"Was every man who had liberty in his mouth to be considered as a traitor, merely because liberty had been abused in France, and had been carried to the most shocking licentiousness? He would venture to say, that if this was to be the consequence, fatal, indeed, would it be for England! If the love of liberty was not to be maintained in England; if the warm admiration of it was not to be cherished in the hearts of the people: if the maintenance of liberty was not to be inculcated as a duty; if it was not to be reverenced as our chief good, as our boast and pride and richest inheritance;—what else had we worthy of our care? Liberty was the essence of the British constitution. King, lords, commons, and courts of judicature, were but the forms; the basis of the constitution was liberty, that grand and beautiful fabric, the first principle of which was government by law, and which this day they were going to suspend."
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AbolitionistsMembers of the Parliament of Great BritainPeople from LondonWhig (British political party) politiciansSecretaries of State for Foreign Affairs of Great Britain and the United Kingdom
Original Language: English
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Sources
Speech in the House of Commons (17 May 1794), quoted in The Speeches of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox, in the House of Commons. Vol. V (1815), p. 286
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_James_Fox
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Charles James Fox
1749 – 1806
englischer Staatsmann und Rhetoriker
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