Peer of England

“ It is this peculiar official quality of an English peerage which saved England from the curse of a privileged noble caste such as that which so long barred all progress in France and Germany. As a result there are hundreds of families in the United Kingdom who, commoners there, would yet, from their purity of blood, position and influence, be accounted noble in any continental country. ”

“ In England nobility is apt to be confounded with the peculiar institution of the British peerage. Yet nobility, in some shape or another, has existed in most places and times of the world’s history, while the British peerage is an institution purely local, and one which has actually hindered the existence of a nobility in the sense which the word bears in most other countries. Nor is nobility the same thing as aristocracy. ”

“ He was the first English ruler since the Conquest who loved his people with a personal love and craved for their love back again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws. Even in his struggles with her England understood a temper which was so perfectly her own, and the quarrels between king and people during his reign are quarrels where, doggedly as they fought, neither disputant doubted for a moment the worth or affection of the other. ”

“ Is the British Peerage to grow brighter with high moral qualities, than with hereditary honours, and to be cherished by an enlightened spirit of public virtue as a standard of all that is honourable, and as a pattern of what is most excellent in the ideal of the true Christian gentleman? Or must the sad reverse be true, and must this House be the scene of the last act in the eventful history of England? Shall a factitious nobility be crowded into these chief seats of the realm; men devoid of ennobling antecedents, and not less so of honour and of worth? ”

“ It says, with an ever-increasing weight, that the care of the individual, the cure of the race, the culture of mind and body, the provision of health in its widest meaning, are the most urgent work of domestic statesmanship. The masses, to whom the twentieth century will belong, will ask for nothing less of nationality than to be free, prosperous, and well.
But England is not only a nation to herself, she is also a part of Christendom. So the second great issue for England is what part she shall play in the West. ”

“ Only by indirect action, only by a much more faithful energy on the part of Aristocracy and the Church, and a far nobler realization of its responsibilities by the Press, can the ancient spirit of England make itself felt in the sordid lists of Westminster. ”

“ If they cannot maintain a majority in Parliament by the use of the patronage and influence of the crown, they must yield their places to their successful rivals; and the king, without the least hesitation, will receive as his confidential advisers to-morrow, the very men whose principles he had condemned but yesterday. Such is a king of England. He can do no wrong. ”

“ The brutish self-will of Henry, the savage bloodthirstiness of Mary, the proud supremacy of Elizabeth, the chivalry of Charles, the republicanism of Cromwell, the languid decline of the Stuarts, the energy of William, and the law-loving quietude of the Brunswicks, all bore the impress of the same principle.
During the last three hundred years, the world had been singularly active, and England perhaps its most active portion; but what relics of its political questions are left to posterity? The passions and the power of the great parties even of the last century have sunk into their graves. ”

“ A shabby lot!—I'm a journalist, Piers, and let me tell you that we English newspaper men have the destiny of the world in our hands. It makes me proud when I think of it. We guard the national honour. Let any confounded foreigner insult England, and he has to reckon with us. A word from us, and it means war, Piers, glorious war, with triumphs for the race and for civilisation! England means civilisation; the other nations don't count. ”

“ In determining his merits as director of the foreign policy of Great Britain, I have stood, I confess, by the old doctrines, and argued upon the assumption that England is a great state, disposed to maintain that greatness; that the English people is a proud, generous, and brave people, prepared to assert its principles and its position, and to assume its part in the affairs of the world—a nation that takes its share in the general policy of nations—that feels it has a common interest in the maintenance of justice, in the limitation of unscrupulous ambition, in the progress of civilization. ”

“ Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days! CHORUS. Yes, Britain set, etc. And while the House of Peers withholds Its legislative hand, And noble statesmen do not itch To interfere with matters which They do not understand, As bright will shine Great Britain's rays As in King George's glorious days! CHORUS. As bright will shine, etc. LEILA. (who has been much attracted by the Peers during this song) . Charming persons, are they not? CELIA. Distinctly. For self-contained dignity, combined with airy condescension, give me a British Representative Peer! ”

“ The working out of the idea of democracy in a country like England which still retained its monarchical form and much of its aristocratic flavor, was a theme on which he dwelt with particular pleasure. Back somewhere in the line of descent his paternal ancestors had been of English blood, and he was proud of the heroism, the spirit and the energy which had made Great Britain one of the mighty nations of the earth. ”

“ Magna Charta is a name very dear to the hearts of the English people. For, ever since that memorable day on which that noble instrument was extorted from King John at the point of the sword, England has been the pioneer to all the other nations of the earth in personal freedom, in public righteousness, in domestic stability, and in foreign influence and enterprise. ”

“ PETITION TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND.
A simple individual, a helpless stranger, presumes to raise his voice among you, Representatives of the people of England; but he invokes you in the name of humanity, of justice,—in the name of your glory. Can he speak in vain? must he not be heard? Cast out from St. Helena, forced away from the greatest monument of the vicissitudes of human life that ever existed, I approach you to paint to you his situation, his sufferings. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But, if this Prince should leave those principles he has so nobly pursued, and consent that we be subjected to the King of England, we will immediately expel him as our enemy, and will choose another king, for as long as one hundred of us remain alive, we will never be subject to the English. ”

“ It is simple prudence to cast our eyes around the civilised world, and study and endeavour to comprehend the movements and directions of the other political bodies. Are not our motions as a nation jealously and eagerly watched by the European powers? While we are secure now, is it safe to assume that we shall always be? England, on the other hand, is in daily peril. ”

“ Do not mistake me; to annex, to coerce, to hold in bondage, may, in some unhappy state of things, be a solemn and fearful duty; it can never be matter for rejoicing or for boasting. But there is matter of rejoicing, so far as boasting is lawful, there is matter for boasting, whenever the English folk wins a new land, not merely to rule over but to dwell in, a new land in which the speech, the laws, the traditions of England may be as much at home as they are here in this our England in Britain. What is England? ”

“ Although weighed down with an immense mass of obsolete law and custom, shall we say that England leads the van in integrity of principle and devotion to human rights? Although the doctrine of divine right was exploded long ago, England loyally holds to her Queen. ”

“ They contented themselves with making the most of oppressive English legislation, to stimulate the people to discontent and rebellion. Ambition was hidden under the burden of taxation which was to make them slaves. Although among the leaders there was great veneration for English tradition and law, the love they professed for England was rather an ideal sentiment than an actual feeling, except among aristocrats and men of rank. ”

“ But King Edward III. commenced to rule with a strong hand. As soon as he was eighteen years old he summoned the Parliament. Mortimer was hanged at Tyburn, and his queen-mother was immured for life.
We have turned our backs upon Old England. The England of a representative Parliament and a House of Commons, of ideals derived from a wider knowledge, the England of a Westminster Abbey, and gunpowder, and cloth-weaving, is the England we all know to-day. Vicious kings and greed of territory, and lust of power, will keep the road from being a smooth one. ”

“ No one will cook."
"And one day," said Estelle, laughing, "will come the swing of the pendulum, and we shall go back to an England which bakes and preserves and brews, and finds out how healthy it makes its children."
"No." Bertie shook his head. "We are going too fast for that. So fast that one day, with its motors and aeroplanes, old England will find it has fallen over a cliff, and lies buried in the sand of Time, forgotten. The brakes will not always act, and exceeding the speed limit generally ends in disaster. We are a mighty nation, but always, always the sea-road for our supplies. ”

“ Under the Tudors, England was governed according to the will of her monarchs. In the succeeding seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we were managed by our landed gentry and aristocracy, the lovers of freedom. ”

“ It then became evident that a new power had entered the House of Commons. From that date the nation has fully realized that although England is a monarchy in name, yet it is a republic in fact. The slow progress of time has at length given to the British people— English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish—the great gift of practical liberty ”

“ To men whose very accents, whose very faces are a living libel upon all loyalty to England, England has by her legislation given power to trample under their feet the only friends she had in the hour of her need. To men who are contending for the perpetuation of institutions which all Europe was obliged to throw off before it could breathe a free breath, or extend a free arm, England has by her legislation given the power, not only to drive her children into the slough of despond, but to mount upon their shoulders there, and sink them irretrievably. ”

“ England, as I persuade myself, still contains in it many kings; possesses, as old Rome did, many men not needing "election" to command, but eternally elected for it by the Maker Himself. England's one hope is in these, just now. ”

“ Englishmen, in particular, ought to sympathise in their struggles; for the aspiration for free institutions all over the world has its source in England. Our example first taught the French nobility to seek to raise themselves from courtiers into legislators. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In February parliament discovered that “ by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles ” it was manifest that the realm of England was an empire governed by one supreme head, the king, to whom all sorts and degrees of people-both clergy and laity ought to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience, and that to him God had given the authority finally to determine all causes and contentions in the realm, “ without restraint, or provocation to any foreign princes or potentates of the world.” ”

“ But you will be thinking that is just what I am doing now; it is too obvious that a public statutory lecture is not a labour of love.
It is clear, then, not from the distinct enunciations of the time, but from the lessons of preceding and following reigns, what England wanted, and what it got in Henry VII. England did not want to become territorially one, as France, Spain, and Germany did before the new drama of politics began. ”

“ English scholars thronged the foreign universities; English chroniclers questioned travellers, scholars, ambassadors, as to what was passing abroad.' The influence of English learning and English statecraft made itself felt all over Europe. Never, perhaps, in all the history of England was there a time when Englishmen played so great a part abroad." The king who gathered this wide, incongruous empire under his sceptre, by mere circumstances of birth and marriage, proved strangely equal, in many respects, to its greatness. ”

“ Be it enacted, by authority of this present Parliament, that the King our Sovereign Lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme Head in earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia, and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and style thereof as all the honours, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities, to the said dignity belonging and appertaining ”