Academics From The United Kingdom

"Englishmen revered Gladstone, but they were never quite sure that they understood him; Palmerston they could pat on the back as one of themselves... His combativeness, his robust, if tactless, patriotism, his capacity for getting into scrapes and his equal capacity for getting out of them, his love of a "scrap," his freedom from malice, his gift for "keeping his end up" —all these things the average Englishman could understand and appreciate, for he saw in them a reflection of his own character."

"I would walk twenty miles to see him [Palmerston] hanged especially if Thiers were to be strung up with him."

"Although a septuagenarian, and since 1807 occupying the public stage almost without interruption, he contrives to remain a novelty, and to evoke all the hopes that used to centre on an untried and promising youth. With one foot in the grave, he is supposed not yet to have begun his true career. If he were to die tomorrow, all England would be surprised to learn that he had been a Secretary of State half this century. If not a good statesman of all work, he is at least a good actor of all work. He succeeds in the comic as in the heroic—in pathos as in familiarity—in tragedy as in farce; although the latter may be more congenial to his feelings. He is not a first-class orator, but an accomplished debater. Possessed of a wonderful memory, of great experience, of consummate tact, of never-failing presence of mind, of gentlemanlike versatility, of the most minute knowledge of Parliamentary tricks, intrigues, parties, and men, he handles difficult cases in an admirable manner and with a pleasant volatility, sticking to the prejudices and susceptibilities of his public, secured from any surprise by his cynical impudence, from any self-confession by his selfish dexterity, from running into a passion by his profound frivolity, his perfect indifference, and his aristocratic contempt. Being an exceedingly happy joker, he ingratiates himself with everybody. Never losing his temper, he imposes on an impassioned antagonist. When unable to master a subject, he knows how to play with it. If wanting in general views, he is always ready to weave a web of elegant generalities. Endowed with a restless and indefatigable spirit, he abhors inactivity and pines for agitation, if not for action. A country like England allows him, of course, to busy himself in every corner of the earth."

"As a Minister, although I often differed from him, I looked upon him as one of our greatest, especially in his knowledge of foreigners and their character. He was clear headed, always knew what he wanted, and was determined to carry it out, with great moral and physical courage. We shall be long ere we see his like again. He was English to the backbone."

"It was the singular position of Lord Palmerston that explained the qualified support given to him by some Conservatives. They found it hard to take part against a gay old Tory of the older school, disguising himself as a “Liberal,” and hoaxing the Reform Club. As a matter of sentiment, many Conservatives refused to deal roughly with one whom they regarded as a sort of Parliamentary grandpapa."

"He loved his country and his country loved him. He lived for her honour, and she will cherish his memory."

"[David Lloyd George said] he would see that an enormous amount of equipment & ammunition were supplied to the Abyssinians, which would enable them to put up a good fight. He says he feels sure that that is what Palmerston would have done."

"Palmerston, rex and autocrat, is, for a Minister finding himself in such fortunate circumstances, far too irritable and violent."

"Wherever there is an absolute tyranny in Europe, his Lordship is looked upon with hatred or mistrust, and wherever there is a desire for constitutional liberty, repressed by bayonets or threatened by irresponsible autocrats, there has his Lordship admirers and friends."

"Towards the end of his life, Lord Palmerston was invited to Bradford to lay the foundation-stone of the new Exchange. On that occasion, the working men were desirous of presenting an address to him, upon their wish for an extension of the franchise. Mr. Ripley, chairman of the Exchange Committee, utterly ignorant of Lord Palmerston's nature, refused to permit any approach to him. The worst enemy of Lord Palmerston could not have done him a worse service. Nothing would have pleased him better than to have met a working-class deputation. His personal heartiness, his invincible temper, his humour and ready wit would have captivated the working men, and sent them away enthusiastic, although without anything to be enthusiastic about."

"I cannot find any fault with Lord Palmerston's bearing on that July day [in 1847]. With all his natural tendency to caustic criticism, he was courteous and fair... Lord Palmerston was an aristocrat; no doubt about that. But he was genial, frank, and generous. Moreover he abhorred cant in every form... Coming over to England in 1878, I was told the following incident of Lord Palmerston, then dead some 13 years. It happened that some of the working class Radicals of the time were in the lobby of "the House" with the view of soliciting subscriptions from Liberal members for some unfortunate of the "advanced" corps, stricken down by disease, and suffering from that other and too common ill—impecuniosity; when the Premier was seen approaching. Said one of the party—"Here comes Pam, let us try him." The idea was pooh-pooh'd, but it was carried out by the suggestor. Lord Palmerston patiently listened to the story and responded with his usual kindly liberality, accompanying the gift by some pleasantry as was his wont. He had faced toward the chamber of the Commons, when suddenly turning back, he enquired, "Can you tell me what has become of an old Chartist acquaintance of mine, Mr. George Julian Harney?" The person addressed could not tell, but an older man of the group said he believed Julian Harney was in America. Lord Palmerston rejoined, "Well, I wish him good fortune: he gave me a dressing down at Tiverton some years ago, and I have not heard of him since; but I hope he is doing well.""

"Nothing will induce her Majesty to have Palmerston... Her dislike of him is, in fact, of very long standing, and partly on moral and partly on political grounds. There are old offences, when he was at the Foreign Office, which sunk deep in her mind, and besides this the recollection of his conduct before her marriage, when in her own palace he made an attempt on the person of one of her ladies, which she very justly resented as an outrage to herself. Palmerston, always enterprising and audacious with women, took a fancy to Mrs. Brand (now Lady Dacre) and at Windsor Castle where she was in waiting, and he was a guest, he marched into her room one night. His tender temerity met with an invincible resistance. The lady did not conceal her attempt, and it came to the Queen's ears. Her indignation was somehow pacified by Melbourne, then all-powerful, and who on every account would have abhorred an esclandre in which his colleague and brother-in-law would have so discreditably figured. Palmerston got out of the scrape with his usual luck, but the Queen has never forgotten and will never forgive it."

"A member of Lord Palmerston's Cabinet gave me an amusing description of their proceedings. At the beginning of the session, and after each holiday, Mr. Gladstone used to come in charged to the muzzle with all sorts of schemes of all sorts of reforms which were absolutely necessary in his opinion to be immediately undertaken. Lord Palmerston used to look fixedly at the paper before him, saying nothing until there was a lull in Gladstone's outpouring. He then rapped the table and said cheerfully, “Now, my lords and gentlemen, let us go to business.”"

"Never...did I meet with any one that could tell a story with greater effect than the late Lord Palmerston."

"Palmerston had two admirable qualities. He had an intense love of Constitutional freedom everywhere; and he had a profound hatred of negro slavery... I should not ascribe to him the overpowering conscientiousness which I ascribe to Peel."

"A Frenchman, thinking to be highly complimentary, said to Palmerston: "If I were not a Frenchman, I should wish to be an Englishman"; to which Pam coolly replied: "If I were not an Englishman, I should wish to be an Englishman.""

"He said he had had two great objects always before him in life—one the suppression of the slave trade, the other to put England in a state of defence."

"He is the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet."

"As we walked along I could gauge the popularity of Lord Palmerston. The moment he came in sight, throughout the whole building, men and women, young and old, at once were struck as by an electric shock. “Lord Palmerston! Here is Lord Palmerston! Bravo! Hurrah! Lord Palmerston for ever!” And so it went on through the whole building. One voice: “I wish you may be Minister for the next twenty years”."

"Right, in his eyes, was right; and if he insisted upon it when a formidable enemy might be provoked, he treated with becoming scorn the argument that we should deal more gently with an inferior delinquent. "What?" he used to say; "we are to tax our people for the purpose of giving them a strong Government, and then we are not to maintain the rights of our people because their Government is strong. The weaker a Government is, the more inexcusable becomes its insolence or injustice.""

"I have heard analogous stories told of the brusqueness or indifference of leaders in more recent times. Almost the only Parliamentary leader against whom such charges were never brought were Melbourne and Palmerston. Both were light-hearted and rather cynical men of the world, and Palmerston's long ascendency was due quite as much to his good humour and jokes and banter as it was to more intellectual qualities."

"In every post alike he showed the qualities that Englishmen love—pluck, good-humour, unflinching care for England's greatness, untiring zeal in the service of the State. His unexhausted, apparently inexhaustible spirits, his splendid physique, his untiring activity of mind and body, seemed proof against the inroads of old age."

"Even if England still continues to increase in civilization and opulence, she may yet, as other stronger states also rapidly augment, perhaps not long retain her present commanding position in the world; and it may be that in future ages the name of Palmerston will be synonymous with her greatest glory. From one generation of Englishman to another, the saying will be handed down: We are all proud of him."

"When I went to Harrow in 1797, the late Lord Palmerston was reckoned the best-tempered and most plucky boy in the school, as well as a young man of great promise. We were in the same house, which was Dr. Bromley's, by whom we were often called when idle "young men of wit and pleasure." The late Lord De Mauley...and myself, were fags to Althorp, Duncannon, and Temple, who messed together; and the latter was by far the most merciful and indulgent. I can remember well Temple fighting "behind school" a great boy called Salisbury, twice his size, and he would not give in, but was brought home with black eyes and a bloody nose, and Mother Bromley taking care of him."

"Then you know what to avoid. Do the exact opposite of what he did. His administration at the Foreign Office was one long crime."

"He is to the middle classes what Feargus O'Connor was to the working classes."

"In 1864, when Austria and Prussia attacked Denmark, Britain remained neutral. This was due to Queen Victoria, who overruled Lord Palmerston, although that sharp-sighted statesman pointed out that Prussia wanted Kiel as a naval base. Thus we gave Germany her Kiel Canal."

"We learned to call him Old Pam, and to love him better than any Prime Minister was ever loved throughout the three kingdoms. All parties in the House took to him. It was pleasant to sit under his parliamentary government, and though there were Liberals more liberal than he, and Conservatives more conservative, the majority both of Liberals and Conservatives secretly preferred him to their special chiefs... Perhaps no single word goes so far in the description of Lord Palmerston as the word ‘manly.’ ... In every respect Lord Palmerston was masculine, not feminine... Lord Palmerston was at all points a man. No sentimental egotism, no moral irritability, no sweet feminine cant about him. A genial stoicism,—not the stoicism of the cynic,—an inestimable faculty of taking the good and leaving the bad alone, an invincible serenity and lightness and brightness of soul, distinguished him."

"When we were at war with Russia, and when the nation, after trying statesman after statesman, continued in the distressing consciousness that the administration lacked vigour, the man who, for a quarter of a century, had been checkmating the policy of Russia was naturally called for. In no spirit of confidence or enthusiasm,—feeling clearly that others had failed, but by no means certain that the right man was yet discovered,—England said, ‘Try Palmerston.’ It was on the 8th of February, 1855, that the Earl of Derby withdrew, and that he took the helm... The country looked on in hope, beginning to breathe more freely...the practical instinct of the nation gradually decided that Palmerston was the man to whom the business of the war could be committed, and in whose hands the name of England was safe."

"Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do!"

"That's Article 98; now go on to the next."

"Only three people," said Palmerston, "have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it."

"The American assault on Ireland under the name of Fenianism may be now held to have failed, but the snake is only scotched and not killed. It is far from impossible that the American conspirators may try and obtain in our North American provinces compensation for their defeat in Ireland."

"Russia will in due time become a power almost as great as the old Roman Empire. She can become mistress of all Asia, except British India, whenever she chooses to take it; and when enlightened arrangements shall have made her revenue proportioned to her territory, and railways shall have abridged distances her command of men will become enormous, her pecuniary means gigantic, and her power of transporting armies over great distances most formidable. Germany ought to be strong in order to resist Russian aggression, and a strong Prussia is essential to German strength."

"Lord Palmerston: Then you did not vote for me, friend Rowcliffe; you preferred voting for a Tory. William Rowcliffe: I did not vote for you, my Lord, for if I had, I should have voted for a Tory."

"Gladstone will soon have it all his own way; and, whenever he gets my place, we shall have strange doings...He is a dangerous man, keep him in Oxford, and he is partially muzzled; but send him elsewhere, and he will run wild."

"As to tenant-right, I may be allowed to say that I think it is equivalent to landlords' wrong."

"I beg to propose to you that toast which is the first to which honour is done in every society of Englishmen, I mean "the Health of Her Majesty the Queen" — a toast which embodies the expression of that which is the deepest and warmest feeling of every Englishman... It could not be expected that man would pursue with diligence and success the pursuits of industry if he were not assured that he would reap in security the fruits which that industry might produce, and I am happy to say that our Army, our Navy, our Militia, and our Volunteers do afford to the people of these realms that security which human arrangements can provide for them. We are happily now at peace with all foreign Powers; but the continuance of that peace is not likely to be less certain when it is known to all foreign nations that the Army, the Navy, the Militia, and the Volunteers of England are in a state of perfect efficiency, and ready if called upon to defend the interests and to maintain the honour and dignity of their country against all who might think fit to assail them."

"If I have in any Degree been fortunate enough to have obtained some share of the Good Will and Confidence of my Fellow-Countrymen, it has been because I have rightly understood the Feelings and Opinions of the Nation, and because they think that I have...endeavoured to maintain the Dignity and to uphold the Interests of the country abroad, and to provide for its security at home."

"Mackieson gave me the other day a buffalo hide whip from Africa called in those regions a Peace Maker and used as such in the households of chieftains. Our Peace Makers are our Armstrongs and Whitworths and our engineers."

"As to the notion that the Brazilian nation see the criminality of slave trade and have for ever abjured it such a notion is too childish for a grown man really to entertain, however it may suit the Brazilians to endeavour to make it accepted. The plain truth is that the Portuguese are of all European nations the lowest in the moral state and the Brazilians are degenerate Portuguese, demoralized by slavery and slave trade, and all the degrading and corrupting influences connected with both... I have laboured indefatigably all the time I was at the Foreign Office to put an end to the slave trade, and though not with entire at all events with some considerable success and nothing shall induce me to load my conscience with the guilt of having been a party to promoting its revival. I am afraid Bright has been at you upon these Brazilian matters. He has always professed great horror of slave trade and has invariably opposed the employment of any and every means by which it could be made to cease."

"I am sure every Englishman who has a heart in his breast and a feeling of justice in his mind, sympathizes with those unfortunate Danes (cheers), and wishes that this country could have been able to draw the sword successfully in their defence (continued cheers); but I am satisfied that those who reflect on the season of the year when that war broke out, on the means which this country could have applied for deciding in one sense that issue, I am satisfied that those who make these reflections will think that we acted wisely in not embarking in that dispute. (Cheers.) To have sent a fleet in midwinter to the Baltic every sailor would tell you was an impossibility, but if it could have gone it would have been attended by no effectual result. Ships sailing on the sea cannot stop armies on land, and to have attempted to stop the progress of an army by sending a fleet to the Baltic would have been attempting to do that which it was not possible to accomplish. (Hear, hear.) If England could have sent an army, and although we all know how admirable that army is on the peace establishment, we must acknowledge that we have no means of sending out a force at all equal to cope with the 300,000 or 400,000 men whom the 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 of Germany could have pitted against us, and that such an attempt would only have insured a disgraceful discomfiture—not to the army, indeed, but to the Government which sent out an inferior force and expected it to cope successfully with a force so vastly superior. (Cheers.) … we did not think that the Danish cause would be considered as sufficiently British, and as sufficiently bearing on the interests and the security and the honour of England, as to make it justifiable to ask the country to make those exertions which such a war would render necessary."

"Mr. Gladstone's Doctrine which the Observer praised that every sane man has a moral Right to vote goes straight to universal suffrage which not even the most vehement Reformer has hitherto advocated. Moreover if every sane Man has that Right why does it not also belong to every sane woman Who is equally affected by Legislation and Taxation. The Truth is that a vote is not a Right but a Trust. All the Nation cannot by Possibility be brought together to vote and therefore a Selected few are appointed by Law to perform this Function for the Rest and the Publicity attached to the Performance of this Trust is a Security that it will be responsibly performed."

"I have read your speech and I must frankly say, with much regret as there is little in it that I can agree with, and much from which I differ. You lay down broadly the Doctrine of Universal Suffrage which I can never accept. I intirely deny that every sane and not disqualified man has a moral right to a vote—I use that Expression instead of “the Pale of the Constitution”, because I hold that all who enjoy the Security and civil Rights which the Constitution provides are within its Pale—What every Man and Woman too have a Right to, is to be well governed and under just Laws, and they who propose a change ought to shew that the present organization does not accomplish those objects...[Your speech] was more like the Sort of Speech with which Bright would have introduced the Reform Bill which he would like to propose than the Sort of Speech which might have been expected from the Treasury bench in the present State of Things. Your Speech may win Lancashire for you, though that is doubtful but I fear it will tend to lose England for you. It is to be regretted that you should, as you stated, have taken the opportunity of your receiving a Deputation of working men, to exhort them to set on Foot an Agitation for Parliamentary Reform—The Function of a Government is to calm rather than to excite Agitation."

"Retirement should be a happier time, conditioned upon not being ill.#"

"People are treated for mental disorders, they go back to work and they earn wages again. We can see how their earnings go up. But how do they feel about themselves and the world? That has a value."

"We usually think that a strong economy leads to an increase in life satisfaction among the population. We found that's not the case in Scotland."

"The following Treatise... has been endeavoured to make the theory of limits, or ultimate ratios... the sole foundation of the science, without any aid whatsoever from the theory of series, or algebraical expansions. I am not aware that any work exists in which this has been avowedly attempted, and I have been the more encouraged to make the trial from observing that the objections to the theory of limits have usually been founded either upon the difficulty of the notion itself, or its unalgebraical character, and seldom or never upon anything not to be defined or not to be received in the conception of a limit..."

"A large quantity of examples is indispensable."

"It is not true, out of geometry, that the mathematical sciences are, in all their parts those models of finished accuracy which many suppose. The extreme boundaries of analysis have always been as imperfectly understood as the tract beyond the boundaries was absolutely unknown. But the way to enlarge the settled country has not been by keeping within it, but by making voyages of discovery, and I am perfectly convinced that the student should be exercised in this manner; that is, that he should be taught how to examine the boundary, as well as how to cultivate the interior. ...allowing all students whose capacity will let them read on the higher branches of applied mathematics, to have each his chance of being led to the cultivation of those parts of analysis on which rather depends its future progress than its present use in the sciences of matter."