Government of England

“ In England the state takes charge of the education of another class, the nobility and gentry; that is, of young men of ancient and historical families, the nobility, and young men of fortune, the gentry. England is an oligarchical state; her government an aristocracy, the government of all by a few, the nobility and gentry, for the sake of a few, and in the name of a king. There the foundation of power is wealth and birth from a noble family. The union of both takes place in a wealthy noble. There, nobility is the blossom of the state ”

“ The history of England during the hundred and seventy years which have elapsed since the House of Commons became the most powerful body in the state, her immense and still growing prosperity, her freedom, her tranquillity, her greatness in arts, in sciences, and in arms, her maritime ascendency, the marvels of her public credit, her American, her African, her Australian, her Asiatic empires, sufficiently prove the excellence of her institutions. But those institutions, though excellent, are assuredly not perfect. Parliamentary government is government by speaking. ”

“ England hath hitherto taken the lead in almost every thing great and good, and her citizens stand foremost in the annals of fame, as having shaken off the fetters which hung upon the human mind, and called it forth to the exertion of its noblest powers; and her constitution has been so far from receiving any injury from the efforts of these her free born enterprising sons, that she is, in part, indebted to them for the unrivalled reputation she now enjoys, of having the best system of policy in Europe. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Good political institutions, it was at one time held, were the cause of a nation's happiness, and England, it was firmly believed, owed her prosperity wholly to her constitution. A century of revolutions has taught us all that a good form of government cannot of itself save a state from ruin, and many of us have come to think that forms of government are nothing, and that no constitutional changes can impair the strength of England. ”

“ England to-day pays one of the inevitable penalties of free government and of material prosperity, that of having at times at the head of national affairs statesmen who belong rather to the past than to the present, and whose skill and merit are rather the business tact and knowledge of details, acquired by long experience, than the quick and prescient comprehension of the requirements of sudden emergencies.... ”

“ Instead of collecting all authority into one centre, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a body of representatives, a council, and a governor, because there is in England a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They endeavor to balance these different powers, as if this equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use in republics founded upon the equality of all the citizens, and as if establishing different orders of men was not a source of divisions and disputes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ England has offered to the world the one conspicuous example of a long, continuous, and orderly development of political institutions. The early date at which the principle of self-government was established in England, the steady growth of the principle, the absence of civil dissension, and the preservation in the midst of change of so much of the old organization, have given its constitution a great influence over the ideas of politicians in other countries. ”

“ I hold with respect to alliances, that England is a Power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful, to steer her own course, and not to tie herself as an unnecessary appendage to the policy of any other Government. I hold that the real policy of England—apart from questions which involve her own particular interests, political or commercial—is to be the champion of justice and right ”

“ 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. ”

“ England has been called, and truly, "the mother of constitutions and the constitutional system." Our principles of national and individual liberty are so inseparable from true government that where they are not found, a real, beneficial, political institution does not exist. ”

“ Measured by the standards of duration, absence of violent commotions, maintenance of law and order, general prosperity and contentment of the people, and by the extent of its influence on the institutions and political thought of other lands, the English government has been one of the most remarkable the world has ever known. ”

“ In the case of dependencies of the former class, this country has at length realized, in rare completeness, the true principle of government. England has always felt under a certain degree of obligation to bestow on such of her outlying populations as were of her own blood and language, and on some who were not, representative institutions formed in imitation of her own ”

“ It is a matter which concerns not merely the tenure of office by one individual, or even by a Government; it is a question that involves principles of national policy, and the deepest interests as well as the honour and dignity of England. ”

“ They believed it to be still in their power to regenerate England. The House of Commons declared England to be a Commonwealth, 'without a king or House of Lords,' and, taking the name of Parliament for itself, appointed forty-one persons to be a Council of State, charged with the executive government, and renewed annually. ”

“ Likewise a copy of the laws and Acts of this government, all which we have accordingly done. Humbly submitting ourselves to your Lordships' favorable constructions upon any thing that may therein be found amiss ; we being wholly ruled and governed by the good and wholesome [laws] of our Mother, the kingdom of England, as far as the constitution of our place will bear ; and we doubt not, but your Lordships are sensible that in these remote parts, we cannot in every punctilio follow the niceties of the laws of England ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our topic is, how absolute monarchy, which just then succeeded so brilliantly over the Channel, was attempted in England, under conditions of no apparent danger, failed and failed at a great cost. And how, in the course of the struggle, ideas were developed which proved ultimately strong enough, as well as sufficiently lasting, to carry out an entirely new structure of constitutional government. It is the point where the history of nations turned into its modern bed. It is the point also where the Englishman became the leader of the world. ”

“ Originally possessed of almost absolute power, the English ruler, at the present day possesses very little actual power and influence, much less in fact than the people of the United States have entrusted to their President. The constitutional history of England is largely the narrative of the successive steps by which the people have wrested from royal hands and taken under their own control, the powers of government. ”

“ At the end of the eighteenth century the political reformers on the European Continent looked to the institutions of England for their inspiration, so that during the course of the nineteenth century most of the countries of Continental Europe adopted written constitutions of government providing for legislative bodies, partially representative at least, and vested with the greater part of the legislative power and often modeled closely upon the English Parliament. ”

“ There has been a prevalent notion in this country that England was slowly, but certainly, tending towards a more democratic form of government, and a more equal and equitable distribution of power among the different orders of society. ”

“ If, in the nineteenth century, England has been the mother of parliaments and has exercised a dominant influence upon the evolution of national governments, France has had an equally important rôle in moulding systems of local administration among the nations." Munro, Government of European Cities, 7. ”

“ The first thing is to consider by what steps a government came into existence entirely different from that of England in the seventeenth century, and unlike anything that had previously been known in Europe. ”

“ 12 I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered; and with this maxim in view, I offer a few remarks on the so much boasted constitution of England. ”

“ The participation of the people in their own government was the more significant, because the colonies actually had what England only seemed to have,—three departments of government. ”

“ In my opinion, the form of Government may be different in different countries, according to their circumstances, their wishes, their wants. England loves her Queen, and has full motive to do so. ”

“ So national are our institutions, so completely have they arisen from the temper and adapted themselves to the character of the people, that when for a season they were apparently annihilated, the people of England voluntarily returned to them, and established them with renewed strength and renovated vigour.
The constitution of England is again threatened, and at a moment when the nation is more prosperous, more free, and more famous than at any period of its momentous and memorable career. ”

“ Estates, and laid the foundations for that royal power on which it was possible to raise the proudest monarchy of modern times. In England the forces which the King and his adherents could command were defeated in the country and crushed; the supreme authority was in the hands of the Parliament, with which the capital had hitherto been always in perfect accord. ”

“ The vast number of authorities, printed and in manuscript, on which a History of England should be based, if it is to represent the existing state of knowledge, renders co-operation almost necessary and certainly advisable. ”

“ The French Foreign Office, wishful to allay the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for war with England, secured this admirable couple and sent them round the town. You cannot be amused at a thing, and at the same time want to kill it. The French nation saw the English citizen and citizeness—no caricature, but the living reality—and their indignation exploded in laughter. The success of the stratagem prompted them later on to offer their services to the German Government, with the beneficial results that we all know. ”

“ Go back in the history of England as far as the fourteenth century. We find three powers standing face to face — the Crown, the Lords, and the Commons; they are constantly engaged either in friendly negotiations or in violent opposition. ”

“ The great necessity is that England shall gather its people, by representation, in convention and frame a constitution which shall contain the means of peaceful development in accordance with enlightenment and necessity. ”

“ If a new constitution was to be formed for the whole British dominions, and a supreme legislature coextensive with it, upon the general principles of the English constitution, an equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, let us see what would be necessary. England has six millions of people, we will say; America had three. England has five hundred members in the house of commons, we will say; America must have two hundred and fifty. ”