“ My noble friend [Lord Palmerston] has spoken of the miseries of civil war, as well he may; but no word has ever fallen from his lips which implies that anyone was entitled to cast censure on the American Government for the contest in which they are engaged.
Who are we that we should speak of civil war as in no circumstance possible or permissible? Do we not remember that our own liberties have been secured through every form and variety of civil war? How much blood has been shed in the streets of this ancient capital of Edinburgh! ”

“ The Great Eastern fired two guns from her bows at 5.30 to mark the commencement of her journey, and Sir Robert Peel, mounting to the little quarter-deck of the Hawk, marked time, while three small but earnest cheers were given by the select company on board to the success of the great enterprise. In return came back a swelling hearty roar from all on the cable ship, as with the last salute of waving hats and caps and handkerchiefs, the tender dropped astern leaving the Great Eastern dipping slowly but steadily ahead at the rate of about six knots an hour. ”

“ There is not a province in our vast colonial empire, and there are few civilised nations in the world, which will hear without an emotion of regret that Lord Palmerston no longer guides the policy of England. Never again will that familiar voice be heard in the councils of Europe, or in the British Senate, of which he almost seemed a part, never again will that native gaiety of spirits enliven the social circle in which he loved to move. ”

“ Well, then, has the Board of Trade,34 or has any other department of the Government, any means of procuring or of helping to procure anywhere in the wide world a subsidiary supply of cotton? As to our manufacturers themselves they will do nothing unless directed and pushed on. They are some of the most helpless and shortsighted of men. They are like the people who held out their dishes and prayed that it might rain plum-puddings. They think it is enough to open their mill-gates, and that cotton will come of its own accord. ”

“ And so things would go on until the bitter end—until at last even the Appropriation Bill has passed, Parliament is dissolved, and we appeal to those millions who, perhaps, six months before might have looked upon us as the vindicators of their intolerable grievances, but who now receive us as a defeated, discredited, and a degraded Ministry, whose services can no longer be of value to the Crown or a credit to the nation. ”

“ The present position of the Queen’s army is a pitiable one. The Queen has just seen, in the camp at Aldershot, regiments, which, after eighteen years’ foreign service in most trying climates, had come back to England to be sent out after seven months to the Crimea. Having passed through this destructive campaign, they have not been home for a year before they are to go to India for perhaps twenty9 years! This is most cruel and unfair to the gallant men who devote their services to the country, and the Government is in duty and humanity bound to alleviate their position. ”

“ How many victims of civil war crowd our churchyards in every portion of the country! How many lie upon our mountains with nothing to mark them but the heath or the cairn! What do we say of these men? Do we consider their course to have been an evil one? ”

“ Whether they are called High Church or Low Church or Broad Church, they bear witness, in their legitimate bounds, to the activity of the religious mind of the nation, and in the course of our history this country is deeply indebted to the exertions and the energy of all those parties. The High Church party, totally irrespective of its religious sentiment, fills a noble page in the history of England, for it has vindicated the liberties of this country in a memorable manner ”

“ They beg us to believe that the Foreign Minister does not understand the meaning of his own acts, or the scope of his own policy; that, in spite of all his protestations to the contrary, we are the veritable perfide Albion.
“For my own part I cannot refuse to respond to the appeal of Lord Derby, when he says, ‘We have told Europe what we want, and why we want it, and Europe is in the habit of believing what we say.’ I hope the day will never come when an English Government will be justly charged with saying one thing and meaning another. I therefore gladly take Lord Derby at his word. ”

“ He believed the war was more likely than anything else to abolish slavery. The supply of cotton under slavery must always be insecure. It was the interest of England that the supply of cotton should be by free labour rather than by that of slaves. As to the political aspect of the question, the more he considered this war, the more improbable he thought it that the United States would be broken into separate Republics. ”

“ We have believed that that peace would be best maintained by an observance of the treaties in which all the Great Powers of Europe have joined. Those treaties are not antique and dusty obsolete documents. They are not instruments devised under a state of circumstances different from those that exist, and ill adapted to the spirit of the age in which we live....
“... As the Lord Mayor has told us to-night, there is no country so interested in the maintenance of peace as England. Peace is especially an English policy. She is not an aggressive Power, for there is nothing that she desires. ”

“ As to the fear of what might be the result of Mussulman fanaticism if such a course were taken, he could only say that the fanaticism of the Mussulman never broke out when he was beaten, while he had no apprehension that our prestige would be diminished among the Mussulman population of India.... Great nations, like great ships, could ride in safety only on the high seas, and although Russia might have her ambitions, which it might one day be our duty to resist, we should be able to do so all the better if we could but succeed in obtaining freedom for those down-trodden populations of Turkey. ”

“ After all our sacrifices during the Crimean War, after having shed the blood of thousands of our fellow-countrymen and expended millions of treasure, England surely has some right to say now what should be done, and how it should be done. The situation, though in some respects very similar to that which existed in 1854, is entirely changed as regards the state of public opinion in this country. Although it may be said that Russia is thundering at the gates of Constantinople, England is determined that she will not go to war against Russia for Turkey. ”

“ A pianist should treat his instrument rather as a friend than as an enemy, caress rather than bully it; but Herr Rubinstein seats himself at the piano with a seeming determination to punish it, and his endeavours to extort the power of an orchestra from that which is, after all, but an unpretending row of keys, hammers, and strings, result in an exaggeration of style entirely antagonistic to real musical expression. ”

“ France is a military Power. England, as compared with France, is not. England is a naval Power. So is France. If the balance of power between them is to be preserved, England must be the stronger by sea, as France is by land, otherwise England would be at the mercy of France.”
22 The Emperor somewhat disputed the justice of these remarks, observing that his 500,000 men were required to hold his position upon the Continent, and that I had not taken into account the insular position of Great Britain, which made her, as it were, a large fortress. ”

“ I ask any man in this House: Is it possible to do a thing that is more perilous than that which is done by the right hon. gentleman and his Australian colleague, the member for Salisbury, viz., to make it appear that there is a gulf which shall not be passed by legislation, between the highest, the most powerful and the most numerous portion of the middle class, and the great body of the working people who are really the very heart of this great country? ”

“ Dissolution of Parliament is a different instrument in different hands. It is an instrument of which a Minister who is in office, with his Government established, can avail himself with a facility which a Minister who is only going to accede to office is deprived of. There may be circumstances which may render it imperative on a Minister in office to advise the Sovereign to exercise the prerogative of dissolving Parliament; but he always has the opportunity of disposing of the public business before that dissolution takes place. ”

“ Yes, gentlemen, if it be true—and it is true—that the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church, it is equally true that the blood of the patriots has been the foundation of the liberties of our country. ”

“ Disraeli would go no further than four members, and so, according to my own expression, Sheffield was left out in the cold. This is the plain history of the case. It is a story that could be told of many other similar attempts to defeat the Bill, which attempts were defeated by our steady determination to carry the Bill, spite of calumny, spite of threats, spite of abuse. The Bill is now law, and is law because a number of Liberals were more far-sighted, ay, and more disinterested, than those who called themselves leaders of the Liberal party. ”

“ I said that we have from the beginning taken a deep interest in favour of Denmark—not from family ties, which have little influence on English policy, and sometimes act unfavourably—but, first, that we have thought from the beginning that Denmark has been harshly and unjustly treated; and, secondly, we deem the integrity and independence of the State, which commands the entrance to the Baltic, objects of interest to England. ”

“ The congregations of the great majority of the places of worship in London and its suburbs, reinforced moreover by many who do not habitually attend places of worship at all, were united in the pursuit of a common object, and in the acknowledgment of a common obligation. The claims of the sick poor were urged from several hundred pulpits, not on any ground of expediency, or of economy, or even of benevolence, but mainly on the broad principle that their recognition forms an essential part of the life dictated by every form of Christianity. ”

“ The army he once had at his behest is scattered in bands of rebels all over the country; and as he can never recruit again his incredibly diminished hordes, he will be forced to make this Amba his last asylum and tomb, or, followed by a few faithful adherents and the most valuable captives, seek a home in the marshy jungles and entangled feverish villages of the lowlands. ”

“ The old and much abused campaign medal may now be looked upon as a reward, but it will cease to be sought after as a distinction for a new order is instituted—an order for merit and valour, open without regard to rank or title, to all whose conduct in the field has rendered them prominent for courage even in the British Army. A path is left open to the ambition of the humblest soldier—a road is open to honour which thousands have toiled, and pined, and died in the endeavour to attain ”

“ Saturday, April 20, 1861.—There was an interesting debate last night in the House of Lords, brought on by Lord Ellenborough, on the Roman question, in which Clarendon and Lord Derby also took part. He asked whether our Government was engaged in any correspondence with the object of reconciling the spiritual independence of the See of Rome with the exercise of temporal sovereignty by the King of Italy within the Roman territory. He thought Rome was the fitting capital of a united Italy, and that the occupation by the French of that city precluded that unity. ”

“ It is majestic—a free and mighty people demand nothing for themselves, neither power, nor commerce, nor extended empire. They seek simply the welfare of others and the solidarity of nations.
118 Professor E. A. Freeman: From amid the clatter of wine-cups a voice of defiance went forth, conveying the brag which all the world had heard, that England would fight a first, a second, and a third campaign rather than permit another Power to do the work which she herself ought to accomplish. ”

“ Since Lord Derby has so pitilessly dowsed with cold water the heated enthusiasm of visionary journalists, they have never ceased to weep and to wail over the ruins of their pet toy, which has collapsed like a pricked bladder or a broken drum. ”

“ That this meeting protests against the perpetuation of class government to the exclusion of the great majority of the people from the franchise; refuses to allow itself to be made an instrument to further the means of contending parties or the selfish interests of any class; and pledges itself to adopt all means of organising and agitating for the only just basis of representation—registered residential manhood suffrage and the ballot. ”

“ John Russell has taken it up with extraordinary vehemence and anger. His opposition to it is furious on high constitutional grounds, which appear to me absurd and uncalled for. If I were in Parliament I should be puzzled how to vote, for there is much to be said against the Bill, and much against voting against it, particularly against leave to bring it in. Almost all the Tories voted with the Government, and John Russell carried very few with him, and neither of his own nephews. He is more than ever exasperated against Palmerston for bringing it in. ”

“ She covets no cities and no provinces. What she wishes is to maintain and to enjoy the unexampled Empire which she has built up, and which it is her pride to remember exists as much upon sympathy as upon force. ”

“ They are like the hunted dog whom everybody may kick. But in the South the feeling is very different. There black children and white children are brought up together. In the South there is not that hatred, that contempt, of the black man which exists in the North. There is a kindly feeling in the minds of the Southern planters towards those whom England fixed there in a position of servitude. England forced slavery upon the Southern States of America. ”