Chancellors Of The Exchequer

"With favour and fortune fastidiously blest, He's loud in his laugh, and he's coarse in his jest; Of favour and fortune unmerited, vain, A sharper in trifles, a dupe in the main; Achieving of nothing, still promising wonders, By dint of experience, improving in blunders; Oppressing true merit, exalting the base, And selling his country to purchase his place; A jobber of stocks by retailing false news; A prater at court in the style of the stews; Of virtue and worth by profession a giber; Of juries and senates the bully and briber. Though I name not the wretch, you all know who I mean— 'Tis the cur-dog of Britain, and spaniel of Spain."

"I need not mention the many advantages that will attend this manner of proceeding. It will in a great measure obviate the delusion which Sir Robert makes use of in a certain place, to wit, that the majority of the House of Commons is the majority of the nation."

"It is great pleasure to me that I never saw him better, and that quiet and hunting, together, have repaired his health so well. Your friend Sir Robert has but one of these helps; but I remember when I saw him last, which was the last time he sent to desire me, he told me he owed his strength to it."

"He possessed no vain desire to distinguish himself by peculiarity of opinion or hardiness of enterprize, and he detested war. This made the late acute Dr. Johnson (who was no friend to his political opinions) say of him, "He was the best minister this country ever had; as, if we would have let him" (he speaks of his own violent faction) "he would have kept the country in perpetual peace.""

"Although in 1714 the materials for oligarchy everywhere abounded, it seemed as if no party could use them and that political instability, which had been such a marked feature of English life since the Revolution, would continue. Within a decade all was changed: aided both by events, and by the tidal sweep of history, a politician of genius, Robert Walpole, was able to create what had eluded kings and ministers since the days of Elizabeth I—a government and a policy acceptable to the Court, to the Commons, and to the majority of the political establishment in the nation at large. Indeed, he made the world so safe for Whigs that they stayed in power for a hundred years."

"For twenty years Walpole had just held in check those aspirations natural to a society which was faced with enormous possibilities of commercial expansion, a society which had, too, the capacity to seize its chances and the wealth and men needed to exploit them. Walpole had avoided wars and kept the peace because he believed England existed for the sake of men of substance, who gained from security and low taxation, and not for the sake of rash commercial adventurers... England has never known a prime minister more adroit in handling men than Walpole, but he was too rooted in reality, too sensitive to the everyday world to be a great statesman."

"But however distasteful this was to several serious men among the Whigs, Mr. Walpole enjoyed and encouraged it all, as pursuing of his plan of having everybody be deemed a Jacobite who was not a professed and known Whig."

"He was not a reformer, or a successful war minister, or a profound and original thinker, or even a tactician of great enterprise, and yet he possessed qualities which have justly placed him in the foremost rank of politicians. Finding England with a disputed succession and an unpopular sovereign, with a corrupt and factious Parliament, and an intolerant, ignorant, and warlike people, he succeeded in giving it twenty years of unbroken peace and uniform prosperity, in establishing on an impregnable basis a dynasty which seemed tottering to its fall, in rendering, chiefly by the force of his personal ascendency, the House of Commons the most powerful body in the State, in moderating permanently the ferocity of political factions and the intolerance of ecclesiastical legislation."

"Colonel Cecil, who was agent for the Chevalier St. George...suffered himself to be cajoled and duped by Sir Robert Walpole to such a degree, as to be fully persuaded that Sir Robert had formed a design to restore the House of Stuart. For this reason he communicated to Sir Robert all his dispatches, and there was not a scheme which the Chevalier's court or the Jacobites in England had projected during Sir Robert's long administration, of which that minister was not early informed, and was therefore able to defeat it without any noise or expence."

"No man ever was blessed with a clearer head, a truer or quicker judgment, or a deeper insight into mankind; he knew the strength and weakness of everybody he had to deal with, and how to make his advantage of both; he had more warmth of affection and friendship for some particular people than one could have believed it possible for any one who had been so long raking in the dirt of mankind to be capable of feeling for so worthless a species of animals."

"[H]e had great method and a prodigious memory, with a mind and spirit that were indefatigable: and without every one of these natural as well as acquired advantages, it would indeed have been impossible for him to go through half what he undertook."

"Sir Robert loved to take company home with him to dinner after a debate: when the letters came in, he threw such and such aside, and said they might stay till to-morrow; when he saw the direction of his Huntsman, he said he would read it immediately."

"The political axiom generally attributed to him, that all men have their price, and which has been so often repeated in verse and prose, was perverted by leaving out the word those. Flowery oratory he despised; he ascribed to the interested views of themselves or their relatives, the declarations of pretended patriots, of whom he said, "All those men have their price," and in the event, many of them justified his observation."

"I think I have never left him without liking him better than before. I could not admire or love him more, even if I had no obligations to him; though, in that case, I should give a freer, because less suspicious testimony of the claims which, I think, he has to be both loved and admired."

"Mr. Pitt is, at the head of his own table, exactly what hits my taste—attentive without being troublesome—mixing in the conversation without attempting to lead it—laughing often and easily—and boyish enough if it should fall in his way, to discuss the history of Cock Robin."

"Not merely a chip of the old 'block', but the old block itself."

"His talents, quickness, temper and application well qualified him to have been a Prime Minister in the real sense of the word."

"Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years."

"I think I could eat one of Bellamy's mutton pies."

"Oh my country! How I love my country!"

"Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies; and all That shared its shelter perish in its fall."

"I return you many thanks for the honour you have done me; but Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example."

"I need not remind the house that we are come to a new era in the history of nations; that we are called to struggle for the destiny, not of this country alone, but of the civilized world. We must remember that it is not for ourselves alone that we submit to unexampled privations. We have for ourselves the great duty of self-preservation to perform; but the duty of the people of England now is of a nobler and higher order. We are in the first place to provide for our security against an enemy whose malignity to this country knows no bounds: but this is not to close the views or the efforts of our exertion in so sacred a cause. Amid the wreck and the misery of nations, it is our just exultation, that we have continued superior to all that ambition or that despotism could effect, and our still higher exultation ought to be, that we provide not only for our own safety, but hold out a prospect to nations now bending under the iron yoke of tyranny, what the exertions of a free people can effect; and that at least in this corner of the world, the name of liberty is still revered, cherished, and sanctified."

"[T]he result of this great contest will ensure the permanent security, the eternal glory of this country; that it will terminate in the confusion, the dismay, and the shame, of our vaunting enemy; that it will afford the means of animating the spirits, of rousing the courage, of breaking the lethargy, of the surrounding nations of Europe; and I trust, that, if a fugitive French army should reach its own shores after being driven from our coasts, it will find the people of Europe reviving in spirits, and anxious to retaliate upon France all the wrongs, all the oppressions, they have suffered from her; and that we shall at length see that wicked fabric destroyed which was raised upon the prostitution of liberty, and which has caused more miseries, more horrors to France and to the surrounding nations, than are to be paralleled in any part of the annals of mankind."

"We ought to have a due sense of the magnitude of the danger with which we are threatened; we ought to meet it in that temper of mind which produces just confidence, which neither despises nor dreads the enemy; and while on the one hand we accurately estimate the danger with which we are threatened at this awful crisis, we must recollect on the other hand what it is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay, for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for every thing dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave."

"That we shall have no difficulty in procuring the men who are to compose this force, I am perfectly satisfied, because the spirit of the country is now raised in the capital, and will from thence rapidly pervade all the extremities of the empire. That spirit was first kindled in the north, from thence it has extended to the metropolis, and is now catching from town to town, from village to village, and very shortly the whole kingdom will, I am convinced, manifest one scene of activity, of animation, and of energy, displaying in its native lustre the character of Englishmen."

"[I]f we are not wanting to ourselves, if we have not forgotten our national character, but remember who we are, and what we are contending for, the contest will be glorious to us, and must terminate in the complete discomfiture of the enemy, and ultimate security to this kingdom."

"Much has been said of the danger of arming the people. I confess that there was a time when that fear would have had some weight; but there never was a time when there could have been any fear of arming the whole people of England, and particularly not under the present circumstances. I never, indeed, entertained any apprehensions from a patriot army regularly officered, according to the manner specified in the measure before the house, however I might hesitate to permit the assemblage of a tumultuary army otherwise constituted. From an army to consist of the round bulk of the people, no man who knows the British character could have the least fear if it even were to include the disaffected; for they would bear so small a proportion to the whole, as to be incapable of doing mischief, however mischievously disposed. There was indeed a time when associations of traitors systematically organized, excited an apprehension of the consequences of a sudden armament of the populace: but that time is no more, and the probability is now, as occurred in the case of the volunteers, that, if there are still any material number of disaffected, by mixing them with the loyal part of the community, the same patriotic zeal, the same submission to just authority will be soon found to pervade the whole body, and that all will be equally anxious to defend their country or perish in the attempt."

"The amount of our danger, therefore, it would be impolitic to conceal from the people. It was the first duty of ministers to make it known, and after doing so, it should have been their study to provide against it, and to point out the means to the country by which it might be averted."

"[W]e had not an option at this moment, between the blessings of peace and the dangers of war that from the fatality of the times, and the general state of the world, we must consider our lot as cast, by the decrees of Providence, in a time of peril and trouble that he trusted the temper and courage of the nation would conform itself to the duties of that situation that we should be prepared, collectively and individually, to meet it with that resignation and fortitude, and, at the same time, with that active zeal and exertion, which, in proportion to the magnitude of the crisis, might be expected from a brave and free people; and that we should reflect, even in the hour of trial, what abundant reason we have to be grateful to Providence, for the distinction we enjoy over most of the countries of Europe, and for all the advantages and blessings which national wisdom and virtue have hitherto protected, and which it now depends on perseverance in the same just and honourable sentiments, still to guard and to preserve."

"He defies me to state, in one sentence, what is the object of the war. I know not whether I can do it in one sentence; but is one word, I can tell him that it is SECURITY: security against a danger, the greatest that ever threatened the world. It is security against a danger which never existed in any past period of society. It is security against a danger which in degree and extent was never equalled; against a danger which threatened all the nations of the earth; against a danger which has been resisted by all the nations of Europe, and resisted by none with so much success as by this nation, because by none has it been resisted so uniformly, and with so much energy. This country alone, of all the nations of Europe, presented barriers the best fitted to resist its progress. We alone recognised the necessity of open war, as well with the principles, as the practice of the French revolution. We saw that it was to be resisted no less by arms abroad, than by precaution at home; that we were to look for protection no less to the courage of our forces, than to the wisdom of our councils; no less to military effort, than to legislative enactment. At the moment when those, who now admit the dangers of jacobinism while they contend that it is extinct, used to palliate its atrocity, and extenuate its mischief, this house wisely saw that it was necessary to erect a double safeguard against a danger that wrought no less by undisguised hostility than by secret machination."

"The advocates of the French revolution boasted in its outset, that by their new system they had furnished a security for ever, not to France only but to all countries in the world, against military despotism; that the force of standing armies was vain and delusive; that no artificial power could resist public opinion; and that it was upon the foundation of public opinion alone that any government could stand. I believe, that in this instance, as in every other, the progress of the French revolution has belied its professions; but so far from its being a proof of the prevalence of public opinion against military force, it is instead of the proof, the strongest exception from that doctrine, which appears in the history of the world. Through all the stages of the revolution military force has governed; public opinion has scarcely been heard. But still I consider this as only an exception from a general truth; I still believe, that, in every civilized country (not enslaved by a jacobin faction) public opinion is the only sure support of any government."

"[O]n what grounds are we to be convinced that he [Napoleon] has an interest in concluding and observing a solid and permanent pacification? Under all the circumstances of his personal character, and his newly acquired power, what other security has he for retaining that power, but the sword? His hold upon France is the sword, and he has no other. Is he connected with the soil, or with the habits, the affections, or the prejudices of the country? He is a stranger, a foreigner, and an usurper; he unites in his own person every thing that a pure Republican must detest; every thing that an enraged Jacobin has abjured; every thing that a sincere and faithful Royalist must feel as an insult. If he is opposed at any time in his career, what is his appeal? He appeals to his fortune; in other words to his army and his sword. Placing, then, his whole reliance upon military support, can he afford to let his military renown pass away, to let his laurels wither, to let the memory of his achievements sink in obscurity? Is it certain that, with his army confined within France, and restrained from inroads upon her neighbours, he can maintain, at his devotion, a force sufficiently numerous to support his power? Having no object but the possession of absolute dominion, no passion but military glory, is it certain, that he can feel such an interest in permanent peace, as would justify us in laying down our arms, reducing our expense, and relinquishing our means of security, on the faith of his engagements?"

"If we carry our views out of France, and look at the dreadful catalogue of all the breaches of treaty, all the acts of perfidy at which I have only glanced, and which are precisely commensurate with the number of treaties which the republic have made (for I have sought in vain for any one which it has made and which it has not broken); if we trace the history of them all from the beginning of the revolution to the present time, or if we select those which have been accompanied by the most atrocious cruelty, and marked the most strongly with the characteristic features of the revolution, the name of Buonaparte will be found allied to more of them than that of any other that can be handed down in the history of the crimes and miseries of the last ten years. His name will be recorded with the horrors committed in Italy, in the memorable campaign of 1796 and 1797, in the Milanese, in Genoa, in Modena, in Tuscany, in Rome, and in Venice."

"Thus qualified, thus armed for destruction, the genius of the French revolution marched forth, the terror and dismay of the world. Every nation has in its turn been the witness, many have been the victims of its principles, and it is left for us to decide, whether we will compromise with such a danger, while we have yet resources to supply the sinews of war, while the heart and spirit of the country is yet unbroken, and while we have the means of calling forth and supporting a powerful co-operation in Europe."

"What then was the nature of this system? Was it any thing but what I have stated it to be? an insatiable love of agrandizement, an implacable spirit of destruction directed against all the civil and religious institutions of every country. This is the first moving and acting spirit of the French revolution; this is the spirit which animated it at its birth, and this is the spirit which will not desert it till the moment of its dissolution, "which grew with its growth, which strengthened with its strength," but which has not abated under its misfortunes, nor declined in its decay; it has been invariably the same in every period, operating more or less, according as accident or circumstances might assist it; but it has been inherent in the revolution in all its stages."

"The all-searching eye of the French revolution looks to every part of Europe, and every quarter of the world, in which can be found an object either of acquisition or plunder. Nothing is too great for the temerity of its ambition, nothing too small or insignificant for the grasp of its rapacity."

"Look then at the fate of Switzerland, at the circumstances which led to its destruction, add this instance to the catalogue of aggression against all Europe, and then tell me, whether the system I have described has not been prosecuted with an unrelenting spirit, which cannot be subdued in adversity, which cannot be appeased in prosperity, which neither solemn professions, nor the general law of nations, nor the obligation of treaties (whether previous to the revolution or subsequent to it), could restrain from the subversion of every state into which, either by force or fraud, their arms could penetrate. Then tell me, whether the disasters of Europe are to be charged upon the provocation of this country and its allies, or on the inherent principle of the French revolution, of which the natural result produced so much misery and carnage in France, and carried desolation and terror over so large a portion of the world."

"[W]hat was required of us by France was, not merely that we should acquiesce in her retaining the Netherlands, but that, as a preliminary to all treaty, and before entering upon the discussion of terms, we should recognise the principle, that whatever France, in time of war, had annexed to the republic, must remain inseparable for ever, and could not become the subject of negociation. I say, that, in refusing such a preliminary, we were only resisting the claim of France, to arrogate to itself the power of controlling, by its own separate and municipal acts, the rights and interests of other countries, and moulding, at its discretion, a new and general code of the law of nations."

"We will not leave the monster to prowl the world unopposed, He must cease to annoy the abode of peaceful men. If he retire into the cell, whether of solitude or repentance, thither we will not pursue him; but we cannot leave him on the throne of power."

"We are not in arms against the opinions of the closet, nor the speculations of the school. We are at war with armed opinions; we are at war with those opinions which the sword of audacious, unprincipled, and impious innovation seeks to propagate amidst the ruins of empires, the demolition of the altars of all religion, the destruction of every venerable, and good, and liberal institution, under whatever form of polity they have been raised."

"I feel in common with every gentleman who hears me, the proud situation in which we have been placed, and the importance it has given us in the scale of nations. The rank that we now hold, I trust, we shall continue to cherish, and that, pursuing the same glorious course, we shall all of us feel it to be a source of pride and consolation that we are the subjects of the king of Great Britain."

"[W]e must also do justice to the wisdom, energy, and determination of the parliament who have furnished the means, and the power, by which all the rest was sustained and accomplished. Through them all the departments of his Majesty's government had the means of employing the force whose achievements have been so brilliant; through the wisdom of parliament the resources of the country have been called forth, and its spirit embodied in a manner unexampled in its history. By their firmness, magnanimity, and devotion to the cause, not merely of our own individual safety, but of the cause of mankind in general, we have been enabled to stand forth the saviours of the earth. No difficulties have stood in our way; no sacrifices have been thought too great for us to make; a common feeling of danger has produced a common spirit of exertion, and we have cheerfully come forward with a surrender of a part of our property as a salvage, not merely for recovering ourselves, but for the general recovery of mankind. We have presented a phenomenon in the character of nations."

"Certainly much depends upon the posture in which you converse of peace. What is the real foundation of the strength of a nation? Spirit, security, and conscious pride, that cannot stoop to dishonour. It comprehends a character that will neither offer nor receive an insult. Give me peace consistently with that principle, and I will not call it a peace "nominal or delusive;" and there is no man who will go farther than I will to obtain it. To any thing dishonourable I will never submit; nor will this country ever submit to it, I trust. There can be no man who has an English heart within his bosom who can wish it; or can wish that you may, by an untimely diminution of your strength, expose yourselves to the renewal, with aggravated insults, of those evils which we have already had too much reason to deplore."

"[T]here is one great resource, which I trust will never abandon us, and which has shone forth in the English character, by which we have preserved our existence and fame, as a nation, which I trust we shall be determined never to abandon under any extremity, but shall join hand and heart in the solemn pledge that is proposed to us, and declare to his Majesty, that we know great exertions are wanting, that we are prepared to make them, and at all events determined to stand or fall by the laws, liberties, and religion of our country."

"[I]f we love that degree of national power which is necessary for the independence of the country, and its safety; if we regard domestic tranquillity, if we look at individual enjoyment, from the highest to the meanest among us, there is not a man, whose stake is so great in the country, that he ought to hesitate a moment in sacrificing any portion of it to oppose the violence of the enemy; nor is there, I trust, a man in this happy and free nation, whose stake is so small, that would not be ready to sacrifice his life in the same cause... There may be danger, but on the one side there is danger accompanied with honour; on the other side, there is danger with indelible shame and disgrace; upon such an alternative, Englishmen will not hesitate."

"[Y]ou have it stated in the subsequent declaration of France itself, that it is not against your commerce, that it is not against your wealth, it is not against your possessions in the east, or colonies in the west, it is not against even the source of your maritime greatness, it is not against any of the appendages of your empire, but against the very essence of your liberty, against the foundation of your independence, against the citadel of your happiness, against your constitution itself, that their hostilities are directed. They have themselves announced and proclaimed the proposition, that what they mean to bring with their invading army is the genius of their liberty: I desire no other word to express the subversion of the British constitution,—and the substitution of the most malignant and fatal contrast—and the annihilation of British liberty, and the obliteration of every thing that has rendered you a great, a flourishing, and a happy people. This is what is at issue; for this are we to declare ourselves in a manner that deprecates the rage which our enemy will not dissemble, and which will be little moved by our entreaty. Under such circumstances are we ashamed or afraid to declare, in a firm and manly tone, our resolution to defend ourselves, or to speak the language of truth with the energy that belongs to Englishmen united in such a cause?"

"[I]f we look to the whole complexion of this transaction, the duplicity, the arrogance, and violence which has appeared in the course of the negociation, if we take from thence our opinion of its general result, we shall be justified in our conclusion, not that the people of France, not that the whole government of France, but that that part of the government which had too much influence, and has now the whole ascendancy, never was sincere; was determined to accept of no terms but such as would make it neither durable nor safe, such as could only be accepted by this country by a surrender of all its interests, and by a sacrifice of every pretension, to the character of a great, a powerful, or an independent nation."

"I verily believe, in the present state of Europe, that if we are not wanting to ourselves, if, by the blessing of Providence, our perseverance, and our resources, should enable us to make peace with France upon terms in which we taint not our character, in which we do not abandon the sources of our wealth, the means of our strength, the defence of what we already possess; if we maintain our equal pretensions, and assert that rank which we are entitled to hold among nations—the moment peace can be obtained on such terms, be the form of government in France what it may, peace is desirable, peace is then anxiously to be sought. But unless it is attained on such terms, there is no extremity of war, there is no extremity of honourable contest, that is not preferable to the name and pretence of peace, which must be in reality a disgraceful capitulation, a base, an abject surrender of every thing that constitutes the pride, the safety, and happiness of England."

"I trust also that we shall not be disappointed in our expectation of the spirit of the public collectively or individually; that they will not be wanting in their exertions in such a crisis; that they will be animated, collectively and individually, with a spirit that will give energy and effect to their exertions; that every man who boasts, and is worthy of the name of an Englishman, will stand forth in the metropolis, and in every part of the kingdom, to maintain the authority of the laws, and enforce obedience to them, to oppose and counteract the machinations of the disaffected, and to preserve a due principle of submission to legal authority. I trust that all the inhabitants of the kingdom will unite in one common defence against internal enemies, to maintain the general security of the kingdom, by providing for the local security of each particular district; that we shall all remember, that by so doing we shall give the fullest scope to his Majesty's forces against foreign enemies, and also the fullest scope to the known valour and unshaken fidelity of the military force of the kingdom against those who shall endeavour to disturb its internal tranquillity. Such are the principles which I feel, and upon which I shall act for myself, and such are the principles, and will be the conduct, I hope, of every man in this house and out of it; such are the sentiments that are implanted in us all; such the feelings that are inherent in the breast of every Englishman."