Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury: Trending quotes (page 4)

“He ventured to enter his most earnest protest against the mode in which several Members of that House were inclined to treat anything that ran out of the common ruck—and introduced them to schemes and ideas which former debates had not reached. The scheme of the hon. Gentleman was not new—he should not have thought that it was new to many Members of that House; the literature of the country had been full of it for three or four years. They all instinctively felt that it was a scheme that had no chance of success. It was not of our atmosphere—it was not in accordance with our habits; it did not belong to us. They all knew that it could not pass. Whether that was creditable to the House or not was a question into which he would not inquire; but every Member of the House the moment he saw the scheme upon the Paper saw that it belonged to the class of impracticable things.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1867/may/30/committee-progress-may-28 in the House of Commons (30 May 1867) against John Stuart Mill's proposal for electing MPs by proportional representation
1860s

Literature , Idea , Question , Chance

“Conflict in free states is the law of life.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 118, 1865, p. 198
1860s

Life , Law

“Political equality is not merely a folly – it is a chimera. It is idle to discuss whether it ought to exist; for, as a matter of fact, it never does. Whatever may be the written text of a Constitution, the multitude always will have leaders among them, and those leaders not selected by themselves. They may set up the pretence of political equality, if they will, and delude themselves with a belief of its existence. But the only consequences will be, that they will have bad leaders instead of good. Every community has natural leaders, to whom, if they are not misled by the insane passion for equality, they will instinctively defer. Always wealth, in some countries by birth, in all intellectual power and culture, mark out the men whom, in a healthy state of feeling, a community looks to undertake its government. They have the leisure for the task, and can give it the close attention and the preparatory study which it needs. Fortune enables them to do it for the most part gratuitously, so that the struggles of ambition are not defiled by the taint of sordid greed. They occupy a position of sufficient prominence among their neighbours to feel that their course is closely watched, and they belong to a class brought up apart from temptations to the meaner kinds of crime, and therefore it is no praise to them if, in such matters, their moral code stands high. But even if they be at bottom no better than others who have passed though greater vicissitudes of fortune, they have at least this inestimable advantage – that, when higher motives fail, their virtue has all the support which human respect can give. They are the aristocracy of a country in the original and best sense of the word. Whether a few of them are decorated by honorary titles or enjoy hereditary privileges, is a matter of secondary moment. The important point is, that the rulers of the country should be taken from among them, and that with them should be the political preponderance to which they have every right that superior fitness can confer. Unlimited power would be as ill-bestowed upon them as upon any other set of men. They must be checked by constitutional forms and watched by an active public opinion, lest their rightful pre-eminence should degenerate into the domination of a class. But woe to the community that deposes them altogether!”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 112, 1862, pp. 547-548
1860s

Men , Feeling , Communication , Motivation

“It was a part of a budget which even three months had proved to be a mass of miscalculation; it was the pet scheme of a cosmopolitan school who love England little, and whom England loves less, whose sympathies are half-American and half-French; and it was the first application of a theory of combined taxation and reform, according to which the poor were exclusively to fix the revenue which the rich were exclusively to pay.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

‘The Conservative Reaction’, The Quarterly Review, vol. 108 (July & October 1860), p. 276
1860s

Love , School , Parting

“It is right to be forward in the defence of the poor; no system that is not just as between rich and poor can hope to survive.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech at Edinburgh (24 November 1882), from in G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume III, p. 65
1880s

Hope

“Wherever democracy has prevailed, the power of the State has been used in some form or other to plunder the well-to-do classes for the benefit of the poor.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 107, 1860, p. 524
1860s

Democracy

“Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Richard Cecil, as quoted in Remains of Mr. Cecil (1836) edited by Josiah Pratt, p. 59
Misattributed

Solitude

“We are not the same people that we have been, either in our social characteristics, in our patriotic sentiments, or in the tone of our moral and religious feelings.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech at the Oxford Union (February 1850), from H. A. Morrah, The Oxford Union. 1823-1923 (1923), p. 139
1850s

People , Feeling

“Confidence depends upon the people in whom you are to confide. You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots, for instance. Nor, going higher up the scale, would you confide them to the Oriental nations whom you are governing in India—although finer specimens of human character you will hardly find than some of those who belong to these nations, but who are simply not suited to the particular kind of confidence of which I am speaking. Well, I doubt whether you could confide representative institutions to the Russians with any great security. You have done it to the Greeks, but I do not know whether the result has been absolutely what you wish. And when you come to narrow it down you will find that this which is called self-government, but which is really government by the majority, works admirably well when it is confided to people who are of Teutonic race, but that it does not work so well when people of other races are called upon to join in it.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6
1880s

People , Confidence , Dependency

“If I were asked to define Conservative policy, I should say that it was the upholding of confidence.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quoted in Salisbury — Victorian Titan (1999) by Andrew Roberts
1890s

Confidence

“Mr Mayor and gentlemen - I have great pleasure in associating myself in how ever humble and transitory manner with this great and splendid undertaking. I am glad to be associated with an enterprise which I hope will carry still further the prosperity and power of Liverpool, and which will carry down the name of Liverpool to posterity as the place where a great mechanical undertaking first found its home. Sir William Forwood has alluded to the share which this city took in the original establishment of railways. My memory does not quite carry me back to the melancholy event by which that opening was signalised, but I can remember that which presents to my mind a strange contrast with the present state of things. Almost the earliest thing I can recollect is being brought down here to my mother's house which is close in the neighbourhood, and we took two days on the road, and had to sleep half way. Comparing that with my journey yesterday I feel what an enormous distance has been traversed in the interval, and perhaps a still larger distance and a still more magnificent rate of progress will be achieved before a similar distance of time has elapsed from the present day. I will not detain you in a room where it is perhaps difficult to hear. Of all my oratorical efforts, the one which I find most difficult to achieve is that of competing with a steam engine. Occasionally you are invited to do it at railway stations, and I know distinguished statesmen who do it with effect, but I think I have never ventured to compete in that line. I will therefore, though with some fear and trembling, fulfil the injunctions of Sir William Forwood, and proceed to handle the electric machinery which is to set this line in motion. I only hope the result will be no different from what he anticipates.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

At the opening of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, 4 February 1893. Quoted in the Liverpool Echo of the same day, p. 3
1890s

Pleasure , Fear , Hope , Way

“First-rate men will not canvass mobs; and if they did, the mobs would not elect the first-rate men.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: 'Democracy on its Trial', Quarterly Review, 110, 1861, p. 281

Men

“The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Letter to Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (25 May 1877), as quoted in G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume II, p. 145
1870s

Error , Dead

“…the central doctrine of Conservatism, that it is better to endure almost any political evil than to risk a breach of the historic continuity of government.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 135, 1873, p. 544
1870s

Evil

“I have a strong belief that there is a danger of the public opinion of this country undergoing a reaction from the Cobdenic doctrines of 30 or 40 years ago, and believing that it is our duty to take everything we can, to fight everybody, and to make a quarrel of every dispute. That seems to me a very dangerous doctrine, not merely because it might incite other nations against us—though that is not a consideration to be neglected, for the kind of reputation we are at present enjoying on the Continent of Europe is by no means pleasant, and by no means advantageous; but there is a much more serious danger, and that is lest we should overtax our strength. However strong you may be, whether you are a man or a nation, there is a point beyond which your strength will not go. It is madness; it ends in ruin if you allow yourselves to pass beyond it.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1898/feb/08/the-queens-speech-reported-by-the-lord in the House of Lords (8 February 1898)
1890s

Strong , Fight , Madness , Country

“Not the number of noses, but the magnitude of interests, should furnish the elements by which the proportion of representation should be computed…The classes that represent civilisation, the holders of accumulated capital and accumulated thought have a right to require securities to protect them from being overwhelmed by hordes who have neither knowledge to guide them nor stake in the Commonwealth to control them.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, 1, (1859), pp. 28-29

Knowledge

“There can be no finality in politics.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 123, 1867, p. 557
1860s

“As I have said, there are two points or two characteristics of the Radical programme which it is your special duty to resist. One concerns the freedom of individuals. After all, the great characteristic of this country is that it is a free country, and by a free country I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like. That is not my notion of freedom.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech to the third annual banquet of the Kingston and District Working Men's Conservative Association (13 June, 1883), quoted in 'The Marquis Of Salisbury At Kingston', The Times (14 June 1883), p. 7
1880s

Men , People , Freedom , Hurt

“I say that we put all our money upon the wrong horse. ... My own conviction is strong that, unless some very essential reforms in the conduct of the government are adopted, the doom of the Turkish Empire cannot be very long postponed.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1897/jan/19/address-in-answer-to-her-majestys-most#column_29 in the House of Lords (19 January 1897), expressing regret for Britain's support of the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War

Money , Horse , Strong

“I grieve that so much of the resources of this country must be spent on what is essentially an unprofitable expenditure ... but, after all, safety, safety from a foreign foe comes first, before every other earthly blessing, and we must take care, in our responsibility to the many interests that depend upon us, in our responsibility to the generations that are to succeed to us, that no neglect of ours shall suffer that safety to be compromised.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Brighton (19 November 1895), quoted in The Times (20 November 1895), p. 7

Suffering , Dependency , Country