British government

“ Even when Great Britain has relaxed in her measures, or appeared to recede from her claims, instead of manifestations of gratitude, our politicians have risen in their demands, and sometimes to such a degree of insolence, as to lay the British government under a necessity of persevering in its measures to preserve its honour. ”

“ Don't you see how the British Government are going on, taking country after country year after year, in order to manage them better than they were managed under others? and don't you see how these countries thrive under their strong and just Government? ”

“ The sophistry of reasoning from a comparison between theory and practice, is obvious. The most perfect operating government, may be made to look defective, compared with a fabrick, reared by the imagination. And by calling this imaginary fabrick, the British government, all the old prejudices in its favour are ingeniously ensnared, by tho Aristotelian artifice of hypothetical systematizing. Tho mind can only be freed from these fetters by comparing realities. ”

“ In a sober sense, in a sense of deep conviction, I say that the emergence of this country from British domination, and its union under its present form of government beneath the general Constitution of the country, if not a miracle, is, I do not say the most, but one of the most fortunate, the most admirable, the most auspicious occurrences, which have ever fallen to the lot of man. ”

“ Thus British institutions—the institutions of national self-government, which are peculiarly British in origin—have played a main part both in determining the character of the British Empire and in bringing about its wonderful expansion. The more the British Empire has grown the more freedom has been established on the face of the earth. ”

“ That, deeply impressed with the melancholy state of public concerns, they would, in the fullest information they could obtain, and with the most mature deliberation they could employ, review the whole of the late proceedings, that they might be enabled to discover, as they would be most willing to apply, the most effectual means of restoring order to the distracted affairs of the British empire, confidence to his majesty’s government, obedience, by a prudent and temperate use of its powers, to the authority of parliament, and satisfaction and happiness to all his people. ”

“ Adams's. The parliament, or orders, are theoretically and practically omnipotent. Such is the doctrine of the British government and of the British lawyers. The government possesses unlimited power, and the nation bas no rights independent of the government. The reverse is the principle adopted by our policy. It contends, that the power of a government may be limited, and that the people may have rights independent of the government. ”

“ They are impressed with the treatment of the British Government, its straightforwardness, veracity and benevolence, in contrast to the merciless dealings of the Government at home, which inflicts shocking punishments for even minor offences. ”

“ The appointment of that high authority is the only power which Great Britain still retains. Frankly and generously she has one by one surrendered all the rights which were once held necessary to the condition of a colony—the patronage of the Crown, the right over the public domain, the civil list, the customs, the post office have all been relinquished ... she guards our coasts, she maintains our troops, she builds our forts, she spends hundreds of thousands among us yearly; and yet the paltry payment to her representative is made a topic of grumbling and popular agitation. ”

“ By diffusing education among your vassals and dependents, establishing schools, promoting the construction of good roads, and suppressing, with the whole weight of your authority and influence, barbarous usages and crimes, such as infanticide, suttee, thuggee, and dacoitee, you may, Princes and Chiefs, effectually second these endeavours of the British Government, and secure for yourselves and your people a full share of the benefits which the measures to which I have alluded are calculated to confer upon you. ”

“ They have seen that the government of England is not like that of other countries, struggling for its existence, and occupied in guarding against daily dangers. They have seen that the British Constitution acts in unison with the spirit of the nation, with whose interests it is charged. They know that its advice is worthy of being listened to ”

“ By institutions of government I mean the established rule or order of action through which the sovereign (in our case the sovereign people) attains the ends of government. The governmental institutions of Great Britain have been established by the growth through many centuries of a great body of accepted rules and customs which, taken together, are called the British Constitution. In this country we have set forth in the Declaration of Independence the principles which we consider to lie at the basis of civil society "that all men are created equal ”

“ As long as England is England, as long as the English people are animated by the feelings and spirit and opinions which they possess, you may knock down twenty foreign Ministers one after another, but depend upon it no one will keep his place who does not act upon the same principles. When it falls to my duty, in pursuance of my functions, to oppose the policy of any Government, the immediate cry is, “Oh, it’s all spite against this man, or that man, Count This, or Prince That, that makes you do this.” ”

“ It is evidently the interest, and ought to be the care of all those entrusted with the administration of government, to see that every part of the British empire enjoys to the full, the rights they are entitled to by the laws, and the advantages which result from their being maintained with impartiality and vigour. ”

“ The country is simply informed by the resolution, as it was adopted, that, so far as foreign nations are concerned, the future rule of the Government of England is to be, that, in all cases, and under all circumstances, British subjects are to have that protection only, which the law and the tribunals of the land in which they happen to be, may give them. ”

“ These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English Constitution that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the Empire, even down to the minutest member. ”

“ The British Empire will need all the wisdom it can command, if it is to hold its own in the parliament of reason or the arbitrament of war.
CHAPTER IX ENGLISH DEMOCRACY The modern national state is the most powerful political organism ever known, because it is the conscious or unconscious agency of a people's will. Government is no longer in England the instrument of a family or a class; and the only real check upon its power is the circumstance that in some matters it acts as the executive committee of one party and is legitimately resisted by the other. ”

“ I say, therefore, gentlemen, that we have got a right to expect that in the near future some substantial steps should be taken for granting to the people of this country that government which is responsible, which is representative and which is an integral part of the British Empire. ”

“ Now I think I anticipate your feelings when I say that although we, and all of us, say that the rights of a Power, the rights of a nation, ought not to be invaded because it happens to have the misfortune of a despotic Government, yet none of us would wish that the agency of England should be gratuitously and wantonly employed in extending the limits of that despotism, and causing it to exercise its power where that power had not before prevailed. ”

“ And in the case of the British possessions it has the advantage, especially valuable at the present time, of adding to the moral influence and weight in the councils of the world of the power which, of all in existence, best understands liberty—and, whatever may have been its errors in the past, has attained to more of conscience and moral principle in its dealings with foreigners than any other great nation seems either to conceive as possible or recognize as desirable. ”

“ Of course, the base of all this tremendous work of Government is our unparalleled Civil Service. Our Civil Service is our glory and our pride. It is the admiration of all foreigners who see it, but it is, and I think I can appeal to you, sir—it is much more the admiration of those who as political Ministers are called upon to witness its working from within. They constitute the wheels and the springs on which moves the great Juggernaut Car of the State, and if these were once to get out of order, it would be an evil day indeed for Great Britain. ”

“ I have stated that the Government has been administered for fourteen years in utter contempt of the wishes of the inhabitants, constitutionally, continuously, and almost unanimously expressed through their representatives and otherwise, on a subject which concerns their highest and best interests, and which, as the history of Great Britain amply shows, has always more deeply interested British subjects than any other. ”

“ The British constitution of government, as now established in his majesty's person and family, is the wisest and best in the world. 7. The king of Great Britain is the best, as well as the most glorious monarch upon the globe, and his subjects the happiest in the universe. 8. It is most humbly presumed, the king would have all his plantation governors follow his royal example, in a wise and strict adherence to the principles of the British constitution, by which in conjunction with his other royal virtues, he is enabled to reign in the hearts of a brave and generous, a free and loyal people. ”

“ In the British Constitution, each of the three co-ordinate members of the sovereignty is invested with powers which, if fully exercised, would enable it to stop all the machinery of government. Nominally, therefore, each is invested with equal power of thwarting and obstructing the others; and if, by exerting that power, any of the three could hope to better its position, the ordinary course of human affairs forbids us to doubt that the power would be exercised. ”

“ The authority of the British Crown is at this moment the most powerful instrument, under Providence, of maintaining peace and order in many extensive regions of the earth, and thereby assists in diffusing among millions of the human race, the blessings of Christianity and civilization. ”

“ I am convinced that these principles are calculated, so far as the influence of England may be properly exercised with respect to the destinies of other countries, to conduce to the maintenance of peace, to the advancement of civilization, to the welfare and happiness of mankind.
I do not complain of the conduct of those who have made these matters the means of attack upon her Majesty’s Ministers. The Government of a great country like this is undoubtedly an object of fair and legitimate ambition to men of all shades of opinion. ”

“ Well, gentlemen, I must say that I have read this part of His Excellency's speech with considerable pain. It is the duty of the Government, here, to consult and to consider the sentiments of the people. The people of this country are loyal to the Empire. They may not like the bureaucracy and they do not. And the British Cabinet has declared that the people are not wrong when they say that the [Pg 163] Bureaucracy has mismanaged matters. They do not like the Bureaucracy, and for sufficient reasons; but they are loyal to the Empire. ”

“ In consequence of the generous British declaration, the National Council has been able to organise as a real governmental institution and to exercise all the rights and powers of a real Government, representing a fully independent State. ”

“ Her Majesty’s Government and the British people have at last felt it their duty to pay for the administration of one of their own provinces, and I think we have a very fair reply to the Little Englanders, who are always charging us with increasing the responsibilities of Her Majesty’s Government, and stating that the ‘Charters,’ when in difficulty, always appeal to the mother country. ”

“ There was a disinclination on the part of his advisers to counsel him to fulfil that engagement. The Government of England expressed an opinion, through various channels, that that engagement ought to be fulfilled. But opinions of a different kind reached the royal ear from other quarters. Other governments, naturally—I say it without implying any imputation—are attached to their own forms. Each government thinks its own form and nature the best, and wishes to see that form, if possible, extended elsewhere. ”

“ But a government such as England has, a government the work of no human hand, but which has grown up, the imperceptible aggregation of centuries—this is a thing which we only can enjoy; which we cannot impart to others ”

“ They ask for greater firmness of purpose in their rulers, and a more defined and consistent policy on the part of the Government; something, in short, that will make all parties feel that an order of things has been established to which it is necessary that they should conform themselves, and which is not to be subject to any unlooked for and sudden interruption consequent upon some unforeseen move in the game of politics in England. ”

“ Parliament has comprised uninterruptedly, aside from the king, the two branches which exist at the present time, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, or, strictly, the Lords of Parliament and the Representatives of the Commons.
The range of jurisdiction which, step by step, these chambers, both separately and conjointly, have acquired has been broadened until, so far as the dominions of the British crown extend, it covers all but the whole of the domain of human government. ”