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Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

186 quotes

“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Nottingham (26 November 1889), quoted in Andrew Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (1999), p. 544
“The elective principle—government by representation—is not an Eastern idea; it does not fit Eastern traditions or Eastern minds.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (6 March 1890), quoted in The Times (7 March 1890), p. 6
“You closed your speech with some eloquent expressions of your desire to satisfy the national aspirations of Ireland. Rightly or wrongly, I have not the slightest wish to satisfy the national aspirations of Ireland and I remained silent because if I had spoken I must have spoken to that extent against you.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Carnarvon (21 March 1890), quoted in Peter Gordon, 'Select Document: Lord Carnarvon's memoirs relating to his lord lieutenancy, c. 29 March to 7 April 1886', Irish Historical Studies, Volume 40, Issue 158…
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Mansion House, London (10 November 1890), quoted in The Times (11 November 1890), p. 4
“Parliament is a potent engine, and its enactments must always do something, but they very seldom do what the originators of these enactments meant.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement to the Associated Chambers of Commerce (March 1891)
“[Most legislation] will have the effect of surrounding the industry which it touches with precautions and investigations, inspections and regulations, in which it will be slowly enveloped and stifled.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement to the Associated Chambers of Commerce (March 1891)
“That Mahomedan civilisation hangs back from the general movement of the world, and certainly from the movement of Christian nations. It will not assimilate the modern ideas which are essential to progress and essential even to preservation, and therefore for many, many years past the solicitude of statesmanship has been how are they to keep these Mahomedan communities from crumbling into dust.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Glasgow (20 May 1891), quoted in The Times (21 May 1891), p. 10
“Our object is to multiply proprietors of land in a country [Ireland] which, owing to a great variety of causes, has come into a thoroughly unhealthy condition, and which, without the support of a class in the highest sense Conservative, of a class which has a deep and ineradicable interest in the existing state of things, cannot come back to the healthy condition in which we all desire to see it. ... I should have thought it was now one of the commonplaces of politics that where such a class exists it is a sheet-anchor of the social stability of the country.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (26 June 1891)
“[T]he trade of Africa...is a motive for preventing territory from falling into the hands of other Powers, that those Powers will probably use the dominion which we concede to them for the purpose of crippling the trade that we otherwise should possess; and that seems to be a legitimate motive for the accession of territory which might otherwise be wanting.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (25 November 1891), quoted in Michael Bentley, Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (2001), p. 226
“I am very anxious to multiply small holdings and small properties in this country. ... I do not think that small holdings are the most economical way of cultivating the land. But there are things of more importance than economy. I believe that a small proprietary constitutes the strongest bulwark against revolutionary change, and affords the soundest support for the Conservative feeling and institutions of the country.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Exeter on the Small Holdings Act (2 February 1892), quoted in The Times (3 February 1892), p. 6
“England is the Protestant nation of the world. (Cheers.) England has resisted more than any other country the domination of the clerical profession...and has resisted the secular domination of the clerical profession. You are going to create an ultra-clerical state under the government of Archbishops Croke and Walsh. (Hear, hear.) You are going to give the power of the majority of the state, and therefore the power of the state, to those who through long ages have always been the enemies of English influence and English power.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Exeter against Irish Home Rule (2 February 1892), quoted in The Times (3 February 1892), p. 6
“[A]s long as England is true to herself now or on any future occasion, if you allow this atrocious, this mean, this treacherous revolution to pass, you will be untrue to the duty which has descended to you from a splendid ancestry, you will be untrue to your highest traditions, you will be untrue to the trust that has been bequeathed to you from the past, you will be untrue to the Empire of England.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords against the Irish Home Rule Bill (8 September 1893)
“[W]e may fairly protest against any artificial action which tends to lower wages, and therefore makes a living wage more difficult to obtain. This free immigration of destitute aliens is to my mind an interference of that kind. We have a right to say that our social system is for ourselves and that we will not receive a destitute population which will lower the standard of our own population and increase the burdens we have to bear.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (6 July 1894), quoted in The Times (7 July 1894), p. 8
“Few men, whatever their creed, would now seek their geology in the books of their religion, or, on the other hand, would fancy that the laboratory or the microscope could help them to penetrate the mysteries which hang over the nature and the destiny of the soul of man. ... We live in a small, bright oasis of knowledge, surrounded on all sides by a vast, unexplored region of impenetrable mystery.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the British Association (6 August 1894), quoted in The Times (9 August 1894), p. 6
“It is the place where Collectivist and Socialistic experiments are tried. It is the place where a new revolutionary spirit finds its instruments and collects its arms.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the London County Council; speech to the metropolitan division of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in the Queen's Hall, Langham Place (7 November 1894), quoted in The Times (8 Novemb…
“[I]n dealing with such money as you possess, I have no doubt that here in Brighton you will not differ from me that the first claim is the naval defence of England. (Loud and continued cheers.) ... It is our business to be quite sure in respect to this island-home of ours, whose inaccessibility is the source of our greatness, that no improvement of foreign fleets and no combination of foreign alliances should be able for a moment to threaten its safety.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Brighton (19 November 1895), quoted in The Times (20 November 1895), p. 7
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Brighton (19 November 1895), quoted in The Times (20 November 1895), p. 7
“Now consider the case of the Uitlanders. They are not a minority. They are a majority, but those who differ from them in traditions and race and feeling have the government and have the rifles (cheers), and the result is that the Uitlanders get no votes and bitterly complain that they get no justice. (Cheers.) I have not investigated their grievances; I do not know whether they are correct; but I know it tells what would have been the complaint and sorrow of our Ulster people if we had handed them over to the tender mercies of Home Rule.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Nonconformist Unionist Association (31 January 1896), quoted in The Times (1 February 1896), p. 10
“[Y]ou must remember that these people, these Turks, are of the race of Genghiz and Tamerlane, that they belong to a religion, of which I would not say a word of disrespect, which has produced high civilisation and morality, but is capable of the most atrocious perversion and corruption of any religion on the face of the globe; and being Mahomedans and being Turks, with their fanaticism thoroughly aroused, they perpetrated these horrors at which Christendom has grown pale.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Nonconformist Unionist Association on the Armenian Massacres (31 January 1896), quoted in The Times (1 February 1896), p. 10
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (19 January 1897), expressing regret for Britain's support of the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War
“He entirely shares your Majesty's burning indignation at the gross and monstrous injustice which has been perpetrated in France. It is perfectly horrible; and gives the impression that truth and justice are no longer regarded as of any serious importance in France. It is difficult to understand how any country can conduct either civil or military Government in such a deplorable condition of the public mind.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Queen Victoria on the Dreyfus affair (12 September 1899), quoted in The Letters of Queen Victoria: A Selection from Her Majesty's Correspondence Between the Years 1837 and 1861, Vol. III 1896–1901, ed. George …
“I have said for years that I always thought that when I knew what the Queen thought I knew pretty certainly what view her subjects would take, and especially the middle classes of her subjects.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (25 January 1901)
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Miss Milner (11 November 1901), quoted in The Times (19 November 1901), p. 10
“It is very sad, but I'm afraid America is bound to forge ahead and nothing can restore the equality between us. If we had interfered in the Confederate War it was then possible for us to reduce the power of the United States to manageable proportions. But two such chances are not given to a nation in the course of its career.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1878 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Selborne after J.P. Morgan acquired a predominating influence in Cunard, White Star and other shipping lines (13 March 1902), quoted in Andrew Roberts, Lord Salisbury: Victorian Titan (1999), p. 50 and Da…
“[T]he splitting up of mankind into a multitude of infinitesimal governments, in accordance with their actual differences of dialect or their presumed differences of race, would be to undo the work of civilisation and renounce all the benefits which the slow and painful process of consolidation has procured for mankind...It is the agglomeration and not the comminution of states to which civilisation is constantly tending; it is the fusion and not the isolation of races by which the physical and moral excellence of the species is advanced. There are races, as there are trees, which cannot stand erect by themselves, and which, if their growth is not hindered by artificial constraints, are all the healthier for twining round some robuster stem.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, vol. I (March & July 1859), p. 22
“The really remarkable fact which is to be inferred from the conduct of the Southern States is, the genuine alarm with which they regarded the workings of Democracy. ... They had acted in partnership with one for seventy years. They had watched it ripening year by year to the full development of mob supremacy. ... They deliberately decided that civil war, with all its horrors, and with all its peculiar risks to themselves as slaveowners, was a lighter evil than to be surrendered to the justice or the clemency of a victorious Democracy. It is not for Europe to dispute the accuracy of their judgment.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Democracy on its Trial', Quarterly Review, vol. 110 (July & October 1861), p. 274
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Confederate Struggle and Recognition', Quarterly Review, vol. 112 (July & October 1862), pp. 547-548
“A few years ago a delusive optimism was creeping over the minds of men. There was a tendency to push the belief in the moral victories of civilisation to an excess which now seems incredible. It was esteemed heresy to distrust anybody, or to act as if any evil still remained in human nature. At home we were exhorted to show "our confidence in our countrymen," by confiding the guidance of our policy to the ignorant, and the expenditure of our wealth to the needy. Abroad we were invited to believe that commerce had triumphed where Christianity had failed, and that exports and imports had banished war from the earth. And generally we were encouraged to congratulate ourselves that we were permanently lifted up from the mire of passion and prejudice in which our forefathers had wallowed. The last fifteen years have been one long disenchantment; and the American civil war is the culmination of the process.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Confederate Struggle and Recognition', Quarterly Review, vol. 112 (July & October 1862), pp. 562-563
“For two hundred years these tests had been constantly and cheerfully subscribed by some six generations of clergymen. All these men, all the great lights of the Church since 1662, were by the sweeping denunciation of his hon. Friend accused without exception of having been compelled to tamper with their consciences. ... That long experience was the best answer to the statements which had been made. They might depend upon it that an experience of two hundred years was a better guide than the experience of his hon. Friends the Members for Canterbury or Plymouth. Oxford life was but three years in duration, and it was the experience of three years against that of two hundred. Two hundred years furnished a better average of the ordinary tendencies of humanity.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (9 June 1863)
“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. An extension of the suffrage to the working classes means that upon a question of taxation, or expenditure, or upon a measure vitally affecting commerce, 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 (1830–1903) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The House of Commons', Quarterly Review, vol. 116 (July & October 1864), pp. 269-270
“The North is fighting for no sentimental cause—for no victory of a 'higher civilization'. It is fighting for a very ancient and vulgar object of war—for that which Russia has secured in Poland—that which Austria clings to in Venetia—that which Napoleon sought in Spain. It is a struggle for empire, conducted with a recklessness of human life which may have been paralleled in practice, but has never been avowed with equal cynicism. If any shame is left in the Americans, the first revision they will make in their constitution will be to repudiate formally the now exploded doctrine laid down in the Declaration of Independence, that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed'.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The United States as an Example', Quarterly Review, vol. 117 (January & April 1865), pp. 252-253
“We might as well hope for the termination of the struggle for existence by which, some philosophers tell us, the existence or the modification of the various species of organized beings upon our planet are determined. The battle for political power is merely an effort, well or ill-judged, on the part of the classes who wage it to better or to secure their own position. Unless our social activity shall have become paralyzed, and the nation shall have lost its vitality, this battle must continue to rage. In this sense the question of reform, that is to say, the question of relative class power, can never be settled.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Change of Ministry', Quarterly Review, vol. 120 (July & October 1866), p. 273
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (30 May 1867) against John Stuart Mill's proposal for electing MPs by proportional representation
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (2 August 1867) on the Orissa famine of 1866
“We have heard from the opposite Bench several very animated appeals to this House, and several constitutional lectures as to our duties. The noble Earl the late Foreign Secretary (the Earl of Clarendon) went so far, as I understood him, as to tell us that we must watch public opinion more closely, and pay greater attention to the majorities in the other House of Parliament. My Lords, it occurs to me to ask the noble Earl whether he has considered for what purpose this House exists, and whether he would be willing to go through the humiliation of being a mere echo and supple tool of the other House in order to secure for himself the luxury of mock legislation? I agree with my noble Friend the noble Earl (the Earl of Derby) below me that it were better not to be than submit to such a slavery.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (26 June 1868)
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (26 June 1868)
“Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change—for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it—but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it. The army of so-called reform, in every stage of its advance, necessarily converts a detachment of its force into opponents. The more rapid the advance the more formidable will the desertion become, till at last a point will be reached where the balance between the forces of conservation and destruction will be redressed, and the political equilibrium be restored.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Past and the Future of Conservative Policy', Quarterly Review, vol. 127 (July & October 1869), pp. 551-552
“It is only by the renunciation of all present hopes of office that Conservatives can save what yet remains to be saved of the institutions for which they profess to fight. 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. In the changes of political life it may well end in the moderate Liberals enjoying a permanent tenure of office, propped up mainly by their support. Such a result, constituted as human nature is, would no doubt be irritating. Yet it is the only policy by which the Conservatives can now effectively serve their country.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Past and the Future of Conservative Policy', Quarterly Review, vol. 127 (July & October 1869), p. 560
“But an Ethiopian cannot change his skin—nor can I put off my "Toryism"—my deep distrust of the changes which are succeeding each other so rapidly. Numbers of men support them who are not of the spirit that bred them; but that spirit is essentially a pagan spirit, discarding the supernatural, and worshipping not God but man. It is creeping over Europe rapidly: and I can not put off the conviction that it is dissolving every cement that holds society together. I have given you enough and too much of my gloomy thoughts. They have been excited by reading in a Liberal paper "that learning is too high and sacred a thing to be sectarian". Bah!”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Henry Acland (12 November 1869), quoted in J. F. A. Mason, 'The Election of Lord Salisbury as Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1869', Oxoniensia, vol. xxix (1964–5), p. 188
“It is our political machinery which fails. Unrivalled as an instrument for enfeebling the arm of Government, and therefore hindering an excess of executive interference, it has prevented the oppressions into which the zeal of Continental bureaus constantly betrays them. It satisfies the most imperious want of a free people, which is to be let alone. It is not ineffective for purposes of mere destruction, especially when it is driven by the forces of sectarian animosity. But in matters where it is necessary that Government should govern and create, it lamentably breaks down. All the virtues that are attributed to it—in many respects justly—for the concerns of peace, make it helpless for the purposes of war.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Political Lessons of the War', Quarterly Review, vol. 130 (January & April 1871), pp. 274-275
“The revolution of 1832 was, therefore, in its ultimate results, a democratic revolution, though its earlier form was transitional and incomplete. This form was productive of great advantages for the time: indeed, for some years it might be said, without exaggeration, that the accidental equilibrium of political forces which it had produced presented the highest ideal of internal government the world had hitherto seen. But it was not the less provisional on that account. The forces by which political organisms are destroyed were, for the time, balanced by influences which still lingered, and were, therefore, neutralised. But these were increasing, and the others were decaying, and the balance could not last for any length of time. It has now been finally upset, and we have now fully reached the phase of political transformation to which the revolution of 1832 logically led.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Political Lessons of the War', Quarterly Review, vol. 130 (January & April 1871), pp. 279-280
“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 (1830–1903) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Commune and the Internationale', Quarterly Review, vol. 130 (January & April 1871), p. 578
“I wish that there was any chance of awakening England to the necessity or the duty of sustaining upon the Continent the position which she acquired and held in former times. Such a revival of feeling on her part would not only draw classes together in this country and purify our internal conflicts from the material element which is coming to be dominant in them; but it would prove an important guarantee for the maintenance of the present structure of Europe. ... [A]ny such revival of feeling in England is chimerical. ... The fault really lies in the change in the nature of spirit of the English nation. They do not wish, as they formerly did, for great national position, and they are glad to seclude themselves from European responsibilities by the protection which their insular position is supposed to give them. ... The great middle classes and the professional classes with whom power in this country really resides, have deliberately turned away from the ancient aims and policy of England in foreign affairs.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Bille (18 April 1871), quoted in Marvin Swartz and Frank Herrmann, Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (1985), pp. 25-26
“Some persons, I know, entertain a notion that the proper way to educate a young man of 18 is to put before him all the arguments and systems of belief which ever have been or can be devised, and let him take his choice; but I am quite convinced that no such notion will ever commend itself to the general mass of parents in this country. They are well aware that thorny questions of controversy are not fit for men of unripe and unpractised minds, and that the only effect of asking them to choose impartially between all beliefs is to make them think that no belief is of much importance, and that at an age when temptations are strongest they may come to the conclusion that the moral maxims which rest on belief and belief alone are mere ancient and valueless superstitions.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (8 May 1871)
“I am afraid a belief is prevalent that the advancement of morality is due to the action of Government authority. If so, we are in danger of abandoning the highest standard of morality, that of Christianity, and of seeking another in Acts of Parliament and regulations of police. Is there any country in the world in which the action of the Legislature has been able to supply the calls of the moralist and the teacher? 150 years ago the upper and middle classes of this country were as bad with regard to drunkenness as the lower classes are now. People did not then trust to legislative action, they resorted to civilization and religion. They trusted to allegiance to a principle, and in the upper and middle classes of this country at present drunkenness is not a prevailing vice. Why, then, not believe that the influences which had been so powerful with the upper and middle classes will be equally operative with the lower? I trust that in any measures your Lordships may be asked to pass, you will shrink from attempting a task which it is impossible for any Legislature to perform—namely, by the action of Government to insure morality among the people.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (2 May 1872)
“So far as positive religion goes, the Tests Act...has left Oxford better off than it was before. There is more security for religious teaching than there was. The great effect of the Tests Act—or rather of that great movement of public opinion of which the Tests Act was only the outcome—has been negative. All hindrance to the teaching of infidelity has been taken away, and that is the great danger of the future. (Hear, hear.) The great danger is that there should be found inside our Universities—especially, I fear, inside Oxford—a nucleus and focus of infidel teaching and influence—(hear, hear)—not infidel in any coarse or abusive sense, but in that sense which Professor Palmer used the words "heathen virtue." I fear that the danger we have to look to is that some Colleges in Oxford may in the future play a part similar to that disastrous part which the German Universities have played in the de-Christianization of the upper and middle classes.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Church Congress in the Mechanics' Institute, Leeds (10 October 1872), quoted in The Times (12 October 1872), p. 7
“The two parties represent two opposite moods of the English mind, which may be trusted, unless past experience is wholly useless, to succeed each other from time to time. Neither of them, neither the love of organic changes nor the dislike of it, can be described as normal to a nation. In every nation, they have succeeded each other at varying intervals during the whole of the period which separates its birth from its decay. Each finds in the circumstances and constitution of individuals a regular support which never deserts it. Among men, the old, the phlegmatic, the sober-minded, among classes, those who have more to lose than to gain by change, furnish the natural Conservatives. The young, the envious, the restless, the dreaming, those whose condition cannot easily be made worse, will be rerum novarum cupidi. But the two camps together will not nearly include the nation: for the vast mass of every nation is unpolitical.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Position of Parties', The Quarterly Review, vol. 133 (July & October 1872), pp. 583-584
“In Europe good government and other qualities may secure the sympathy of a population. In the East the first quality that secures the sympathy of a population is the possession of strength, and the moment they were convinced that strength had gone from Turkey, the power of Turkey to maintain her Empire was gone. Are your Lordships prepared to see the allegiance of the people of Asia given up to the advancing Power? If so, I ask whether there would be any chance of maintaining the loyalty of the people of India, when once they knew that the Russian power was dominant down to the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, and that the English power was nothing compared with it? That was the real danger which we had to fear.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1878 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (18 July 1878)
“[A]s individuals and as nations we live in states of society utterly different from each other. As a collection of individuals, we live under the highest and latest development of civilization, in which the individual is rigidly forbidden to defend himself, because society is always ready and able to defend him. As a collection of nations we live in an age of the merest Faustrecht, in which each one obtains his rights precisely in proportion to his ability, or that of his allies, to fight for them. ... In practice it is found that International Law is always on the side of strong battalions. ... It is puerile...to apply to the dealings of a nation with its neighbour's territory the morality which would be applicable to two individuals possessing adjoining property, and protected from mutual wrong by a law superior to both.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Ministerial Embarrassments', Quarterly Review, vol. 151 (January & April 1881), pp. 542-544
“Much has been said in the present debate about conciliation and the value of conciliatory measures to Ireland...Conciliatory legislation is infinitely superior; but it depends for its efficacy on the circumstances under which it is used, and on the manner in which it is applied. Deterrent legislation, if vigorous and strong, at least deters, whatever the value of that process may be. But conciliatory legislation only conciliates where there is a full belief on the part of those with whom you are dealing that you are acting on a principle of justice, and not that you are acting on motives of fear. Where there is a suspicion or a strong belief that your conciliatory measures have been extorted from you by the violence which they are meant to put a stop to, all the value of that conciliation is taken away.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (5 June 1882)