safest course is to trust to him who has proved himself the greatest financier of the day’."

"Your Lordships must all feel the high and honourable character of the late Sir Robert Peel. I was long connected with him in public life. We were both in the councils of our Sovereign together, and I had long the honour to enjoy his private friendship. In all the course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw in the whole course of my life the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact."

"Whether he was a model of statesmanship may be doubted. Models of statesmanship are rare, if by a model of statesmanship is meant a great administrator and party leader, a great political philosopher and a great independent orator, all in one. But if the question is whether he was a ruler loved and trusted by the English people there is no arguing against the tears of a nation."

"[T]he people at large did care and enthusiastically care for the Conservative statesman who had sacrificed power to give the millions cheap bread; and there was scarcely a schoolboy who had not got by heart Sir Robert Peel's pathetic expression of his hopes that his name might live in the homes of those whose lot it was to labour, when at the end of their day's toil they recruited their exhausted strength by “abundant and untaxed food, no longer leavened by a sense of injustice.”"

"For a quarter of a century, at least, he was without question the first public servant of England; not the first in position only, but in knowledge of the public business, and in capacity for transacting it throughout all its departments; the man to whom all good public servants looked up as their model and their worthy chief. He must be credited with all the industry, the self-control, the patience, the judgment which such a part required. His integrity was as great as his other qualities; no jobbery, no connivance at abuses stains his name. Setting party questions aside, he was the man who would have been chosen as the chief ruler of England by the almost unanimous voice of the English people, and a heavy price was paid for party when he was excluded from the administration during ten of the best years of his life, and banished from power at the moment when the national confidence in him was at its height."

"Lord Robert Cecil while at Oxford occasionally joined in the debates of the Union Society, taking the strong Tory side, and speaking sometimes with a young man's vehemence. I recollect his declaiming that Sir Robert Peel, for breaking up the Conservative party, should be left to lie in the grave of infamy which his tergiversation had dug."

"[T]he right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government is a man of considerable capabilities as a legislator: he possesses great talents for debate, for the management of this House, and for the transaction of official business. He has great knowledge, and I doubt not is actuated by a sincere desire to promote the interests of the country; but it is impossible for me with truth to deny that there is too much ground for the reproaches of those who having, in spite of bitter experience, a second time trusted him and raised him to power, have found themselves a second time deluded. It is impossible for me not to say that it has been too much the habit of the right hon. Baronet to make use of, when in opposition (as he has done in reference to the present question), passions with which he has not the slightest sympathy, and prejudices which he regards with profound contempt. As soon as he reaches power, a change—a salutary change for the country—takes place. The instruments are flung aside—the ladder by which he climbed is kicked down. This is not a solitary instance, and I am forced to say that this sort of conduct is pursued by the right hon. Baronet on something like a system."

"[F]or God's sake, be sure, if the King is driven to the wall, of Peel. An appeal to him and his countrymen could not be disregarded. Unless you have Peel, the House of Commons cannot be managed."

"Peel is, in fact, the embodied reflex of the public mind of England."

"Peel's speech is, to me, the most affecting public event which I ever remember: no return of Cicero from exile, no triumphal procession up to the temple of Capitoline Jove, no Appius Claudius in the Roman Senate, no Chatham dying in the House of Lords, could have been a truly grander sight than that great Minister retiring from office, giving to the whole world free trade with one hand, and universal peace with the other, and casting under foot the miserable factions which had dethroned him."

"[W]hat was Peel really notable for? It was surely the perfection of what may be called “concessionary” Conservatism. This is the concept that the highest virtue in politics is to resist change until change becomes inevitable, and then to concede to it with as little fuss and as much obeisance to tradition as possible... Peel assumed, as most Conservative politicians until Mrs Thatcher generally have, that his political opponents represented the future. Their excesses must be resisted, but most of their causes in the end would prevail and the business of the Conservative Party was to make the transition as smooth as possible."

"I never in my time saw a minister who possessed more absolute power in the House of Commons than Peel. His influence and power are most extraordinary. In the House he is everything—but there his power ceases. If he was the same in Council, and in all his intercourse with mankind, he would exceed anything this country, or perhaps any other, ever saw, but I fear he is not equal to the situation he fills, and to the times in which he lives. By his power in the House of Commons alone does he keep his party together. Out of the House his conduct is well calculated to destroy it. Cold and uncourteous to every one—even to his colleagues in office, who appear to me to be afraid to differ from him—at times in manner he is almost insolent. It will be found when he dies that no minister ever possessed fewer friends, or would be personally less lamented. In his policy he is deficient in vigour and in courage. He rather looks too much to popularity, and if any great emergency were to arise ... I feel that Peel would be found wanting."

"His very name seems a synonym for all that is safe, judicious, business-like, sound, and practical. In spite of the two great schisms of 1829 and 1846, we cannot help looking back upon him as a man whom any party would have been wise to follow. We cannot help it. Nor can I doubt that if he had been spared, his old followers would again have fallen under the spell, and again have mustered under his banner."

"For concocting, producing, explaining, and defending measures he had no equal, or anything like an equal. There was nothing simile aut secundum. When a thing was to be done, he did it better than anybody."

"The Protection Parliament has voted and passed, by a great majority, the total repeal of the Corn-laws! No living soul could have done this but Peel, and I am not surprised at the increasing rage of the Protectionists. They appear more angry than ever."

"What struck me above all in the conversation of Sir Robert Peel was his constant and passionate preoccupation with the state of the working classes in England."

"Sir Robert Peel, perhaps the greatest peacetime prime minister in British history... Probably no one man has ever possessed such a comprehensive and detailed grasp of the whole machinery of government... As he saw it, the problem facing the ruling class, during a period when Britain was undergoing a revolution in population and in rising expectations, was how to preserve a fundamentally sound system from violent overthrow by making it more acceptable and efficient. In his view acceptability and efficiency were inseparable. To work, Conservatism thus demanded well-judged and carefully timed but none the less fundamental reforms. The entire operations of government had to be improved and so popularized by applying sensible commercial principles. That is the pragmatic and, if you like, materialistic approach which Mrs Thatcher so clearly shares."

"The Whig opposition in the house appears spiritless and several of the Radicals, Roebuck, Raikes, Curry etc., laud Peel to the skies and contrast his vigour and liberality with the feebleness and irresolution of the late Ministry."

"Taken all round, Peel was the greatest man I ever knew."

"The great virtue of Peel was that he had such an enormous conscience. Conscience, they say, is a very expensive thing to keep. Peel certainly kept one."

"I believe it to be impossible that anything can prevent Peel's speedy return to office; he has raised his reputation to such a height during this session, he has established such a conviction of his great capacity and of his liberal, enlarged, and at the same time safe views and opinions, that even the Radicals, such as Hume, join in the general chorus of admiration which is raised to his merits; he stands so proudly eminent, and there is such a general lack of talent, that he must be recalled by the voice of the nation and by the universal admission that he is indispensable to the country."

"Peel was decidedly for a property tax. He wished to reach such men as Baring, his father, Rothschild, and others, as well as absentees and Ireland. He thought too it was expedient to reconcile the lower with the higher classes, and to diminish the burthen of taxation on the poor man."

"Sir Robert had studied the change which has been progressively taking place in the public mind and, from very close observation, I am thoroughly convinced that one of his greatest objects was, if possible, to encourage a kind and sympathetic feeling between the different classes and ranks in society, so that each might have adapted itself to a change which is inevitable. This belief is so firmly fixed in my mind, that I have always regarded it as the key by which much of his conduct that has exposed him to obloquy, was to be explained."

"There were two things especially conspicuous about him. One was his over-mastering sense of public duty; this never deserted him. The other thing was his sense of measure. He had generally an exact sense of the proportion between one Bill, and the general policy of the Government; also of the proportion between the different parts of the same Bill; and of the relation in which the leaders of his party stood to their followers."

"Peel brought forward his financial plans in a speech of three hours and forty minutes, acknowledged by everybody to have been a masterpiece of financial statement. The success was complete; he took the House by storm; and his opponents, though of course differing and objecting on particular points, did him ample justice... It is really remarkable to see the attitude Peel has taken in this Parliament, his complete mastery over both his friends and his foes. His own party, nolentes aut volentes, have surrendered at discretion, and he has got them as well disciplined and as obedient as the crew of a man-of-war. This just measure, so lofty in conception, right in direction, and able in execution, places him at once on a pinnacle of power, and establishes his Government on such a foundation as accident alone can shake. Political predictions are always rash, but certainly there is every probability of Peel's being Minister for as many years as his health and vigour may endure. Only a few weeks ago I heard from my Whig friends of nothing but his weakness and embarrassments, and of all the difficulties his own supporters would cause him, what a poor figure he cut, &c.; but now they have not a word to say, and one of them who had been loudest in that strain brought to the Travellers’, where I was dining, an account of Peel's speech, and said, ‘One felt, all the time he was speaking, “Thank God, Peel is Minister!”’ There can be no doubt that he is now a very great man, and it depends on himself to establish a lasting reputation."

"I myself am satisfied that he is much nearer to the Radicals than to any other party in the State."

"His smile was like the silver plate on a coffin."

"The Right Honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes."

"I appeal to the contemptible speech made lately by Sir Robert Peel to an applauding House of Commons. "Orders of merit," said he, "were the proper rewards of the military" (the desolators of the world in all ages). "Men of science are better left to the applause of their own hearts." Most learned legislator! Most liberal cotton-spinner! Was your title the proper reward of military prowess? Pity, you hold not the dungeon-keys of an English Inquisition! Perhaps Science, like Creeds, would flourish best under a little persecution."

"[T]here is always so much wisdom and prudence in the view he takes of great and difficult affairs, that his opinion cannot but be valuable."

"What is this diplomacy? It is a costly engine for maintaining peace. It is a remarkable instrument used by civilised nations for the purpose of preventing war. Unless it be used for that purpose, unless it be used to appease the angry passions of individual men, and check the feelings which arise out of national resentment, unless it be used for that purpose, it is an instrument not only costly but mischievous. If then your application of diplomacy be to fester every wound, to provoke instead of soothing resentments, to place a minister in every court of Europe for the purpose, not of preventing quarrels, or of adjusting quarrels, but for the purpose of continuing an angry correspondence in this place, or of promoting what is supposed to be an English interest by keeping up conflicts with the representatives of other powers, then I say that not only is the expenditure upon this costly instrument thrown away, but this great engine, used by civilised society for the purpose of maintaining peace, is perverted into a cause of hostility and war."

"Peel himself is a much better man than any we can oppose to him. He really is exceedingly dexterous and handy, as well as eloquent and powerful."

"Each town and each country will command the amount of currency which it requires for its own purposes, undisturbed in the slightest degree by consulting its manifest interest, namely, by purchasing that which it wants in the cheapest market. [Derisive cheers.] Yes, by purchasing that which it wants in the cheapest market. You consider this a very low and unworthy principle; that it is a doctrine of the Manchester school; that it is a novel doctrine of some speculative political philosophers, and that it may be safely rejected. But this doctrine of purchasing in the cheapest market is not a doctrine of speculative philosophers only. It is not a doctrine introduced by modern economists. It is, no doubt, a doctrine sanctioned expressly and directly by the authority of Adam Smith. It is the doctrine of Say and of Hume. It is opposed to a doctrine which was fashioned some eighty or ninety years since, of which such writers as Montesquieu and Voltaire were the patrons; but Smith, and Say, and Hume, demonstrated the true principles which ought to regulate the commercial policy of a nation."

"The principles which should govern the commercial intercourse of nations, do not differ from those which regulate the dealings of private individuals."

"My belief is, that a wiser decision than that to which you came—to subject property to direct taxation within certain limits—to remove the prohibition upon foreign cattle—to permit swine and sheep to be imported—to reduce the duty on corn, on sugar, on lard, on butter, and on cheese—you never made. My belief is that you have been amply repaid for any loss you may have sustained by that reduction; that you have gained the confidence and goodwill of the labouring classes in this country, by parting with that which was thought to be directly for the benefit of the landed interest. It was that confidence in the generosity and justice of Parliament which in no small degree enabled you to pass triumphantly through that storm which convulsed other nations during the year 1848."

"I decidedly liked Peel; and could not but hope some real good might yet lie in him for the country... Incomparably better furnished both with talent and disposition than any other we have at present."