British Peers

"[I have had many a talk with Cromwell] of god, of nature & of other polytyke & wordly thyngys [from which he has] geddryd more frute of truth then I have downe of any other man lyvyng syth I cam here to my cuntrey."

"The ix. day of Iuly, Thomas lorde Cromewel, late made erle of Essex...beyng in the counsaill chaber, was sodainly apprehended, and committed to the tower of London, the whiche many lamented, but mo reioysed, and specially suche, as either had been religious men, or fauored religious persones, for thei banqueted, and triumphed together that night, many wisshyng that that daie had been seuen yere before, and some fearyng least he should escape, although he were imprisoned, could not be mery. Other who knewe nothyng but truth by hym, bothe lamented hym, and hartely praied for hym: But this is true that of certain of the Clergie he was detestably hated, & specially of suche as had borne swynge, and by his meanes was put from it, for in dede he was a man, that in all his doynges, semed not to fauor any kynde of Popery, nor could not abide the snoffyng pride of some prelates, whiche vndoubtedly whatsoeuer els was the cause of his death, did shorten his life, and procured the ende that he was brought vnto."

"There is a general feeling, and it is increasingly sensitive, that this is all about 'get the Jew'. I do not play the anti-Semitic card. But within my immediate community, and the Jewish community generally, they are sensitive to the fact that this is becoming all about one Jew."

"[On 3 February 1824] Mr. Brougham pronounced a tremendous philippick against their present designs, and former conduct. Excelling, as that learned gentleman's oratory does, in bitterness of sarcasm, and severity of attack, he seems on this occasion to have outdone all his former efforts of a similar kind. His words inspired in the breasts of his hearers the same indignation with which his own was evidently animated, and the House resounded with cheers at every pause, whilst he was dragging each separate Sovereign of the Allies before the tribunal of a free and popular assembly, to answer for their attempts to crush by mere physical force the just liberties of the world."

"Brougham...became...the educator and radicalizer of his party."

"The cause of law reform in England for the last forty years can never be disjoined from the name of Henry Brougham."

"To be sure, he has done wonders this session. A mere tongue, without a party and without a character, in an unfriendly audience, and with an unfriendly Press, never did half so much before. As Sydney Smith says, "verily he hath a devil.""

"Brougham's success at the bar is prodigious; much more rapid and extensive than that of any barrister since Erskine's starting."

"If left out he would indeed be dangerous; but if taken in he would simply be destructive. We may have little chance of being able to go on without him, but to go on with him would be impossible."

"Undoubtedly the notional leader of British Jewry."

"Sometimes rhetorical phrases are applied even by eminent Judges to propositions of law. In Lord Dungannon v. Smith Lord Brougham in eloquent language declared it as "one of the corner stones of the law," and I understand the Lord Chancellor in the same case to have considered the decision in Jee v. Audley to be "one of the landmarks.""

"The great unwashed."

"Lord Grey's first offer to Brougham was Attorney-General. Brougham took the letter and quietly tore it in two and threw it under his feet; that was his whole reply. He then reiterated his notice for Reform, and Lord Grey took fright, and would have given him the Rolls, but the king, forewarned, would not do that; and so he became Chancellor."

"Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence."

"Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration."

"Death was now armed with a new terror."

"The management of our press [for the 1807 election] fell into the hands of Mr. Brougham. With that active and able man I had become acquainted through Mr. Allen in 1805. At the formation of Lord Grenville's Ministry, he had written at my suggestion a pamphlet called The State of the Nation... His early connection with the Abolitionists had familiarized him with the means of circulating political papers, and given him some weight with those best qualified to co-operate in such an undertaking. His extensive knowledge and extraordinary readiness, his assiduity and habits of composition, enabled him to correct some articles, and to furnish a prodigious number himself."

"So, to borrow the phrase Tony Blair used about himself during the first row over New Labour's funding, I regard Lord Levy as 'a pretty straight sort of guy'."

"The Judge has not organs to know and to deal with the text of the foreign law, and therefore requires the assistance of a foreign lawyer who knows how to interpret it."

"The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people."

"A contract executed without any part performance."

"Do you think that a reporter has a right to supply or suppress any part of a judgment?"

"[He said] that might, slumbering in the arms of temperate freemen, which, though he hoped the fatal experiment never would be tried, he had a confident persuasion would, if it ever should become necessary, be uplifted as manfully as it was by their forefathers, when they marshalled the way, through blood and danger, to a free constitution... Of powers thus exercised, and for so hallowed a purpose, we have now a glorious example in a neighbouring nation, which has now made your case its own, and which, after long being, as some say, your enemy, has now become your competitor in the glorious race of liberty, which, roused by unbearable oppression, groaning—but that freemen will not groan—has risen in its might, and driven, as your forefathers drove, a tyrant from the throne which he had polluted, and from a capital which he had stained with the blood of free and innocent citizens. From this castle-yard, at the close of the American war, burst forth a flame in favour of parliamentary reform, which, spreading over the country, eclipsed, during the system of terror and persecution, by fires of a less pure and holy nature, quenched by the blood shed in the name of liberty by those who called themselves its votaries in France, has at length, now that peace has been restored to us, burst forth again with renovated splendour to illuminate your hearts, and with such vigour as will ultimately destroy the abuses of your country. I hail its progress with joy and rapture! Be it mine to fan the flame, &c.!"

"We, with all our monarchical principles—for I will not call them prejudices—we, with all our aristocratic feelings, for I will not call them superstitions—we, with all our natural abhorrence of the levelling system and a democratic form of government, were impatient of beholding a great and rising empire, founded by monarchical England's sons, a republic—a level republic—in the veins of whose members flowed the blood of aristocratic England. We saw those republican principles rooted and planted deep in the hearts and feelings of 3,000,000 of Englishmen—we saw them ruling, and conquering, and flourishing, without a king to govern, without a prelate to bless, without a noble to adorn them—we saw all this effected at the point of the sword after a series of defeat, disaster, and disgrace to the British arms. No wonder, then, that all strong feelings and deeply-rooted prejudices were called into fierce action so often as the successes of America were remembered—so often as the name of the new republic was pronounced."

"Equity has not relieved against gross improvidence."

"In my mind, he was guilty of no error he — was chargeable with no exaggeration — he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve men into a box."

"Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave."

"Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties"

"The more I see and hear, the more I conceive some clear, short, and firm declaration of the party necessary, separating ourselves (without offensive expressions) from the Radicals, and avowing our loyalty, but at the same time our determination to stand by the constitution, and to oppose all illegal attempts to violate it, and all new laws to alter its free nature."

"The English Bar is in a very great degree tedious, and, to say the least of it, somewhat uncertain. I look forward with no small horror to five years' dull, unvaried drudgery, which must be undergone to obtain the privilege of drudging still harder, among a set of disagreeable people of brutal manners and confined talents."

"There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country."

"The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill."

"The Sovereign can only act by advisers, and through the instrumentality of those who are neither infallible nor impeccable— answerable, indeed, for all that the irresponsible Sovereign may do, but liable to err through undue influence, and to be swayed by improper motives."

"The corresponding Society, except about six members, consists of the most dispicable and brutal of mobs. Men whose ignorance and savage barbarity renders them fit only for being tools—indeed, they are the common day laborers about town. This party, perfectly distinct in its nature from the opposition, has done more to ruin its cause, than Pitt and his party ever could have foreseen."

"The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!"

"What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable."

"Wilson was in himself a new and deadly threat to the Government. He was a formidable parliamentary debater with a rapier wit... [H]e could get under Harold Macmillan's skin in a way Hugh Gaitskell never could. While Gaitskell was more of a statesman than Wilson, Wilson was an infinitely more accomplished politician... I can say little in favour of either of Harold Wilson's terms as Prime Minister. Doubtless he had principles, but they were so obscured by artful dodging that it was difficult for friends and opponents alike to decide what they might be. Yet I regretted his departure for several reasons. I had always liked him personally, I had appreciated his sense of humour, and I was aware of his many kindnesses. He was a master of Commons repartee, and I usually scored nothing better than a draw against him in the House."

"[F]ew modern British governments have disappointed their supporters more thoroughly than his. After thirteen years in opposition, Labour returned to office in 1964 on the ticket of technical competence, purposive planning, faster growth and higher social spending. Socialism, as Wilson put it, would be harnessed to science, and science to socialism. When he and his colleagues limped back into opposition six years later, it was hard to tell which half of the promise had been more comprehensively belied. His Government had wrecked its own National Plan less than a year after announcing it, achieved a lower annual growth rate than that of the Conservatives and consumed vast quantities of energy and time in a bitter struggle with the trade unions, in which it was humiliatingly defeated. What Wilson had christened the 'social wage' did indeed absorb a larger share of the gross domestic product, but that was only because the whole economy had grown more slowly than expected. His second incarnation as Prime Minister was even less happy than his first. In 1974 Labour promised 'an irreversible shift of power and wealth to working people and their families', to be achieved through a social contract with the unions, entailing higher social spending and an end to wage controls. Two years later, Wilson resigned, having presided over record levels of inflation and unemployment, having launched an incomes policy patently designed to reduce real wages and having started the long series of expenditure cuts which were to destroy all hope of putting Labour's election pledges into effect."

"Harold's record as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party has been underestimated. As Prime Minister, during a period of unremitting economic difficulty, he maintained full employment but was unable to restrain inflation. Unwilling to break trades union power by allowing mass unemployment, as Mrs Thatcher was later to do, he tried the alternative policy of income and prices restraint... It failed, but it was a failure rooted in a commitment to social justice... In another way, Harold's achievement as Prime Minister has been underestimated. He was without prejudice. He did not judge people on their colour, race, gender or class. Members of his government were drawn from many backgrounds."

"The most politically skillful of them was Harold Wilson. It was my good fortune that we were friends before he became prime minister. I was able to persuade him to remain east of Suez for a few years longer... The problems he faced in Britain were deep-seated—lowered levels of education and skills, lower productivity because unions were not cooperating with management. The Labour Party in the 1960s and 1970s was dominated by the trade unions and could not tackle these basic issues, hence Wilson was seen as going for quick fixes. To keep the party behind him, he had to zigzag, making him appear wily and devious."

"My warmest congratulations on your election victory. As you enter the great office of Prime Minister, I want to extend my very best wishes for success for you and your government and the people of the United Kingdom. I look forward to the continuation of the close and friendly cooperation, based on mutual confidence and respect, which has bound our countries so closely for so long."

"I do not believe that it is too generous to describe Harold Wilson as one of the most brilliant men of his generation... For my generation at least, as observers through television and from a distance, his ever-present pipe became a symbol of tranquillity in times of some turmoil... He was a man of many achievements and, perhaps above all, a very human man who served his country well and honourably and who has earned, by that, a secure place in its history."

"We have Mr. Wright's allegation that a surveillance operation was mounted against Lord Wilson of Rievaulx when he was Prime Minister in the mid-1970s... Many criticisms can be made of Lord Wilson's stewardship—I have made some in the past and I have no doubt that I may make some more in future—but the view that he, with his too persistent record of maintaining Britain's imperial commitments across the world, with his over-loyal lieutenancy to Lyndon Johnson, with his fervent royalism, and with his light ideological luggage, was a likely candidate to be a Russian or Communist agent is one that can be entertained only by someone with a mind diseased by partisanship or unhinged by living for too long in an Alice-Through-the-Looking-glass world in which falsehood becomes truth, fact becomes fiction and fantasy becomes reality. The result of the allegation has been substantially to fortify the view that I expressed in a letter to The Times 18 months ago, which is that MI5 should now be pulled totally out of its political surveillance role."

"Harold was, above all else, a great political survivor, a fine politician if, perhaps, never truly a statesman."

"I shall remember him above all for his courtesy and his kindness. He hated being disagreeable. He liked to be nice to people, which is not always the case with those who had his thrust to power. He also had very good nerve in a crisis. And as he experienced quite a number of crises, that was a big asset. In some ways he was easier to work with when things were going wrong. He was cool and unrecriminatory... He served his country well."

"No prime minister ever interfered so much in the work of his colleagues as Wilson did in his first six years... Unfortunately, since he had neither political principle nor much government experience to guide him, he did not give Cabinet the degree of leadership which even a less ambitious prime minister should provide. He had no sense of direction, and rarely looked more than a few months ahead. His short-term opportunism, allied with a capacity for self-delusion which made Walter Mitty appear unimaginative, often plunged the government into chaos. Worse still, when things went wrong he imagined everyone was conspiring against him. He believed in demons, and saw most of his colleagues in this role at one time or another."

"When, 50 years ago, on 14 February 1963, Harold Wilson was elected leader of the Labour party, even many of his supporters – wrongly I now believe – thought him a politician without principle... He was what used to be called "a good Labour man" – instinctively the enemy of privilege and certain that improvement in the lives of the disadvantaged and the dispossessed depended on the success of the Labour party. That is why he worked so hard, and sometimes deviously, to keep it united. I should have understood that 50 years ago."

"[W]hat really endeared the people of this country to him was that they knew from his background, his upbringing and his own life, in which there was hardship, that he was a compassionate man who understood their needs and who was doing his best, often in difficult circumstances...to meet those needs and to ensure that people had a better life. That was his philosophy and his purpose in coming into the House, in being in opposition and in being a Minister... This country owes a great deal to him."

"He got a clear-cut first, and there is some evidence that he achieved the highest marks in PPE of any undergraduate of the decade... Academically his results put him among prime ministers in the category of Peel, Gladstone, Asquith, and no one else."

"His purpose in politics was to remove the disfiguring evils of poverty and to create a caring society, with equal opportunity, open to advancement and in tune with the changing needs of his time. He was proud to have been responsible for the birth of the Open University. He was by nature a conciliator, and the least assertive of men, but he fought with the doggedness and determination of a true Northerner when he had to. Those qualities, and his high intelligence, kindliness and approachability, helped to spread his influence over a much wider area than his own party. It was a natural expression of that to be a passionate opponent of apartheid and of racial discrimination. He was the most successful leader that Labour has ever had, winning four elections out of five although on each occasion he came to office at a time of great economic difficulty. Above all, he was a devoted servant of his cause and his country."