British ministry

“ ON RESISTANCE TO GREAT BRITAIN From a speech in the Provincial Convention, Virginia, March, 1775
BY PATRICK HENRY I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. ”

“ Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is marked out as the perpetual ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. And if I might be allowed to express in one sentence the principle which I think ought to guide an English minister, I would adopt the expression of Canning, and say that with every British ministry the interests of England ought to be the shibboleth of policy. ”

“ The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the working of the British Government is that which determines, without formally defining, the internal relations of the Cabinet. On the one hand, while each Minister is an adviser of the Crown, the Cabinet is a unity, and none of its members can advise as an individual, without, or in opposition actual or presumed to, his colleagues. On the other hand, the business of the State is a hundred-fold too great in volume to allow of the actual passing of the whole under the view of the collected Ministry. ”

“ The crown officers and their followers adopted openly the pretensions of the British ministry and parliament, and considering their power to be irresistible, appealed to the selfishness of those who might be expectants of patronage, and to the fears of all quiet and timid minds, to adopt a blind submission, as the only safe or reasonable alternative. ”

“ In the British House of Commons the functions and privileges of our Standing Committees are all concentrated in the hands of the Ministry, who have, besides, some prerogatives of leadership which even our Committees do not possess, so that they carry all responsibility as well as great power, and all debate wears an intense personal and party interest. Every important discussion is an arraignment of the Ministry by the Opposition,—an arraignment of the majority by the minority; and every important vote is a party defeat and a party triumph. ”

“ Our pain in contemplating the loss of one ministry, is not alleviated by our anticipation of the ministry that is expected to succeed. The rash and presumptuous man who has been called to take office, does not possess, and his character, so far as hitherto known, is not calculated to command, the confidence of the British nation. ”

“ It is now also distinctly understood that the members of a cabinet are jointly and severally responsible for each other’s acts, and that any attempt to distinguish between a particular minister and his colleagues in such matters is unconstitutional.
During the 19th century the power of ministers was greatly extended, and their duties became more distinctly marked out. As now interpreted, the leading principles of the British constitution are the personal irresponsibility of the sovereign, the responsibility of ministers, and the inquisitorial and controlling power of parliament. ”

“ What conditions could be made when we are in ignorance of our real state? Any conditions we could offer in a vote of the House of Commons carried upon a particular point might be found extremely unwise when we were placed in possession of the real position of the country. No, Sir, we must not allow Her Majesty's Government to escape from their responsibility. That is at the bottom of all their demands when they ask, 'What is your policy?' The very first night we met—on February 4—we had the same question. Parliament was called together by a Ministry in distress to give them a policy. ”

“ We ask no more of them than accession on these three subjects in which the common interests of the country are involved. In other matters we would scrupulously respect their autonomous existence.
This country with its institutions is the proud heritage of the people who inhabit it. It is an accident that some live in the States and some in British India, but all alike partake of its culture and character. We are all knit together by bonds of blood and feeling no less than of self-interest. None can segregate us into segments; no impassable barriers can be set up between us. ”

“ But an agent cannot act when his interest may conflict with his duty. In all matters of common concern with the States—customs, railways, ports, the salt monopoly, etc.—there is always the possibility that the interest of British India may not be identical with the interest of a particular State. The Crown's duty is, or may be, to safeguard the interest of the State particularly in case of a minority administration. ”

“ The Central Government in India which succeeded the British was unquestionably the paramount power in India both de facto and de jure and that Government alone was the only completely independent sovereign in India. It was the special responsibility of this Government to protect all territories in India from external aggression and to preserve peace and good order throughout the country. All the factors which established the paramountcy of the British Government over the States operated to assign a similar position to the Government of India. ”

“ Before putting forward our recommendations we turn to deal with the relationship of the Indian States to British India. It is quite clear that with the attainment of independence by British India, whether inside or outside the British Commonwealth, the relationship which has hitherto existed between the Rulers of the States and the British Crown will no longer be possible. Paramountcy can neither be retained by the British Crown nor transferred to the new Government. ”

“ Treaties or engagements concerning defence and security between heads of two States and binding on their successors could not be treated as personal contracts. The British Crown is an impersonal institution and there was little justification for the capital which was sought to be made of the personal loyalty of the Rulers to the King Emperor. It is clear that the term 'Crown', for purposes of determining the locus of paramountcy meant only the Crown as the Sovereign of India. ”

“ A Ministry which forfeits the friendship of the Commons, cannot stand an hour, and supplies will stop until they are again in accord. In other words, the Government of England had become a Government of the people. ”

“ In so far as paramountcy embodied the submission of States to foreign will, I have every sympathy with this demand, but I do not think it can be their desire to utilise this freedom from domination in a manner which is injurious to the common interests of India or which militates against the ultimate paramountcy of popular interests and welfare or which might result in the abandonment of that mutually useful relationship that has developed between British India and Indian States during the last century. ”

“ When a new fully self-governing or independent Government or Governments come into being in British India, His Majesty's Government's influence with these Governments will not be such as to enable them to carry out the obligations of paramountcy. Moreover they cannot contemplate that British troops would be retained in India for this purpose. Thus as a logical sequence and in view of the desires expressed to them on behalf of the Indian States, His Majesty's Government will cease to exercise the powers of paramountcy. ”

“ Upon the formation of a new ministry with Grenville as prime minister, and Fox as foreign secretary, the Common Council presented an address to the king, offering their sincere thanks and congratulations "on the formation of an administration, combining men of the highest consideration and talents"—the administration was known as "the ministry of all the talents" ”

“ The practicability of Pakistan must be admitted, but the more the separation of the States from British India is considered, the more impracticable it seems; India would live if its Moslem limbs in the North-West and North-East were amputated, but could it live without its heart? ”

“ The decision regarding the lapse of paramountcy was a direct consequence of the theory of personal contract and of the 'non-transferability' of treaty rights without the consent of the Rulers. The doctrine of lapse of paramountcy over Indian States was developed by British legal acumen for conserving the "comradeship in danger and difficulty" between the Imperial power and the Rulers in a context when complete withdrawal of British Power had not been envisaged as a real possibility. ”

“ It was one of the principal contradictions of the British rule in India, that while in England and elsewhere, feudalisma had died long ago, in India feudal rights continued to be guaranteed as a British obligation. ”

“ WHEREAS many of the 6500 languages in this world will cease to be spoken with the passing of the last generation to speak them, and
WHEREAS at the General Conference of the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) , it was unanimously agreed to observe International Mother Language Day on February 21 in each and every year;
NOW KNOW YE THAT we do by these presents proclaim and declare that February 21, 2015 shall be known as
"International Mother Language Day"
in the Province of British Columbia. ”

“ It is for the Interest of the Crown Officers here who are dependent upon the Ministers to make them believe that they have by their Art & policy reconciled the people to their Measures, & if the Nation is so far misled as to believe so, the Ministry may avail themselves of it, but if the Contrary should happen to be true, as it appears to me to be, such Events may sooner than we are aware of it take place, as may afford the Nation Grounds to repent of her Credulity. ”

“ From the moment, my dear H——, that you can establish this fact, you start into life as an able and active Minister, imbued with thoroughly British principles—an active asserter of what is due to his country's rights and dignity, not truckling to court favor, or tamely submitting to royal impertinences; not like the noble lord at this place, or the more subservient viscount at that, but, in plain words, an admirable public servant, whose reward, whatever courts and cabinets may do, will always be willingly accorded by a grateful nation. ”

“ Not only will there be the battles when the enemy tries to come ashore, but afterwards there will fall upon his lodgments very heavy British counter-attacks, and all the time the lodgments will be under the heaviest attack by British bombers. ”

“ It is not only a question of material factors: it is also a question of morals. No compact can endure when, owing to the evolution of ideas, it has ceased to square with general conceptions of right and wrong. In this sense rebus sic stantibus is the implicit condition of every treaty. And certainly things no longer stand in India as they stood when most of the treaties were made. It was assumed, for instance, by those who made them, that British rule in India would continue. Indeed they were made on the British side solely for the purpose of maintaining it. ”

“ I don't know but it may be said with a good deal of reason, that a quick rotation of ministers is very desirable in Great-Britain. A minister there has a vast store of materials to work with. Long administrations are rather favourable to the reputation of a people abroad, than to their liberty. ”

“ In England the impossibility of governing with a body so numerous, so heterogeneous, so inconstant, and yet at the same time so immobile as the house of commons, led at the end of the seventeenth century to the establishment of the ministry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is during the continuance of a Ministry, rather than at its creation, that the functions of the sovereign will mainly interest most persons, and that most people will think them to be of the gravest importance. ”

“ I have the pleasure to inform Congress, that from the best intelligence, I learn that Great Britain has hitherto been very unsuccessful in her attempts to hire fresh German troops for the American war, but the diligence of the Ministry is greatly increased in endeavoring, by every artifice and allurement, to raise men in England, Scotland, and among the Roman Catholics in Ireland. ”

“ For he was a servant of that intricate and extremely complicated machinery for civilization, progress, and the blessed average decencies called the British Empire, that world-flung organization which spreads like a fine-mesh net over the whole globe and in which, through logical consequence, there are many currents and undercurrents, often one government department giving orders or recommendations completely at variance with those of another, every bit as important, department. ”