Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury: Quotes about homeland

“On…rare and great occasions, on which the national mind has fully declared itself, I do not doubt your Lordships would yield to the opinion of the country—otherwise the machinery of Government could not be carried on. But there is an enormous step between that and being the mere echo of the House of Commons…I have no fear of the conduct of the House of Lords in this respect. I am quite sure—whatever judgment may be passed on us, whatever predictions may be made, be your term of existence long or short—you will never consent to act except as a free, independent House of the Legislature, and that you will consider any other more timid or subservient course as at once unworthy of your traditions, unworthy of your honour, and, most of all, unworthy of the nation you serve.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1868/jun/26/debate-resumed-second-night in the House of Lords (26 June 1868)
1860s

Fear , Housing , Country

“The great evil, and it was a hard thing to say, was that English officials in India, with many very honourable exceptions, did not regard the lives of the coloured inhabitants with the same feeling of intense sympathy which they would show to those of their own race, colour, and tongue. If that was the case it was not their fault alone. Some blame must be laid upon the society in which they had been brought up, and upon the public opinion in which they had been trained. It became them to remember that from that place, more than from any other in the kingdom, proceeded that influence which formed the public opinion of the age, and more especially that kind of public opinion which governed the action of officials in every part of the Empire. If they would have our officials in distant parts of the Empire, and especially in India, regard the lives of their coloured fellow-subjects with the same sympathy and with the same zealous and quick affection with which they would regard the lives of their fellow-subjects at home, it was the Members of that House who must give the tone and set the example. That sympathy and regard must arise from the zeal and jealousy with which the House watched their conduct and the fate of our Indian fellow-subjects. Until we showed them our thorough earnestness in this matter—until we were careful to correct all abuses and display our own sense that they are as thoroughly our fellow-subjects as those in any other part of the Empire, we could not divest ourselves of all blame if we should find that officials in India did treat with something of coldness and indifference such frightful calamities as that which had so recently happened in that country.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1867/aug/02/motion-for-an-address in the House of Commons (2 August 1867) on the Orissa famine of 1866
1860s

Fate , Age , Jealousy , Feeling

“…though it is England's right to enforce the law of Europe [i. e. treaties] as between contending states, she has no claim, so long as her own interests are untouched, to interfere in the national affairs of any country, whatever the extent of its misgovernment or its anarchy.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, 1, (1859), p. 23

Law , Country

“So long as we have government by party, the very notion of repose must be foreign to English politics. Agitation is, so to speak, endowed in this country. There is a standing machinery for producing it. There are rewards which can only be obtained by men who excite the public mind, and devise means of persuading one set of persons that they are deeply injured by another. The production of cries is encouraged by a heavy bounty. The invention and exasperation of controversies lead those who are successful in such arts to place, and honour, and power. Therefore, politicians will always select the most irritating cries, and will raise the most exasperating controversies the circumstances will permit.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 131, 1873, p. 578
1870s

Men , Art , Success , Personality

“In the supreme struggle of social order against anarchy, we cannot deny to the champions of civilised society the moral latitude which is by common consent accorded to armed men fighting for their country against a foreign foe.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

On Lord Castlereagh's use of bribery to pass the Irish Act of Union. Quarterly Review, 111, 1862, p. 204
1860s

Men , Fight , Country

“To give 'the suffrage' to a poor man is to give him as large a part in determining that legislation which is mainly concerned with property as the banker whose name is known on every Exchange in Europe, as the merchant whose ships are in every sea, as the landowner who owns the soil of a whole manufacturing town…two day-labourers shall outvote Baron Rothschild…The bestowal upon any class of a voting power disproportionate to their stake in the country, must infallibly give that class a power pro tanto of using taxation as an instrument of plunder, and expenditure and legislation as a fountain of gain.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Quarterly Review, 116, 1864, p. 266, pp. 269-270
1860s

Parting , Sea , Country

“To act the part of the fulcrum from which the least Radical portion of the party opposed to them can work upon their friends and leaders, is undoubtedly not an attractive future…it may well end in the moderate Liberals enjoying a permanent tenure of office, propped up mainly by their support…Yet it is the only policy by which the Conservatives can now effectively serve their country.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: Quarterly Review, 127, 1869, p. 560

Support , Future , Parting , Country

“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

“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

“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

“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 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

“The fabric of our prosperity is so artificial, we have raised such a vast edifice of industry and manufacture and wealth within so narrow an area, that the progress of a hostile army through our country would shatter our prosperity with a ruin which centuries would not repair. (Hear, hear.) In proportion to the danger must be our precaution. (Cheers.) We have to protect ourselves.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Source: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Bristol (22 April 1889), quoted in The Times (24 April 1889), p. 6

Wealth , Hostility , Country

“The conflict which we have to fight is still a conflict of tariffs. In every country resolutions are being formed and plans are being worked out for limiting still further the intercourse of nations with each other and interposing new barriers of tariff... And as years go on we shall have to fight that battle. ... It is the world's conflict of the future.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech in the Mansion House, London (10 November 1890), quoted in The Times (11 November 1890), p. 4
1890s

World , Future , Fight , Country

“Law and order are the privilege of the poor. So far as they affect the rich they are the restraint of the rich. It is for all those who are interested in the industry and commerce of this country, not for those who are interested merely in fixed capital and the leisurely enjoyment of its fruits, to struggle to maintain the idea of the supremacy of the law.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech to the Conference of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in Oxford (23 November 1887), quoted in The Times (24 November 1887), p. 7
1880s

Idea , Law , Country

“I believe that any repeal of the Union [with Ireland] or any substantial tampering with it is fraught with danger to this country. That has always been the opinion of the Conservative party and always will remain so. It is granting a separate government and separate executive. ... The result is that the [Protestant] minority will not only have laws passed of which they disapprove, but they will have to depend on the toleration and good will of their enemies for the common privileges of civilised life and securities.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Speech to a banquet of the Merchant Taylors' Company, London (10 May 1886), quoted in The Times (11 May 1886), p. 12
1880s

Life , Dependency , Law , Country

“England is, I believe, the only country in which during a great war eminent men write and speak publicly as if they belonged to the enemy.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Letter to Miss Milner (11 November 1901), quoted in The Times (19 November 1901), p. 10
1900s

War , Country , Men