Prime Minister

“ A Prime Minister, even here in England, who shall dare believe the heavenly omens, and address himself like a man and hero to the great dumb-struggling heart of England, and speak out for it, and act out for it, the God's-justice it is writhing to get uttered and perishing for want of—yes, he too will see awaken round him, in passionate, burning, all-defiant loyalty, the heart of England, and such a 'support' as no Division-List or Parliamentary Majority was ever yet known to yield a man! ”

“ The Prime Minister, with appalling responsibility for the life of the Empire, surrounded by men of all political faiths and representatives of every class, is no longer merely a spokesman, a prophet, a minister, an executive ”

“ A Ministerial government, too, is carried on in the face of day. Its life is in debate. A President may be a weak man; yet if he keep good Ministers to the end of his administration, he may not be found out—it may still be a dubious controversy whether he is wise or foolish. But a Prime Minister must show what he is. He must meet the House of Commons in debate; he must be able to guide that assembly in the management of its business, to gain its ear in every emergency, to rule it in its hours of excitement. ”

“ In the United States, where the whole people is the fountain of power, the ministers are the servants of the President, appointed and dismissed by him. In England, while they are still in theory her Majesty's ministers, and the Prime Minister is nominally selected by the sovereign, by a remarkable transformation they have become the servants of the legislature—that is, of the people. ”

“ These statements from a Minister—from one who has been Prime Minister, and who, for aught I know, may be again Prime Minister—show a littleness that I did not expect from a statesman of this country, whose fate and whose interests hang on every word the noble Lord utters, and when the fate of thousands, aye, and of tens of thousands, may depend on whether the noble Lord should make one false step in the position in which he is now placed. ”

“ Cooler observers discerned a solid advantage in a Prime Minister who could minister at once to the public demands in the rival spheres of speech and action, who could appease with words the popular clamour for the moon and yet be guided by others into the mundane paths of practical common sense. ”

“ You are ambitious, I know. You intend to be Prime Minister, a people’s Prime Minister. Well, for my part, I hate the people. I am an aristocrat. As your wife I should be in a perfectly ridiculous position. ”

“ Prime Minister shows strength, boldness, and sincerity; he is a leader, and “All we like sheep” are disposed to follow him, if he can show us a way out of the thickets where we wander, torn and bleeding. Pray Heaven he be not wearied by specious talk, or repelled by still more specious hypocrisy! or hampered and discouraged by the working of the “wheels within wheels” which move with such secret and perplexing intricacy, crushing honest effort and smothering honest speech! Surely the British people can be trusted to know what their foes know, what their Allies know,72 what America knows? ”

“ The old Prime Minister ran unsteadily out of the room. There was a muffled scream from the hall and next instant he returned with a long shiny silver queue, which he had evidently clipped from the head of one of the servants. ”

“ The Prime Minister stands between the Crown and the cabinet; for although the King may, and sometimes does, communicate with a minister about the affairs relating to his own department, it is the Premier who acts as the connecting link with the cabinet as a whole, and communicates to him their collective opinion. ”

“ A prime minister, a peer, a great duke,—put a man forward as a candidate for a borough, and, when the man was beaten, pay his expenses! Was this to be done,—to be done and found out and then nothing come of it in these days of purity, when a private member of Parliament, some mere nobody, loses his seat because he has given away a few bushels of coals or a score or two of rabbits! ”

“ The Prime Minister of England has a lonesome job of course, but he is the head of his own party, has and knows he has all the while his own special crowd, he is allowed and expected, as a matter of course, to snuggle up to. ”

“ The four men who have held office as Prime Minister of the Commonwealth form, in the aggregate and as individuals, the best illustrations of the qualities just enumerated. Each has displayed a sound knowledge of human nature, evidencing the knowledge by his many-sidedness, his tact, his judgement, his mingled daring and caution, his willingness to compromise. ”

“ If I were Prime Minister I would rather fall in the attempt than work on through a succession of expedients none of which were satisfactory to myself, to hold language at variance with my opinions, and to truckle to difficulties which it is now time boldly to face. ”

“ The greatest teacher of all in Parliament, the head-master of the nation, the great elevator of the country—so far as Parliament elevates it—must be the Prime Minister: he has an influence, an authority, a facility in giving a great tone to discussion, or a mean tone, which no other man has. Now Lord Palmerston for many years steadily applied his mind to giving, not indeed a mean tone, but a light tone, to the proceedings of Parliament. ”

“ The extraordinary spectacle was witnessed, on the meeting of parliament, of a man with no political connection, who had never been in the cabinet, and who had never served in any ministerial office, being practically prime minister. ”

“ The Prime Minister still has his home down there and talks to the blacksmith and to others of his school companions, for he and they are still one people together, with ties which it is impossible for statecraft to break—or to forge. ”

“ You stand high, and are well spoken of even by our opponents. Whether we stand or fall, it is a moment for you to increase your personal influence. That is the element now to encourage in your career, because you are not like the old fogies in the cabinet, who, if they go out, will never enter another again. You have a future, and though you may not be an emperor, you may be what I esteem more, prime minister of this country. ”

“ Now, as to this new policy, I will tell the House what I think the Prime Minister should do. He ought, I think, always to choose for his President of the Board of Control or his Secretary of State for India, a man who cannot be excelled by any other man in his Cabinet, or in his party, for capacity, for honesty, for attention to his duties, and for knowledge adapted to the particular office to which he is appointed. If any Prime Minister appoint an inefficient man to such an office, he will be a traitor to the Throne of England. ”

“ The Prime Minister shall manage and direct the work of the Government, take care of coordinated political activities of the Government, coordinate the work of members of the Government and represent the Government. ”

“ No one still feels so much pride in it as I feel. I would have given ten years of my life to make him Prime Minister, and now I would give five to keep him so. It is like it was to be king, when men struggled among themselves who should be king. ”

“ In other words, the incoming Prime Minister, with his Cabinet, has the right to remodel the Sovereign's household—or any other body of offices—in whatever degree he may think requisite, and the late Prince Albert could not even appoint his own private secretary, but much to his chagrin had to accept one appointed for him by the Prime Minister. ”

“ The highest patronage of a prime minister is, of course, a considerable power, though it is exercised under close and imperative restrictions—though it is far less than it seems to be when stated in theory, or looked at from a distance. ”

“ The very sun in the firmament is God’s prime minister in this wondrous world of beings, and he works with sovereign vigour on the surface of the earth, and spreads his influence deep under the clods to the very root and fibre, moulding them in their proper forms by Divine direction. ”

“ A prime minister in respect of affairs generally, and a Cabinet minister with reference to the affairs of his department, must explain every matter of moment as fully and carefully as does Bismarck to William or Gortschakoff to Alexander. ”

“ Either, as in the American republic, the head of the executive must be elected by some agency entirely independent of the representative body; or the body must content itself with naming the prime minister, and making him responsible for the choice of his associates and subordinates. ”

“ The man you honour with your choice should, to follow out my comparison, be the prime minister of your kingdom of pleasure,—no, your chief courtier, and as such be ever submissive and eager to do your bidding. ”

“ His political career was one of intense energy and activity in every department of government, especially after he became Prime Minister, and while it gained him the enthusiastic applause and devotion of a large portion of the nation, it exposed him to a correspondingly intense opposition on the part of another. ”

“ The head of the illustrious house is invariably a determined sportsman. He has no manners, crushes everybody else with his nominal superiority, tolerates the sub-prefect much as he submits to the taxes, and declines to acknowledge any of the novel powers created by the nineteenth century, pointing out to you as a political monstrosity the fact that the prime minister is a man of no birth. ”

“ I came here to keep a promise to a man who is, in his way, a great statesman. He is Prime Minister of our country. He has, without a doubt, so far as it is possible for such a man to have it there at all, the cause of the people at his heart. ”

“ But the English politician is so far suffused with the spirit of modernity as to prefer the newspaper to the book, to regard more closely registration records than the classics, and generally is wide awake rather than steeped in subtler and profounder forms of sagacity and knowledge. The Prime Minister is a Survival. With all his extraordinary adaptiveness, he stands in many respects in sharpest contrast to his environment. ”

“ The Prime Minister shall keep the President informed on matters of domestic and foreign policy, and submit for the consideration of the Cabinet any matter which the President may request him to refer to it. ”

“ The King, at the time when the story opens, has as his Prime Minister an aged Marquis, who is a dark, heavy man of intellectual aspect, whose man{271}ner is profoundly discouraging to all who seek to win his sympathy, and whose ascendancy in his own Cabinet is overshadowed by that of a Secretary of State, who bears an extraordinary resemblance to a certain Secretary of State who shall be nameless. ”

“ Foreign Office, for which he is peculiarly well fitted, and there is no reason why he should not look forward to being Prime Minister in some future combination of parties, a post which he would fill better than any of the statesmen who now play the principal parts in the political drama. ”

“ The Prime Minister is to me a great
play. To show that the most violent
enemy may be turned into the most
faithful friend by justice and forgiveness,
was well worth doing, especially in
times like these. It will have a lasting
success, because it reaches the most
noble and divine emotions, and appeals
to all people, everywhere, for all time. ”

“ One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin. These are the gifts we want, but we can't always get them, and have to do without them. ”

“ The beggar may have the same thought as the Prime Minister,—he only lacks the power of expression. The more helpless and inept the beggar, the greater the responsibility of the Premier. For the Premier has received education, culture, training, and the choice of the people, and to him is given the privilege of voicing the beggar's thought. ”

“ They spend a vast deal of money in this house, and I undertake to look over their accounts. Nominate me your prime minister, and I shall be the happiest of men. It is impossible but there must be something to be gleaned from his majesty. ”

“ Behind all that was unworthy, the real man lay strong and brave. He might become a Cabinet Minister, Prime Minister! He had power which could fit him even for this. The sphere of such a man's influence was simply boundless. ”

“ More commonly, it is the duty of the prime minister to lay the collective opinion of his colleagues before the sovereign, and take his pleasure on public measures and appointments. The sovereign never presides at a cabinet; and at the meetings of the privy council, where the sovereign does preside, the business is purely formal. ”

“ By the royal ratification the Prime Minister finds himself not only the confirmed master of all his collaborators, however ambitious and impatient, but also the mouthpiece of the nation in international matters, with all the moral authority of the King’s choice and the unanimous advice of the “Elder Statesmen.” ”

“ The Prime Minister did not think him fit for important office but sought to satisfy his claims by an empty honour, such as he might give to a man who, perhaps, had deserved well, but whose powers were now decrepit. ”

“ It was not until the eighteenth century that a Premier of the modern type came into existence. With the development of the party system, the gradual growth of the Cabinet's prestige, and the consequent weakening of the sovereign's prerogatives, the Prime Minister ceased to be the choice of the Crown, and became the nominee of the nation. As the leader of the party in office, he acquired the unquestioned right of selecting his own Ministers. ”