Downing Street

“ Hence arose the terms of mixed Druses and mixed Christians; mixed Druses meaning Druses living in the Christian country, and mixed Christians those living in the Druse country. Such was the origin of the mixed population question, which entirely upset the project of Downing Street; happy spot, where they draw up constitutions for Syria and treaties for China with the same self-complacency and the same success!
Downing Street (1842) decided upon the sectarian government of the Lebanon. ”

“ Beyond the now vacant space on the north are the great group of Government offices, the Home [Pg 83] and Colonial Offices facing Parliament Street, and behind them the India and the Foreign Offices. Above Downing Street there are others, the Privy Council Office and the Treasury.
Downing Street is called after George Downing, an American Ambassador to the Hague under Cromwell and in Charles II.'s reign. John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Ossory and the last Earl of Oxford, lived here. Boswell occupied a house in Downing Street in 1763. ”

“ In the lucky circumstance of having one man of real intellect and courage to put at the head of the movement, much would come of it;—a New Downing Street, fit for the British Nation and its bitter necessities in this Now Era, would come ”

“ If the people have reason to dislike the autocracy of Downing-street, they would find no amelioration in the ascendency of an oligarchy which would divide the universe into sheep walks for the benefit of flockmasters, and convert the residue of mankind into shepherds. ”

“ Lloyd George steadied himself back to his old combination of firmness and concession. On the side of the strikers, both the miners and transport workers were in favour of moderation, and, in the end, the moderate forces won. The threatened revolution was averted by a quite ordinary compromise on hours and wages. The whole crisis ended with a friendly and even enthusiastic meeting of both parties—a sort of “sing-song”—in the domestic atmosphere of 10, Downing Street. It was a striking exhibition of Mr. Lloyd George’s characteristic gifts of control and conciliation. ”

“ It is the conviction that the tone of our public life is low, and that this low tone is reacting disastrously in many directions, which has set me about these studies in political personality.
There is too much dust on the mirrors of Downing Street for our public men to see themselves as others see them. ”

“ The New Downing Street too, we may predict, will have less and less tolerance for idleness on the part of soldiers or others. Nay the New Downing Street, I foresee, when once it has got its "Industrial Regiments" organized, will make these mainly do its fighting, what fighting there is; and so save immense sums. Or indeed, all citizens of the Commonwealth, as is the right and the interest of every free man in this world, will have themselves trained to arms; each citizen ready to defend his country with his own body and soul,—he is not worthy to have a country otherwise. ”

“ Great men had been in England when he first came to Egypt, and he had submitted to their instructions without demur, but now, wincing under the orders of inferior successors, he told himself, not idly boasting, that nobody in London knew his work as well as he did, and he must be liberated from the domination of Downing Street. The work of emancipation was delicate but not difficult. There was one power stronger than any Government, whereby public opinion might be guided and controlled—the press. ”

“ A private telephone wire connected his study in Portland Place with the official residence, and but for this Sir Philip had cut himself adrift from the house in Downing Street, to occupy which had been the ambition of the great men of his party. Now, however, with the approach of the day on which every effort would be taxed, the police insisted upon his taking up his quarters in Downing Street.
Here, they said, the task of protecting the Minister would be simplified. No. 44 Downing Street they knew. ”

“ I recognise the lament over lost civilisation and a wasted life, and I see Downing Street besieged with ladies in deputations, declaring that they care nothing for party or politics, but a great deal for the life of a dear young creature who is to be sacrificed to appease some people belonging to the existing Ministry. ”

“ We have always felt that that is where the castigation should take place.
The Daily Chronicle reminds us that Downing Street owes its origin to an American. There are some people who never will let bygones be bygones. ”

“ Something I might say about the manners and morals of Downing Street which would be new to you, that section of London society having been rarely penetrated by travellers, and if penetrated still more rarely escaped from without the loss of that peculiar faculty by virtue of which man tells truth. ”

“ Besides the constant visits of Colonial cricketers, have we not had with us recently two separate detachments of Colonial footballers, and has it not been evident that while the Colonial Governments have given their representatives the most open and material support, even to the extent of voting them certain supplies, Downing Street has smiled approvingly, and has, now and again, when not many people were looking, given a pleasant little pat to the wheel of friendship as it went rolling along from Cornwall to Edinburgh, and from Blackheath to Dublin? ”

“ Through the theoretical veto of the governors sent out from the British Isles, Downing Street is supposed to wield its power and to prevent legislation in the five younger nations that in matters touching foreign affairs is contrary to the will of the British Parliament. ”

“ That which immediately suggests itself as a substitute and a remedy for the inefficient government of Downing Street, is some form of local or municipal government. As Mr Wakefield justly observes, a local government, having jurisdiction over quite local or special matters, by no means implies any relinquishment by the imperial government of its requisite control over the colony. Neither does a municipal government imply a republican or democratic government. ”

“ Immediately opposite the front gate of Emmanuel there runs off, at right angles, from the Via Devana, a thoroughfare known as Downing Street. Till the present century it actually gave access to Downing, the youngest of the Colleges to which the University officially accords that title. In those days Downing consisted of a huge parallelogram of prettily be-treed greensward, a furlong across and three furlongs long, [115] thus covering far more space than any other college. ”

“ Their covetousness as landholders might absorb the inheritance of the nation—their ambition as citizens contract the franchises of the humbler classes. The most strenuous opponents of Downing-street have denounced most fiercely the extension of the popular power. ”

“ The striking characteristics of the work done in Downing Street in its connection with the Crown Colonies are the patient care with which each question is examined and the anxiety to be just in every case, however great or however small the issue. ”

“ My dear Sheard,—I enclose the promised 'exclusive to the Gleaner.' It will appear in no other paper of London, but in two of Paris, to-morrow. Forgive me for sending you to Dulwich. I did so for a private purpose of my own, and rely upon your generous friendship to excuse the liberty. I write this prior to visiting Downing Street, where it will be quite impossible, amongst so many people, to speak to you. Do not fear that there exists any evidence of complicity between us. I assure you that you are safe. ”

“ They realize that nothing could be done effectively if Downing Street were hampered by several wills at work at the same time. Yet it is obvious that the people of the Dominions are concerned first with their own affairs, as nations, and are devoted to Britain only in a secondary manner. ”

“ The extraordinary character of the precautions taken by the police had the natural result of keeping the general public ignorant of all that was happening in Downing Street. Reporters were prohibited within the magic circle, and newspapers, and particularly the evening newspapers, had to depend upon such information as was grudgingly offered by Scotland Yard. ”

“ The representative of Downing Street, not contented with gloating over the Victorian artisan from Toorak, must needs clothe his footmen out of the proceeds of the hardy miner's toil. The rogue wants his breeches re-seated, does he! ”

“ The way the just expectations of provincials have been disappointed, the loyal portion depressed, the turbulent petted, and the manner the feelings of all disregarded, the contempt that has accompanied concessions, the neglect that has followed devotion and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary manner the just claims of the meritorious postponed to parliamentary support, has worked a change in the feelings of the people that the Downing Street officials cannot understand, or surely they would pursue a different course. They want to have the mirror held up to them. ”

“ A respectably dressed man was recently arrested for behaving in a strange manner in Downing Street. Others have done the same thing before now, but have escaped the notice of the police by doing it indoors. ”

“ They don't arrest, but they dun us, sir; and they dun with an insistence and an amount of menace, too, that middle-class people can form no conception of. They besiege the departments we serve under with their vulgar complaints, and if the rumor gets abroad that one of us is about to be advanced to a governorship or an embassy, they assemble in Downing Street like a Reform demonstration. ”

“ One of the most historic mansions in London is No. 10, Downing Street, facing the Foreign Office, which has been the official home of the first Lord of the Treasury ever since Sir Robert Walpole moved into it from St. James's Square in 1735. It had belonged to the Crown, and had been granted by George I. to Baron Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister, for life. The residence really consists of two houses, with a covered way between them. That which faces the street is a plain Georgian structure, resembling No. ”

“ He might claim damages of, let us say, £7,000,000 or even £10,000,000, for he is a man of gigantic interests, claiming these damages on the score that his alleged libellers have injured his reputation as a man of business in all quarters of the world. They would have him the craziest muddler and the most easily swindled imbecile outside Fleet Street—where alone wisdom is to be found. How one would enjoy a verbatim report of the cross-examination of these critics in their own newspapers. ”

“ Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based. ”

“ The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. ”

“ Of old, if the postman, the milkman, a messenger boy, and one or two stray dogs and children lingered in our street, we thought it a crowd; since the coming of the Suffragettes, I have seen the same street packed solid with a horde of the most degenerate creatures in London summoned by them "to rush the House of Commons." They have ground their hurdy-gurdies at our door, Heaven knows to what end; vans covered with their posters have obstructed our crossing; motor-cars adorned with their flags have missed fire and exploded in our street ”

“ In this district, as in other districts remote from the wealthy quarters of the metropolis, the hideous London vagabond—with the filth of the street outmatched in his speech, with the mud of the street outdirtied in his clothes—lounges, lowering and brutal, at the street corner and the gin-shop door; the public disgrace of his country, the unheeded warning of social troubles that are yet to come. Here, the loud self-assertion of Modern Progress—which has reformed so much in manners, and altered so little in men—meets the flat contradiction that scatters its pretensions to the winds. ”

“ These streets of London, where the poor do their marketing, are, on Saturday night, gay with light and thronged with people. Because of the next day's rest, there is, until past midnight, an open market, which invades the pavement with costers' barrows heaped with fruit, butchers' stalls, booths of incongruous articles, kitchen utensils, old tools, all the bric-à-brac of the second-hand suburban shop; vehicular traffic is suspended; all barriers are encroached upon; everyone walks in the middle of the street. ”

“ In London streets, the unexpected is always happening; thus, through the hideous plate glass of a bar parlour, you may catch glimpses of waving trees and grey towers, and even the dreadful glare of London advertisement hoardings does not "wholly abolish or destroy" the ancient charm of the crowded, irregular City streets. A City of parallel lines and squares, such as the Colonials love! Perish the thought! Let them widen Southampton Row if they will, remove Holywell Street and King Street if they list; but let us at any rate keep to our old and devious ways through the heart of the City! ”