Various

“ And all this is in pursuance of a theory of political economy incomprehensible to the unprejudiced observer like myself, that it is cheaper and more advantageous to the national prosperity to sacrifice the commercial interests of the country than to incur the risks and expense of protecting them. The only explanation one can give of an infatuation so incredible, of a policy so short-sighted and so fraught with disaster, is, that it is based on ignorance—ignorance of the present injury that it is working, and ignorance of the dangers to which it is giving birth. ”

“ This is not a deliberation on the amendment of national institutions; it is a battle of parties. Each party is seeking not so much to improve the government as to make it the instrument of particular theories or passions. But this surely is what a government, an executive government at least, ought not to be. A government ought to be the impartial guardian for the whole nation of law, order, property, personal rights, and the public safety; while opinion is left to shape itself by discussion, reach maturity, and at length impress itself on legislation. ”

“ Because these means served us some centuries ago, and because, if you will, our national greatness is built upon them, does it follow that we should cling to them in these more enlightened days? If the moral instinct of the people of England begins to revolt against them, even to the prejudice of the national purse, do our money-bags constitute a sufficient reason why we should remain in the Cimmerian darkness and brutality of the middle ages? Of all men you were the last whom I expected to hear confound moral progress with political imbecility. ”

“ There have been very few more active and inquiring minds in this generation: the keenness and swiftness of his intellectual processes were even more surprising than the extent and variety of his scientific attainments. But such powers and such acquirements have, alas! been sometimes in unworthy alliance with jealous dispositions and a low moral tone. What will endear to us the memory of William Siemens is that he was, while so able and skilful, also so modest, so upright, so generous, and so totally free from all narrowness and paltriness of spirit. ”

“ Nothing strikes us members of the oppressed and suppressed races as more anomalous and incomprehensible, than the fact that the party in England which are most ready to compromise the honor of that flag, and to haul it down on the least provocation, are precisely that party who are most loud-tongued in their profession of sympathy for those races to whom it is the banner on which their hopes are fixed—the symbol in their eyes of progress, civilisation, and political freedom. ”

“ Is not the tendency everywhere the opposite way? What permanent claim has party on the allegiance of a moral being? What is it but a soft name for faction, the bane of States? Why should a good citizen surrender his conscience to it? Why should good citizens for ever divide themselves into two hostile camps, and wage political war against each other? Is an unpatriotic and anti-social principle to be accepted as the last word of politics? The supply of organic questions cannot be inexhaustible. ”

“ We call him the crudest of politicians who never reflects that our laws have grown with the people, that they contain the experience of a nation, and are not the paper schemes of clever theorists, and that they are surrounded by traditions which no convulsion ever swept away and which give them half their strength. It is this that a greater lawyer than Blackstone meant when he said that time is the wisest thing in the inferior world. But to timid natures antiquity becomes the proof, and not merely the evidences of excellence ”

“ The electorate, that is to say, the government—at least the body by which the government is appointed and its policy is determined—is undergoing reconstruction on the largest scale. Yet we look in vain, even in the speeches of the great statesman who is the author of these measures, for any forecast of their practical effect, of the influence which they will have on the character of government, or of the sort of policy which they will produce. Able and impressive as the speeches may be, there is little in them but philanthropy and arithmetic, neither of which is politics. ”

“ Withal a secret disquietude, the source of which escapes me, leaves me dissatisfied. I feel agitated, fatigued, worn out. Everything with me has succeeded; nothing is wanting to me that I can name, and yet I am not happy. A vague sense of irritation, which I cannot overcome, prevents me from delighting in anything; this life of struggle is arid and devouring, and in the glowing eyes of my scholars I often discern more joy than I can attain by all the efforts of my intellect.”
It is not difficult to surmise the disease from which Abelard was suffering. ”

“ In barbarous regions of the North men live underground, but these dwellings were suspended in the sunny air amongst plumes of cocoanut and betel; behind them rose the shadowy jungle. There was no cultivated land in sight, for the Malay finds his harvest and his garden in the sea. The smooth sand below high-water mark was a parterre of sponges, green and red, and purple blue, intermixed with coral. Old-fashioned people in Europe cherish certain round masses of limestone, daintily fluted, and put them under a glass case for ornament. ”

“ Foreign policy is with us the great safety-valve by which the bubbling passions of the country find a vent, and our central authority takes refuge from its troubles in foreign wars and schemes of territorial aggrandisement; your Government pursues a diametrically opposite system, and considers, apparently, that its best chance of safety lies in stirring up domestic broils, and exciting the people to fever-heat of political passion among themselves. ”

“ A noble, beautiful, and gifted spirit has passed to the higher and fuller life, and with us is left an influence for good which cannot die. Just as this generation is now profiting by the solar radiation which fell on the earth countless ages ago, so will the labors of Charles William Siemens form a store of knowledge, potential with respect to this and succeeding generations, and destined to confer advantages, greater than we can now estimate, on the ever-advancing cause of science, and on the moral, intellectual, and material progress of humanity!—Gentleman’s Magazine. ”

“ Cousin declare, when a discussion was once raised as to who is the greatest woman that ever lived, that Eloisa towers above all competitors. But for the self-obliterating tenderness of her heart, the self-asserting strength of Abelard’s intellect would long since have been forgotten. Fancy a man worrying himself to death in order to establish that he is not heterodox in his views concerning the reality of Universals, while such a woman offers him, in her own particular person, the sum and abstract of all that is worth having in the world! ”

“ From selfishness the poor are at least as free as the rich; they would vote at least as well if they knew how; but the knowledge is to them unattainable. In no sphere but that of politics does anybody propose to thrust upon people power of which it is manifestly impossible that they should make an intelligent use. Not only is it manifestly impossible that the people should make an intelligent use of the power of direct election to the governing assembly and of determining its policy: it is morally impossible that they should really make use of it at all. ”

“ Rarely indeed has the homage of poets so far apart in time, and varying so widely in spirit and conception, been tendered so persistently to one object. Arthur may pass away in peace to the cool valley of Avilion, Launcelot to his grave in Joyous Guard, Galahad to the Blessed Vision which last he saw with mortal eyes in the city of Estorause; but Tristram is of the earth, earthy, and on the earth he abides. Twelve centuries have not quenched the ardor of his love for fair Iseult, nor traced one wrinkle on his brow. ”

“ There can be no surer way of precipitating the crisis which England seeks to avoid, and which, when it comes, must involve the utter ruin of her trade, than the invitation which her craven attitude offers to her covetous and unscrupulous neighbors, whether they be civilised or uncivilised, to encroach to their own profit, until at last the veil which is now before the eyes of the public in England will be torn away, and they will find themselves suddenly called upon to abandon the parochial details over which they have been wrangling, for sterner work. ”

“ It is the military weapon of a trained barbaric warrior as opposed to the universal implement and utensil of a rude, solitary, savage hunter. Yet how curious it is that even in the midst of this “so-called nineteenth century,” which perpetually proclaims itself an age of progress, men should still prefer to believe themselves inferior to their original ancestors, instead of being superior to them! The idea that man has risen is considered base, degrading, and positively wicked; the idea that he has fallen is considered to be immensely inspiring, ennobling, and beautiful. ”

“ One great temptation to the exploration of the world is rapidly passing away. There is little to be found that will gratify the love of the marvellous. Of an absolutely new land there is now no lingering hope. We know enough of the ocean to be sure that there exists no undiscovered continent, no unsuspected peninsula—unless it be in the Antarctic circle—and no island large enough to be either of value or of interest. ”

“ Amongst the many sagacious sayings of the patient and profound thinkers of Germany, not the least noteworthy was Schelling’s affirmation that the phenomena of instinct are some of the most important of all phenomena, and capable of serving as a very touch-stone whereby the value of competing theories of the universe may be effectually tested. His prescience has been justified by our experience. The greatest scientific event of the present time is the wide acceptance of the theory of evolution, and its use as a weapon of offence and defence. ”

“ She has nothing but an “ancient throne,” now stripped of the last vestige of political power, and an aristocracy which is evidently doomed, and, by its struggles to retain its obsolete privilege, stimulates revolution. The only Conservative institution which is really effective is the non-payment of Members of Parliament; and this Democracy has already marked for abolition.
One could wish for a blast of the Fontarabian horn to awaken British statesmen, in this decisive hour, to the fact that England, though she has the consecrated form, has no longer the substance of monarchical government. ”

“ Let it be thoroughly understood by every one that the soot which hangs in a pall over London in a single day is equivalent to at least fifty tons of coal, and then there will be no difficulty in seeing that the true and the only remedy for our London fogs, with all their attendant ills, is—gaseous fuel. May we not hope that, though Sir William Siemens has gone from among us, the great movement for smoke abatement, in which he so earnestly labored during the last three years of his life, may have full effect? ”

“ Indeed, the incapacity they have shown to protect what they have got, is the best reason they could assign for being unwilling to have more; but it does not touch the question of the principle upon which England’s policy should be based in her dealings with foreign nations, and with her own colonial possessions; in other words, what are the most economical and at the same time the most moral methods of self-preservation? I put economy before morality, because, whatever may be the professions of Governments in practice, as a consideration, it always precedes it. ”

“ It is only yesterday that Canada became a Pacific Power. It is only to-day that the Australians are being united by railroads, and they are still sundered in fiscal policy. The Cape has not yet become possessed of a people sufficiently powerful to make themselves felt. In any case let the colonies speak out, and we can wait, for “all’s well” at present with the loyal sentiments of our scattered brethren.
During this last fortnight they have again proved that they are heart and hand with us in time of trouble. Let us, if they desire it, make their voices be heard in council. ”

“ How can we doubt that for a nature so richly endowed there is higher scope alike for knowledge and for service in the great Eternity? Such beauty and grandeur and energy and power cannot be laid low—they are not destroyed, nothing is lost, but all will live again in ever-growing splendor! ”

“ A stable, though responsible, executive, invested with a reasonable amount of authority, commanding the general confidence of the people, and capable of exercising forecast and governing on a plan, especially with regard to foreign affairs, is a necessity of civilized life. How is it to be secured for the future to England? Have reforming statesmen asked themselves that momentous question, or has the necessity of answering it been hidden from their eyes by the illusion which surrounds the “ancient throne?” What basis has Government at present but party? ”