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George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston

72 quotes

“Every, or nearly every, successive religion that has permeated or overswept this country has vindicated its own fervour at the expense of the rival whom it had dethroned. When the Brahmans went to Ellora, they hacked away the features of all the seated Buddhas in the rock-chapels and halls. When Kutub-ud-din commenced, and Altamsh continued, the majestic mosque that flanks the Kutub Minar, it was with the spoil of Hindu temples that they reared the fabric, carefully defacing or besmearing the sculptured Jain images, as they consecrated them to their novel purpose. What part of India did not bear witness to the ruthless vandalism of the great iconoclast Aurungzeb? When we admire his great mosque with its tapering minarets, which are the chief feature of the river front at Benares, how many of us remember that he tore down the holy Hindu temple of Vishveshwar to furnish the material and to supply the site? Nadir Shah during his short Indian inroad effected a greater spoliation than has probably ever been achieved in so brief a space of time. When the Mahratta conquerors overran Northern India, they pitilessly mutilated and wantonly destroyed. When Ranjit Singh built the Golden Temple at Amritsar, he ostentatiously rifled Mohammedan buildings and mosques. Nay, dynasties did not spare their own members, nor religions their own shrines. If a capital or fort or sanctuary was not completed in the lifetime of the builder, there was small chance of its being finished, there was a very fair chance of its being despoiled, by his successor and heir. The environs of Delhi are a wilderness of deserted cities and devastated tombs. Each fresh conqueror, Hindu, or Moghul, or Pathan, marched, so to speak, to his own immortality over his predecessor's grave.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Asiatic Society of Bengal (7 February 1900), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906), pp. 186-187
“I believe that the Durbar, more than any event in modern history, showed to the Indian people the path which, under the guidance of Providence, they are treading, taught the Indian Empire its unity, and impressed the world with its moral as well as material force. It will not be forgotten. The sound of the trumpets has already died away; the captains and the kings have departed; but the effect produced by this overwhelming display of unity and patriotism is still alive and will not perish. Everywhere it is known that upon the throne of the East is seated a power that has made of the sentiments, the aspirations, and the interests of 300 millions of Asiatics a living thing, and the units in that great aggregation have learned that in their incorporation lies their strength. As a disinterested spectator of the Durbar remarked, Not until to-day did I realise that the destinies of the East still lie, as they always have done, in the hollow of India’s hand. I think, too, that the Durbar taught the lesson not only of power but of duty. There was not an officer of Government there present, there was not a Ruling Prince nor a thoughtful spectator, who must not at one moment or other have felt that participation in so great a conception carried with it responsibility as well as pride, and that he owed something in return for whatever of dignity or security or opportunity the Empire had given him.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Budget Speech (25 March 1903), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898-1905 (1906), pp. 308-309
“For where else in the world has a race gone forth and subdued, not a country or a kingdom, but a continent, and that continent peopled, not by savage tribes, but by races with traditions and a civilisation older than our own, with a history not inferior to ours in dignity or romance; subduing them not to the law of the sword, but to the rule of justice, bringing peace and order and good government to nearly one-fifth of the entire human race, and holding them with so mild a restraint that the rulers are the merest handful amongst the ruled, a tiny speck of white foam upon a dark and thunderous ocean?”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Guildhall upon his presentation of the Freedom of the City of London (20 July 1904), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (19…
“It is the Indian poor, the Indian peasant, the patient, humble, silent millions, the 80 per cent who subsist by agriculture, who know very little of policies, but who profit or suffer by their results, and whom men's eyes, even the eyes of their own countrymen, too often forget—to whom I refer. He has been in the background of every policy for which I have been responsible, of every surplus of which I have assisted in the disposition. We see him not in the splendour and opulence, nor even in the squalor, of great cities; he reads no newspapers, for, as a rule, he cannot read at all; he has no politics. But he is the bone and sinew of the country, by the sweat of his brow the soil is tilled, from his labour comes one-fourth of the national income, he should be the first and the final object of every Viceroy's regard.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Byculla Club in Bombay two days before he departed from India (16 November 1905), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906)…
“To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor to the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuse—it is so easy to have any of them in India—never to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim, but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of His ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time, and to feel that somewhere among these millions you have left a little justice or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a spring of patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenment, or a stirring of duty, where it did not before exist—that is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India. It is good enough for his watchword while he is here, for his epitaph when he is gone. I have worked for no other aim. Let India be my judge.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Byculla Club in Bombay two days before he departed from India (16 November 1905), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906)…
“In far-off lands, amidst alien peoples, in friendless solitudes, under burning suns, your sons, the offspring of your race, will still do good work, work that is good for themselves, good for the country that has sent them out, and good for the community in which they are placed. They will lead clean and healthy lives and have opportunities for doing noble and unselfish deeds. Wherever unknown lands are waiting to be opened up, wherever the secrets or treasures of the earth are waiting to be wrested from her, wherever peoples are lying in backwardness or barbarism, wherever new civilizations are capable of being planted or old civilizations of being revived, wherever ignorance or superstition is rampant, wherever enlightenment and progress are possible, wherever duty and self-sacrifice call—there is, as there has been for hundreds of years, the true summons of the Anglo-Saxon race.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in London (6 April 1906), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), pp. 33-34
“I suppose that to the bulk of Englishmen present today the Indian Mutiny of 1857 is already a tradition, rather than a memory. It happened before many of us were born. Already it is receding into the dim corridors of the past, and is surrounded with an almost mystic halo as one of the great national epics of our race. But to all of us, young or old, it is one of the combined tragedies and glories of the British nation—a tragedy because there were concentrated into those terrible months the agony and the suffering almost of centuries; a glory because great names leaped to light, high and ennobling deeds were done, and best of all, and most enduring of all, there sprang from all that havoc and disaster the majestic fabric of an India united under a single Crown, governed as we have tried to govern it, and are still trying to govern it, by the principles of justice, truth, and righteousness—a spectacle which, if the entire Empire were to shrivel up to-morrow like a scroll in the fire, would still be a supreme vindication of its existence and its accomplishment in the history of mankind.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Albert Hall, London (23 December 1907), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 43
“Ever since the great Civil War there has hardly been a rebellion or insurrection in any part of the world of a minority either suffering or fearing oppression which has not been encouraged by members of the Liberal Party in England. They have constituted themselves the international champions of the right of insurrection. They have made us the busybodies, and I suppose foreigners would say the political Pecksniffs, of the world. When Parliament and the Puritans rebelled against the King, when the American Colonies revolted, when the French Revolution broke out—in every case of an insurrectionary movement in the small States of Europe, whether it was Italy, or Greece, or Poland, or Hungary, or to go further afield, Armenia, or the Balkans, or the Sudan, always on the other side we have had sympathy with the minority which was rising against the majority, and we remember one case where a people were actually fighting against us, and we were told that they were persons rightly struggling to be free. Yet when Ulster proposes to do exactly the same thing, simply because it does not fit in with your policy, you accuse them of the wickedness of plunging the country into civil war.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords on the Irish Home Rule Bill (30 January 1913)
“In our attitude towards birds we were not far removed from a barbarian age. We allowed our boys to despoil birds' nests of their eggs; we still kept captive most beautiful objects of God's creation which were never intended for imprisonment; and we allowed gamekeepers to kill owls and also the kingfisher, the most exquisite bird that could be seen on the streams of this country, because it was supposed to devour juvenile trout. If a rare bird, a bittern or a buzzard, appeared in any neighbourhood, no effort was made for its protection. On the contrary, it was slaughtered by a local sportsman, who wrote to the local journal to boast of his "glorious" achievement.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Westminster Palace Hotel (6 March 1913), quoted in The Times (7 March 1913), p. 6
“The entire civilized world is concerned in the preservation of the beauty-spots of England. Every year more and more the travelling public of Europe and America are drawn to this country. They come here, not merely for the pleasure of crossing the Channel and seeing the white cliffs of Kent, nor in order to visit the theatres and music-halls of London, or to lose their money at the Derby. They are tempted hither to see the beautiful old-time villages, the mediæval mansions, the little village churches, with their sacred tale of bygone history and romance. And, above all, they come to see the unequalled country scenery of England. Let us not sacrifice that which is so priceless a possession to the nation.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Reigate (31 May 1913), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 115
“It seems likely that 1914 will be the most momentous year in modern British politics. For, unless a solution of the Irish problem be found that is acceptable to both parties—and this, though all favour it in the abstract, may well be found impossible—we shall be confronted with the greatest catastrophe that will have befallen the United Kingdom for 250 years—viz., the prospect of civil war. We feel that the responsibility for this disaster will rest exclusively with those who have not yet consulted the people on their Irish proposals, and decline to do so now. Our duty, the duty of every Primrose Leaguer, is clear. It is to support those who are so bravely fighting the battle of the Union in Ireland, and to insist that the last word on the Home Rule Bill shall be spoken, as it always has been spoken before, by the British democracy.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Primrose League Gazette (31 December 1913), quoted in The Times (31 December 1913), p. 66
“The spectacle of peoples of single race and common traditions existing in a country with clearly defined geographical boundaries, and clinging with successful tenacity to their political existence over long spaces of time, is not an uncommon one in history; but that an Empire like our own, which has over-run the world, which embraces hundreds of races and scores of States, many of which are claiming, and rightly, to be counted as nations themselves—that such an Empire should voluntarily hold together when there is no force to compel it to do so, when the forces that are working in the direction of separation are so strong, when separation itself is so easy—will be an unparalleled and magnificent achievement. This, then, is the problem which the Victoria League has set itself to solve. You endeavour to do it, not by the agency of material forces, not by laws and regulations, because there is no authority behind you to compel anybody to carry out your behests, but by appealing to that which is the most sacred of all human instincts, namely the family tie, and by preaching the gospel that the real cement of Empire is brotherhood, and that the real basis of brotherhood is mutual understanding.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in London (25 May 1914), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), pp. 16-17
“There are coming from India as many as 70,000 of the pick of our forces, British and Indian... Why are these men coming? What has induced them to volunteer to take part in our fighting? They are thousands of miles away. They cannot hear the thunder or see the smoke of the guns. Their frontiers have not been crossed, their homes are not in jeopardy. They are not our kith and kin; no call of the blood appeals to them. Is it not clear that they are coming because the Empire means something to them, much more than mere government or power? It speaks to them of justice, of righteousness, of mercy, and of truth. They have no desire to exchange that rule for the Prussian sabre or the jackboot of the German trooper. They have no desire to change that rule for any other. If any testimony was ever required to the feelings by which they are actuated and to the success of the fundamental principles by which we have endeavoured to rule them, surely it is to be found in this convincing and overwhelming demonstration.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Glasgow (10 September 1914), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), pp. 391-392
“In a few weeks, or at most a few months, thanks to the skill of the Allied Commanders and the bravery of their men, the objects for which we and they have endured more than four years of sacrifice and suffering have been attained. The lands upon which the enemy had laid his cruel and predatory hand are in course of being evacuated. The exiled peoples are returning in joyous crowds across the war frontiers to their homes. The military power of the enemy is broken. His resources are spent. His armaments are in course of being surrendered. Hope breathes again in the souls of the unhappy peoples whom he has trampled in the mire. The impious spirit that claimed that Might was superior to Right and that there was no law but that of successful violence in the world has been exorcised, let us hope for ever. The conflict for international honour, righteousness, and freedom has been won, and the authors of this vast and wicked conspiracy against the liberties of mankind are fugitives on the face of the earth. My Lords, this is a great hour. It has been a wonderful victory. Are we presumptuous if we see in it the judgment of a Higher Power upon panoplied arrogance and enthroned wrong?”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords after the Armistice (18 November 1918)
“We may also, I think, congratulate ourselves on the part that the British Empire has played in this struggle, and on the position which it fills at the close. Among the many miscalculations of the enemy was the profound conviction, not only that we had a "contemptible little Army," but that we were a doomed and decadent nation. The trident was to be struck from our palsied grasp, the Empire was to crumble at the first shock; a nation dedicated, as we used to be told, to pleasure-taking and the pursuit of wealth was to be deprived of the place to which it had ceased to have any right, and was to be reduced to the level of a second-class, or perhaps even of a third-class Power. It is not for us in the hour of victory to boast that these predictions have been falsified; but, at least, we may say this—that the British Flag never flew over a more powerful or a more united Empire than now; Britons never had better cause to look the world in the face; never did our voice count for more in the councils of the nations, or in determining the future destinies of mankind. That that voice may be raised in the times that now lie before us in the interests of order and liberty, that that power may be wielded to secure a settlement that shall last, that that Flag may be a token of justice to others as well as of pride to ourselves, is our united hope and prayer.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords after the Armistice (18 November 1918)
“It is not one, I think, of which we have any cause to be ashamed. We have endeavoured to exercise a steadying and moderating influence in the politics of the world, and I think and hope that we have conveyed not merely the impression, but the conviction that, whatever other Governments or countries may do, the British Government is never untrue to its word, is never disloyal to its colleagues or its allies, never does anything underhand or mean; and if this conviction be widespread, as I believe it to be, that is the real basis of the moral authority which the British Empire has long exerted and, I believe, will long continue to exert in the affairs of mankind.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement to the members of the 1923 Imperial Conference (5 October 1923), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Vol…
“I do not see how any Englishman, contrasting India as it now is with what it was, and would certainly have been under any other conditions than British rule, can fail to see that we came and have stayed here under no blind or capricious impulse, but in obedience to what some (of whom I am one) would call the decree of Providence, others the law of destiny in any case for the lasting benefit of millions of the human race. We often make great mistakes here: we are sometimes hard, and insolent, and overbearing: we are a good deal strangled with red tape. But none the less, I do firmly believe that there is no Government in the world (and I have seen most) that rests on so secure a moral basis, or that is more freely animated by duty.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“India was "the land not only of romance but of obligation." Curzon told members of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce at a dinner in 1903, "If I thought it were all for nothing, and that you and I ... were simply writing inscriptions on the sand to be washed out by the next tide, if I felt that we were not working here for the good of India in obedience to a higher law and to a nobler aim, then I would see the link that holds England and India together severed without a sigh. But it is because I believe in the future of this country, and in the capacity of our own race to guide it to goals that it has never hitherto attained, that I keep courage and press forward."47”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Curzon told the Asiatic Society of Bengal: If there be any one who says to me that there is no duty devolving upon a Christian Government to preserve the monuments of a pagan art, or the sanctuaries of an alien faith, I cannot pause to argue with such a man. Art and beauty, and the reverence that is owing to all that has evoked human genius or has inspired human faith, are independent of creeds, and, in so far as they touch the sphere of religion, are embraced by the common religion of all mankind.... There is no principle of artistic discrimination between the mausoleum of the despot and the sepulchre of the saint. What is beautiful, what is historic, what tears the mask off the face of the past, and helps us to read its riddles, and to look it in the eyes-these, and not the dogmas of a combative theology, are the principle criteria to which we must look.52”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We endeavoured to frame a plague policy which should not do violence to the instincts and sentiments of the native population; a famine policy which should profit by the experience of the past and put us in a position to cope with the next visitation when unhappily it bursts upon us; an education policy which should free the intellectual activities of the Indian people, so keen and restless as they are, from the paralysing clutch of examinations; a railway policy that will provide administratively and financially for the great extension that we believe to lie before us; an irrigation policy that will utilise to the maximum, whether remuneratively or unremuneratively, all the available water resources of India, not merely in canals.... but in tanks and reservoirs and wells; a police policy that will raise standard of the only emblem of authority that the majority of the people see, and will free then from petty diurnal tyranny and oppression.... [T]he administrator looks rather to the silent and inarticulate masses, and if he can raise, even by a little, the level of material comfort and well-being in their lives, he has earned his reward....”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have endeavoured to render the land revenue more equable in its incidence, to lift the load of usury from the shoulders of the peasant, and to check that reckless alienation of the soil which in many parts of the country was fast converting him from a free proprietor to a bond slave. We have done our best to encourage industries which little by little will relieve the congested field of agriculture, develop the indigenous resources of India, and make that country more and more self-providing in the future. I would not indulge in any boast, but I dare to think that as a result of these efforts I can point to an India that is more prosperous, more contented, and more hopeful. Wealth is increasing in India. There is no test you can apply which does not demonstrate it. Trade is growing. Evidences of progress and prosperity are multiplying on every side.6°”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“India must always remain a constellation rather than a country, a congeries of races rather than a single nation. But we are creating ties of unity among those widely diversified peoples, we are consolidating those vast and outspread territories, and, what is more important, we are going forward instead of backward. It is not a stationary, a retrograde, a downtrodden, or an impoverished India that I have been governing for the past five and a half years. Poverty there is in abundance. I defy any one to show me a great and populous city, where it does not exist. Misery and destitution there are. The question is not whether they exist, but whether they are growing more or growing less. In India, where you deal with so vast a canvas, I daresay the lights and shades of human experience are more vivid and more dramatic than elsewhere. But if you compare the India of today with the India of any previous period of history-the India of Alexander, of Asoka, of Akbar, or of Aurangzeb-you will find greater peace and tranquillity, more widely suffused comfort and contentment, superior justice and humanity, and higher standards of material well-being, than that great dependency has ever previously attained.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source