Liberals

“ Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which 392 they are competent. ”

“ The age in which we live is so distinguished for progressive sentiment, so noteworthy for the number and the magnitude of its reforms, that even Liberals are occasionally in danger of letting slip some of the good effects which struggle has won by nodding contentedly at the strides that have been taken, heedless of the enemy ever anxious to push back the shadow on the dial. ”

“ What Liberals object to is the being subjected to the caprices, the passions, and the prejudices of some five hundred men, the majority of whom are [Pg 68] not merely unskilled in legislative faculty and unqualified in administrative experience, but are drawn from a single class out of touch and sympathy with the mass of the people. ”

“ Of the two intermediate parties, the question is, which appears most able to live and learn? From the start the liberals had originally, it would seem that they must hold the more dignified position of the two. ”

“ There has now been told a great deal about the principles which the Liberals entertain, and a list has been given of the many glorious things the Liberals have done; but the question of greatest immediate interest is what the Liberals are doing, for we cannot live upon the exploits of the past, but upon the performances of the present and the promises of the future. ”

“ Radicals and Liberals, then, are agreed as to principle though they differ in methods, for the Liberal is a very good lantern, but a lantern which requires lighting; and it is the Radical who strikes the match. ”

“ In the present juncture of affairs it is needful that you should appear to be in sympathy with the liberals, and that whatever reforms you attempt should seem the result of popular pressure rather than of your own free choice. ”

“ Though they were Liberals they were not democrats; nor yet infidels. ”

“ Only the things that anybody may be presumed to hold have the full authority of democracy. Look out of the window and notice the first man who walks by. The Liberals may have swept England with an over-whelming majority; but you would not stake a button that the man is a Liberal. ”

“ The final result was to bring out differences of opinion more sharply and to widen the gulf between conservatives who clung to everything which belonged to the past and liberals whose desire was to give the people all that had been gained and even more. ”

“ They left the new world to the Whigs and Nonconformists and to those less constructive, less logical, more popular and liberating thinkers who became Radicals in England, and Jeffersonians and then Democrats in America. All Americans are, from the English point of view, Liberals of one sort or another. You will find a fac-simile of the Declaration of Independence displayed conspicuously and triumphantly beside Magna Charter in the London Reform Club, to carry out this suggestion. ”

“ The eternal, never ending, never tiring subject of conversation among Englishmen is politics, and each class of people has its own ideas on the subject. Politics.Were I called upon to form and enunciate a general rule on the subject, I should say that such classes whose interest it is to usher in changes are, as a rule liberals and radicals, while other sections of the society whose interest impels them to stand up for the existing institutions are mostly conservatives. ”

“ The National Liberals, in spite of their enormous difficulties, have not been exterminated. I am not going to enter into a barren inquiry as to whether their numbers are or are not greater than those of Mr. ”

“ The Liberal declares that human beings exist before the State, and control it, that their opinion determines in what way the State, like the Church, the industrial system, and the home, shall be constructed, that opinion varies in different countries and in different ages, and will at one time and in one place acquiesce in despotism and at another time and in another place require adult suffrage, but that always, first and last, the subjects are masters of the State. ”

“ It has been the bane of liberalism, that it was simply critical and not constructive. Your thought must have not wings only, but hands and feet to walk and work, to form and reform. Liberalism must have its organs, must enter the race with its rivals; must not criticise only, but do better. Liberalism must pass the stage of individualism, must become the soul of great combinations. What then shall be the form adequate to express the new Ideal? ”

“ They assailed liberalism in every form, from the French Encyclopædists to the humblest advocate of popular government, consigning all of them to eternal tortures for venturing to assert the natural right of mankind to civil and religious liberty. ”

“ Resolved to broaden and strengthen the bounds of freedom, we who continue attached to the principles of our party will never swerve from the straight course, will never be daunted by the virulence or the violence of our opponents, will never forget to strive for that ideal of Liberalism—liberty of thought, equality of opportunity, and fraternity of aim. ”

“ I observe, too, that the heroes of middle-class liberalism, such as we have hitherto known it, speak with a kind of prophetic anticipation of the great destiny which awaits them, and as if the future was clearly theirs. The advanced party, the progressive party, the party in alliance with the future, are the names they like to give themselves. ”

“ In a few years I believe many men who are now rather aimless—men who have disconsolately watched the collapse of the old Liberalism—will be clearly telling themselves and one another of their adhesion to this new ideal. They will be working in schools and newspaper offices, in foundries and factories, in colleges and laboratories, in county councils and on school boards—even, it may be, in pulpits—for the time when the coming of the New Republic will be ripe. ”

“ The liberal system, which sought to raise the individual, has degraded the masses; and this on so vast a scale and to so pitiable a degree, that the other element in liberalism, philanthropic zeal, has come again to the fore. Liberty go hang, say the new radicals; let us save the people. ”

“ They watch the hard and bitter struggles of the authors of each liberal movement, year by year,—watching them only to taunt and obstruct them,—until, at last, when they see that these have established their fact, that power is on the point of passing to them,—they strike in, with the voice of a monarch, astonish those whom they succor, as much as those whom they desert, and make victory sure. ”

“ It may be observed that pure republicanism is cherished by the philosopher in his closet and admired by the statesman in his theories of government. Yet, when called into operation, the combinations of interest, ambition, or party prejudice too generally destroy the principle, though the name and the form may be preserved. ”

“ From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future. Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error. ”

“ Neither our conservatism nor our liberalism, neither our oligarchic nor our ‘levelling’ zeal, can find much to claim as its own in a struggle which was for a hierarchy under royal licence on the one side, and for a freedom founded in grace on the other. ”

“ The European liberalism of the eighteenth century was civilised, but modern liberalism is no longer civilised. The liberalism of the past read books and understood ideas; modern liberalism reads nothing but newspapers, and uses the great liberal phrases of the past as catchwords, as a mere cloak for selfish interests. ”

“ Just keep in harmony with liberalism and progress, and you will never be the worse for it, gentlemen. Above all, beware of reaction--do not fall back into the immoral morasses of the middle ages. Let us guard the light and liberty of our beautiful age. ”

“ The true work of the Liberal Party in a Liberal age is, with singleness of purpose and all its might, to lift the people to a fair and full share of all the best things of this life,—its highest culture, hopes, aspirations, burdens—as well as its loaves and fishes—and, setting before them a truly noble ideal of citizenship, to help them to attain it. ”

“ But the real point of significance is that, though born and bred in an atmosphere of active Liberalism (our livelihood drawn from the conduct of a “liberal” newspaper) , I had no idea, as a boy, that politics had anything to do with industry or standards of living. ”

“ The Liberal who no longer feels at the bottom of his heart a sympathy with the rebel who chafes against the institutions of society, whether religious, political, social or economic, is well on the road to the other camp. But the dynamic force of Liberty, that great motive power of progress, though a good servant, may be a bad master; and the perennial problem of society is to harmonise its aims with those of the common good. ”

“ The new philosophy was ardently embraced by the liberal party, who, chagrined by long exclusion from office, were rejoiced to find a tangible and plausible ground whereon to attack the whole existing system of government. ”

“ If there is to be a division in the republican party, I glory that I, at least, am found among those who are anxious for the advancement of human rights and of human liberty; and the honorable gentleman who spoke of appealing to the public sentiment, will find, when he does so, or I am much mistaken, that public sentiment is also on the side of public liberty and of human happiness. ”

“ His broad humanity, which recognized the right of everyone to a just estimation of his true value and his claim to a corresponding chance of advancement, had made him from his early youth a liberal, and after the revolution of 1848, a democrat. ”

“ As liberalism is completed in self-criticising, "critical" [83] liberalism, in which the critic remains a liberal and does not go beyond the principle of liberalism, Man,—this may distinctively be named after Man and called the "humane." ”

“ He represents his age both in his deep-rooted conservatism or moderate liberalism, and in his reverence for the new knowledge which was undermining the conservative stronghold, especially in religion. ”

“ I began my public life by being a liberal; and now, by force of reason, by the teachings of experience, and by an increased knowledge of mankind, I have learned, loving my country, wishing her good and her greatness, to become a conservative,—an upholder of authority. ”

“ Let us suppose a monarchical state administered in such a way that, although all goes on according to the will of one person, each citizen could persuade himself that he governs and obeys only his own inclination, we should call that government a liberal government. ”

“ But those who are most afraid, or most decidedly aristocrates, subjoin to their registers, "All good republicans:" or, "Vive la republique, une et indivisible." ["The republic, one and indivisible for ever!"] Some likewise, who are in public offices, or shopkeepers who are very timid, and afraid of pillage, or are ripe for a counter-revolution, have a sheet half the size of the door, decorated with red caps, tri-coloured ribbons, and flaming sentences ending in "Death or Liberty!" ”

“ Already the liberal party throughout the world express the apprehension that "the one retrograde institution in America is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw." ”

“ Without attempting to draw hard lines between communities, the Liberal sees in them distinctions of worth and capacity such as he sees in individuals, and he would give the same freedom of self-development to a nation as to a human being. ”

“ I can appeal to all my past conduct that in everything in which I have been engaged relatively to England, I have always been guided by a liberal policy. I wish to be at the head of affairs no longer than while I am influenced by such sentiments of equal liberality toward all nations. ”

“ They are craving for a renewed demonstration of the ideals that are to pervade the prophecies of world adjustments and domestic relationships. They seek for an expression of their own spirit of liberalism — of the high progressive aspirations which are astir everywhere throughout the world. ”

“ The general effect of the rise of this class was to strengthen Liberalism, not so much by a direct assault upon Toryism as by overbearing Conservatism. One positive piece of Liberal work is due to them. ”

“ Now, gentlemen, "Democrats," as you call yourselves, you who speak so flippantly of your "loyalty," your "love for the Union" and your "love for the people"; you who are generally talking right and voting wrong, we ask you to come forward and act "democratically," by letting your masters, the people, speak. ”

“ And you still call yourselves Democrats, and claim the confidence of the people by your fidelity to the great principle that popular liberty and free institutions must be secured by a strict limitation of the powers of government! ”