“Mr. Gladstone's Doctrine which the Observer praised that every sane man has a moral Right to vote goes straight to universal suffrage which not even the most vehement Reformer has hitherto advocated. Moreover if every sane Man has that Right why does it not also belong to every sane woman Who is equally affected by Legislation and Taxation. The Truth is that a vote is not a Right but a Trust. All the Nation cannot by Possibility be brought together to vote and therefore a Selected few are appointed by Law to perform this Function for the Rest and the Publicity attached to the Performance of this Trust is a Security that it will be responsibly performed.”

— Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Letter to Charles Barrington (15 May 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 565.
1860s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Mr. Gladstone's Doctrine which the Observer praised that every sane man has a moral Right to vote goes straight to univ…" by Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston?

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston 72

British politician 1784–1865

Related quotes

“Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

1990s, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)
Context: Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.

“The capitalist system of production is an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote.”

Ludwig von Mises book Bureaucracy

The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the people’s mandatories. If they do not obey, if they fail to produce, at the lowest possible cost, what the consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities.
Source: Bureaucracy (1944), Chapter I: Profit Management, § 1: The Operation of The Market Mechanism

“Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

“The true touchstone of civil liberty is not that all men are equal but that every man has the right to be the equal of every other man – if he can.”

Benjamin Butler (politician) (1818–1893) Union Army general, lawyer, politician

Inscription on monument

“I have read your speech and I must frankly say, with much regret as there is little in it that I can agree with, and much from which I differ. You lay down broadly the Doctrine of Universal Suffrage which I can never accept. I intirely deny that every sane and not disqualified man has a moral right to a vote—I use that Expression instead of “the Pale of the Constitution”, because I hold that all who enjoy the Security and civil Rights which the Constitution provides are within its Pale—What every Man and Woman too have a Right to, is to be well governed and under just Laws, and they who propose a change ought to shew that the present organization does not accomplish those objects…[Your speech] was more like the Sort of Speech with which Bright would have introduced the Reform Bill which he would like to propose than the Sort of Speech which might have been expected from the Treasury bench in the present State of Things. Your Speech may win Lancashire for you, though that is doubtful but I fear it will tend to lose England for you. It is to be regretted that you should, as you stated, have taken the opportunity of your receiving a Deputation of working men, to exhort them to set on Foot an Agitation for Parliamentary Reform—The Function of a Government is to calm rather than to excite Agitation.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (12 May 1864), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 281-282.
1860s

“God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 20

“I would rather be a woman without a vote and yet know HOW to vote, than to be a man who HAS a vote and hasn't sense enough to use it.”

Gertrude Breslau Hunt (1869–1952)

Machinists' Monthly Journal

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

394
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

“Whenever this administration has gone to the left I have voted for it, and whenever it has gone to the right I have voted against it.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long on the new deal. (Williams p. 708)

“That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"The Idea of Equality"
Source: Proper Studies (1927)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston 72

Related quotes

Related topics