42 quotes
Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.
The English Constitution (1894)
Nations touch at their summits.
The English Constitution (1894)
The greatest teacher of all in Parliament, the head-master of the nation, the great elevator of the country—so far as Parliament elevates it—must be the Prime Minister.
The English Constitution (1894)
A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.
The English Constitution (1894)
The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.
The English Constitution (1894)
[T]he two most singular prerogatives of an English king [are] the power of creating new peers and the power of dissolving the Commons.
The English Constitution (1894)
The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.
The English Constitution (1894)
An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.
The English Constitution (1894)
The great maxim of modern thought is not only the toleration of everything, but the examination of everything. It is by examining very bare, very dull, very unpromising things, that modern science has come to be what it is.
The English Constitution (1894)
A cabinet is a combining committee,—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.
The English Constitution (1894)
[W]hatever is unnecessary in government is pernicious.
The English Constitution (1894)
Our revolution has been called the minimum of a revolution, because in law, at least, it only changed the dynasty, but exactly on that account it was the greatest shock to the common multitude, who see the dynasty but see nothing else.
The English Constitution (1894)
An Act of Parliament is at least as complex as a marriage settlement; and it is made much as a settlement would be if it were left to the vote and settled by the major part of persons concerned, including the unborn children.
The English Constitution (1894)
If happily, by its intelligence and attractiveness, a cabinet can gain a hold upon the great middle part of Parliament, it will continue to exist notwithstanding the hatching of small plots and the machinations of mean factions.
The English Constitution (1894)
The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
The English Constitution (1894)
It always perhaps happens in a great nation, that certain bodies of sensible men posted prominently in its constitution, acquire functions, and usefully exercise functions, which at the outset, no one expected from them, and which do not identify themselves with their original design. This has happened to the House of Lords especially.
The English Constitution (1894)
[A]dministration is an art as painting is an art; and ... no book can teach the practice of either.
The English Constitution (1894)
A new Constitution does not produce its full effect as long as all its subjects were reared under an old Constitution, as long as its statesmen were trained by that old Constitution. It is not really tested till it comes to be worked by statesmen and among a people neither of whom are guided by a different experience.
The English Constitution (1894)
Nothing, perhaps, would more surprise the English people than if the Queen by a coup d’état and on a sudden destroyed a ministry firm in the allegiance and secure of a majority in Parliament. That power, indisputably, in theory, belongs to her; but it has passed so far away from the minds of men that it would terrify them, if she used it, like a volcanic eruption from Primrose Hill.
The English Constitution (1894)
The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.
The English Constitution (1894)