Anglicans From The United Kingdom

"It was a pity that Miss Cavell had to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly. We hope it will not be necessary to have any more executions."

"They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

"I thank God for this ten weeks' quiet before the end... Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty... This time of rest has been a great mercy."

"I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved."

"Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy."

"Possessed of no commanding strength of intellect but of an imperious will, she laboriously studied every detail of government business, and on every question of policy or administration she formed for herself decided opinions, to which she obstinately adhered, pressing them to business pertinaciously on the notice of her ministers. No sovereign of England ever applied himself to the work of government with greater ardour or greater industry."

"The names of the little one will be, Philippe Eugène Ferdinand Marie Clement Baudoin (baldwin, a name of the old counts of Flanders) Leopold George. My aunt who is his godmother wished he should be called Philippe, honour of his grandfather, and as Philippe le bon, who was one of the most powerful princes of this country. I gave him the name with pleasure. Eugene is her own name, Ferdinand that of Chartres, Marie is the name of the queen and of princess Marie, Clement of princess Clémentine, Leopold your aunt wished and George honour of St. George of England and of George the IV."

"She had made the monarchy welcome everywhere, as the representative of the public life of the nation in its non-political aspects. All through her reign, but most of all during its last twenty years, she had appealed to the common human heart of plain people, as a woman who was herself decidedly a "plain person," more apt than the clever, the cultured or the aristocratic of soul to sympathise with the elementary joys and sorrows of her subjects. When she said that she was grieved by some public or private calamity, people knew that her sorrow was sincere, and of the same nature as their own. There was nothing superfine about Queen Victoria in her widowhood. None the less, she made the world recognise in her the symbol of all that was mighty and lasting in the life of England and of the races associated with England in Empire. Because she thus combined the very human and the very high, sentiment about her person became, at the end, akin to the religious. And for an Empire which desired to hold together in brotherhood, but refused to be federated into a single parliamentary Constitution, the only possible unit, in symbolism or in law, was found at last to be the historic Crown of Britain."

"Queen Victoria had put an end to the Republican movement in Great Britain and in the Dominions, not by what she had done, but by what she had been, and by what she had refrained from doing. She had won back public respect for the monarchy in her person. And she had disarmed political hostility to the throne by effacing its occupant as a governing power. It was her habit to express to her advisers, often with unnecessary emphasis, her views on all public questions, but she had not insisted on having her way. She had been content with a purely consultative function in relation to Ministers who were in effect chosen for her by Parliament, sometimes much against her own ideas of their fitness."

"When...the news of the approaching end had been made public, astonished grief had swept over the country. It appeared as if some monstrous reversal of the course of nature was about to take place. The vast majority of her subjects had never known a time when Queen Victoria had not been reigning over them. She had become an indissoluble part of their whole scheme of things, and that they were about to lose her appeared a scarcely possible thought."

"The girl, the wife, the aged woman, were the same: vitality, conscientiousness, pride, and simplicity were hers to the latest hour."

"Victoria was the Queen of England, the Empress of India, the quintessential pivot round which the whole magnificent machine was revolving—but how much more besides! For one thing, she was of a great age—an almost indispensable qualification for popularity in England. She had given proof of one of the most admired characteristics of the race—persistent vitality. She had reigned for sixty years, and she was not out. And then, she was a character. The outlines of her nature were firmly drawn, and, even through the mists which envelop royalty, clearly visible. In the popular imagination her familiar figure filled, with satisfying ease, a distinct and memorable place. It was, besides, the kind of figure which naturally called forth the admiring sympathy of the great majority of the nation. Goodness they prized above every other human quality; and Victoria, who had said that she would be good at the age of twelve, had kept her word. Duty, conscience, morality—yes! in the light of those high beacons the Queen had always lived. She had passed her days in work and not in pleasure—in public responsibilities and family cares. The standard of solid virtue which had been set up so long ago amid the domestic happiness of Osborne had never been lowered for an instant."

"Another great—far greater—event now occupied the mind of the "man in the street": the illness and subsequent death of Queen Victoria. The "man in the street" certainly took a great interest in that event which filled us and our English friends with sorrow. It was such a great passing away of the most outstanding personality of the past hundred years. The morning that the news appeared in the Paris Daily Mail we were greeted by all our friendly tradespeople with subdued voices and a certain awed expression of face: "Vous savez?" they all said, even before they answered to our "bonjour" "Votre idole est morte". Your idol! That is how they talked of Queen Victoria. She was to their minds (more insular than those of our own people) something quite apart. Not altogether real. A fetish that we, the hated English, almost worshipped, and to their credit be it said that with her death, all scurrilous cartoons and postcards disappeared from the kiosks, nor did any derogatory or disrespectful article appear in the Press."

"Whether the queen caused the period, or the period creates the queen, she fitted her time perfectly."

"No British sovereign was more sincerely mourned. As the news of the queen's death spread, impassioned expressions of grief came from every part of the United Kingdom, of the British empire, and of the world. Native chieftains in India, in Africa, in New Zealand, vied with their British-born fellow-subjects in the avowals of a personal sense of loss. The demonstration of her people's sorrow testified to the spirit of loyalty to her person and position which had been evoked by her length of life and reign, her personal sorrows, and her recent manifestations of sympathy with her subjects' welfare."

"The warrior, sage, and poet fill their story With all the various honours of mankind ; — May thy young reign achieve yet truer glory, The pure, enlightened triumphs of the mind ! Too much in this wide world yet needs redressing ; But with thy reign Hope’s loveliest promise came. May thy sweet youth be sheltered by the blessing A nation breathes upon Victoria’s name!"

"We are servants of the Crown as well as servants of the people... I am not ashamed to say that in my old age I rejoice in any opportunity which enables me to testify that, whatever may be thought of my opinions, whatever may be thought of my proposals in general politics, I do not forget the service which I have borne for so many years to the illustrious representative of the British Monarchy."

"[T]hat monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria."

"The colonisation of Australia and New Zealand, and the acquisition of South Africa in the decline of Holland, created the new and wider British Empire still based upon sea-power and comprising a fifth of the human race, over which Queen Victoria, in the longest reign of British history, presided. In this period moral issues arising from Christian ethics became prominent. The slave trade, from which Britain had so shamelessly profited in the past, was suppressed by the Royal Navy. By a terrible internal struggle, at the cost of nearly a million lives, slavery was extirpated from the United States; above all, the Union was preserved."

"The centerpiece of the Oval Office was the resolute desk. I had chosen the desk because of its historical significance. Its story began in 1852, when Queen Victoria dispatched the HMS Resolute to search for the British explorer John Franklin, who had been lost looking for the Northwest Passage. The Resolute was trapped in ice near the Arctic and abandoned by its crew. In 1855 it was discovered by an American whaling ship, which sailed the Resolute back to Connecticut. The vessel was purchased by the U.S. government, refitted, and returned to England as a goodwill gift to the queen. When the Resolute was decommissioned two decades later, Her Majesty had several ornate desks made out of its timbers, one of which she gave to President Rutherford B. Hayes."

"He...made observations with regard to the Queen, which, in my opinion, no meeting of people in this country, and certainly no meeting of Reformers, ought to have listened to with approbation. (Cheers.) Let it be remembered that there has been no occasion on which any Ministry has proposed an improved representation of the people when the Queen has not given her cordial, unhesitating, and, I believe, hearty assent. (Cheers.) ... But Mr. Ayrton referred further to a supposed absorption of the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband to the exclusion of sympathy for and with the people. (Hear, hear.) I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns. (Hear, hear.) But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. (Loud cheers.) I think there has been by many persons a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. (Cheers.) And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she the Queen of a great realm or be she the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)"

"Those kindly graces, those admirable qualities, have endeared her to every class in the community, and are known to all. Perhaps less known was the life of continuous labour which her position as Queen threw upon her. Short as was the interval between the last trembling signature affixed to a public document and the final and perfect rest, it was yet long enough to clog and hamper the wheels of administration; and when I saw the accumulating mass of untouched documents which awaited the attention of the Sovereign, I marvelled at the unostentatious patience which for sixty-three years, through sorrow, through suffering, in moments of weariness, in moments of despondency, had enabled her to carry on without break or pause her share in the government of this great Empire. For her there was no holiday, to her there was no intermission of toil. Domestic sorrow, domestic sickness, made no difference in her labours, and they were continued from the hour at which she became our Sovereign to within a few days—I had almost said a few hours—of her death. It is easy to chronicle the growth of Empire, the course of discovery, the progress of trade, the triumphs of war, all the events that make history interesting or exciting; but who is there that will dare to weigh in the balance the effect which such an example, continued over sixty-three years, has produced on the highest life of her people?"

"Queen Victoria on promotion of Lionel Rothschild to peerage: "It is not only the feeling, of which she cannot divest herself, against making a person of the Jewish religion, a Peer; but she cannot think that one who owes his great wealth to contracts with foreign Governments for Loans, or to successful speculation on the Stock Exchange, can fairly claim a British Peerage. However high Sir L. Rothschild may stand personally in public estimation, this seems to her not less a species of gambling because it is on a gigantic scale and far removed from that legitimate trading which she delights to honour, in which men have raised themselves by patient industry and unswerving probity to positions of wealth and influence.""

"We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist."

"I sympathise most deeply with your expressions on the horrors of war, than which no one can feel more strongly than I do; and earnestly hope that it may be averted. But I cannot abandon my own subjects who have appealed to me for protection. If President Kruger is reasonable, there will be no war, but the issue is in his hands."

"I am too horrified for words at this monstrous horrible sentence against this poor martyr Dreyfus. If only all Europe would express its horror and indignation! I trust there will be a severe retribution."

"It seems to me a defect in our much famed Constitution, to have to part with an admirable Govt like Ld Salisbury's for no question of any importance or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes."

"It is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved."

"I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Women's Rights," with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were women to "unsex" themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection."

"All marriage is such a lottery -- the happiness is always an exchange -- though it may be a very happy one -- still the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband's slave. That always sticks in my throat. When I think of a merry, happy, and free young girl -- and look at the ailing aching state a young wife is generally doomed to -- which you can't deny is the penalty of marriage."

"My dearest Uncle,- I have the greatest pleasure in announcing to you a piece of news which I know will give you as much satisfaction and relief as it does to us, and will do to the whole of the world. Lord Palmerston is no longer Foreign Secretary—and Lord Granville has already named his successor!"

"Affairs go on, and all will take some shape or other, but it keeps one in hot water all the time."

"Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have."

"It is advertising that enthrones the customer as king. This infuriates the socialist...[it is] the crossing of the boundary between West Berlin and East Berlin. It is Checkpoint Charlie, or rather Checkpoint Douglas, the transition from the world of choice and freedom to the world of drab, standard uniformity."

"Powellism is now part of the English intellectual and moral tradition; part of the nation's mythology. The man, too, is a legend in his lifetime. So in a sense his work is done. For whatever eventually happens to him his ideas have now entered the bloodstream of the British body politic, guaranteeing them a kind of immortality. Of no other living British statesman could the same be said."

"He abhors the label right and calls himself a Tory radical. For him the essence of Powellism is its frankly Gaullist emphasis on national independence and its marking out of political ground in which a realistic patriotism can flourish again. But paradoxically it is not rightist in the old-style Tory sense. Mr. Powell, unlike the true Tory right, calls for a withdrawal from Empire not even into Europe but into Britain... Mr. Powell is seen by his lieutenants as the latter-day Joe Chamberlain in the Tory Party, the boy from "Brum" who, though he is unlikely ever to lead his party, will change its orientation and nature by driving it into a Gaullist radicalism rather than on to the right."

"On 20 April 1968 Enoch Powell delivered his notorious 'rivers of blood' speech about the perils of allowing Commonwealth immigrants into the United Kingdom. Kenneth was furious. Powell, Kenneth observed to me, had been assiduous in recruiting men and women from the West Indies to staff the National Health Service. It could not have worked without them."

"On the issue raised by Mr Powell [the EEC] hinges the question whether the British are to retain power to decide their own destiny. In other words, are we to be independent? ... On that issue, put that way, I stand four-square in line with Mr Powell and I hope he is not embarrassed. He is moving to the position which the late General de Gaulle took up at the time of the collapse of France in the last war."

"Among the various textual notes that appear in academic journals, I still find much to commend in the articles by J. Enoch Powell in the Classical Quarterly for 1935 and 1938. His suggestions and conjectures are also implicit in his absolutely indispensable Lexicon to Herodotus."

"He talks so fascinatingly on history, architecture and many subjects that politics seldom came up, but I should be disappointed if on any subject he did not produce some interestingly heterodox views."

"On the matter of his [Powell's] objections to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement I now believe that his assessment was right, though I wish...he had been less inclined to impugn the motives of those who disagreed with him."

"There will never be anybody else so compelling as Enoch Powell. He had a rare combination of qualities all founded on an unfaltering belief in God, an unshakeable loyalty to family and friends and an unswerving devotion to our country. He was magnetic. Listening to his speeches was an unforgettable privilege. He was one of those rare people who made a difference."

"Enoch was the best parliamentarian I ever knew. Everything in Enoch's speeches had to be worked out in reason from first principles."

"Undoubtedly, Enoch was our finest intellect – classicist, historian, economist and biblical scholar... [H]e was a powerful public orator and able to command the House of Commons, or indeed any audience, with his remorseless logic and controlled passion. But as regards the Shadow Cabinet, by this stage he had largely withdrawn into himself. He was disliked and probably feared by Ted Heath... On Sunday 21 April 1968...I woke up to find the front pages of the newspapers dominated by reports of a speech Enoch Powell had made in Birmingham on immigration the previous afternoon. It was strong meat, and there were some lines which had a sinister ring about them. But I strongly sympathised with the gravamen of his argument about the scale of New Commonwealth immigration into Britain. I too thought this threatened not just public order but also the way of life of some communities... I was also quite convinced that, however selective quotations from his speech may have sounded, Enoch was no racist."

"Enoch was right. He had made the two intellectual leaps in economic policy which Keith Joseph and I would only make some years later. First, he had grasped that it was not the unions which caused inflation by pushing up wages, but rather the Government which did so by increasing the supply of money in the economy. Consequently, incomes policies...were a supreme irrelevance to anti-inflation policy. The only aspect of the matter which Enoch then and later failed sufficiently to grasp was the importance of the indirect link between trade union power and inflation. This lay in the fact that over-powerful trade unions priced their own members out of jobs, and inflicted unemployment on both union and non-union workers alike. Governments...would then react by lowering interest rates and expanding the money supply. This would increase demand and jobs for a time, but it also increased inflation... That said, Enoch's insight into the cause of inflation was of supreme importance."

"His intellect was second to none... Enoch got us on to the right argument about inflation."

"I have always read Enoch Powell's speeches and articles very carefully. He was not helpful over things like the Anglo-Irish Agreement. I think he has been absolutely right about the economy – inflation is a monetary phenomenon. I always think it was a tragedy that he left. He is a very, very able politician. I say that even though he has sometimes said vitriolic things against me."

"For those who saw and heard Enoch Powell, the memory is indelible – the black moustache, the burning eyes, the hypnotic, metallic voice, the precision of language, the agility in debate. These will be largely lost to future generations. But, in a more important respect, Powell will survive more surely than any other British politician of the 20th century except Winston Churchill. His speeches and writings will be read so long as there exists a political and parliamentary culture in which speaking and writing matter. And if there comes a time when such a culture is all but destroyed, those brave few who wish to restore it will find in the thoughts of Enoch Powell something approaching their Bible."

"Roy's parliamentary successes were often based on reflections as much as rhetoric. I remember one speech when Enoch Powell interrupted him with what appeared to be a telling point. Roy paused and thought and looked at the ceiling. He delayed his reply so long that there was an uncomfortable feeling among his supporters that for once he had been put off his stride. Then he said: “The Right Honourable Gentleman's logic, as always, is impeccable. But since he always starts from false premises, he is bound to come to the wrong conclusion.” In an off-the-cuff remark he had summed up Enoch Powell's whole career."

"I knew Powell at Cambridge when he was a young classical scholar. His IQ is enormously high."