Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury Quotes

I earnestly hope that the House of Lords will always continue to justify your confidence; that it will conscientiously and firmly fulfil the duties for which I think it is eminently fitted, and which are to represent the permanent and enduring wishes of the nation as opposed to the casual impulses which some passing victory at the polls may in some circumstances have given to the decisions of the other House.

Constitutional institutions are splendid things, but whoever heard of any nation which was purely Mahomedan being able to enjoy them. A constitution depends upon the character of the people to whom it is applied, and there is no circumstance which influences those people more than the religion which they profess, and I will venture to say that there is no instance in the history of the world of any purely Mahomedan, or mainly Mahomedan, population flourishing under what we call popular institutions.

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.

[I]t is idle to attempt to dispose of a particular proposal by saying that it is Socialistic. Prove that it is against public policy; show that it discourages thrift; above all, show that it interferes with justice, that it benefits one class by injuring another—do these things, and you have proved your case. But do not imagine that by merely affixing to it the reproach of Socialism you can seriously affect the progress of any great legislative movement, or destroy those high arguments which are derived from the noblest principles of philanthropy and religion.

...institutions like the House of Lords must die, like all other organic beings, when their time comes.

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.

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.

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.

Mohammedanism has the only organization and pretty nearly the only ambition hostile to us that is left in India.

We must learn this rule, which is true alike of rich and poor — that no man and no class of men ever rise to any permanent improvement in their condition of body or of mind except by relying upon their own personal efforts. The wealth with which the rich man is surrounded is constantly tempting him to forget the truth, ad you see in family after family men degenerating from the position of their fathers because they live sluggishly and enjoy what has been placed before them without appealing to their own exertions. The poor man, especially in these days, may have a similar temptation offered to him by legislation, but this same inexorable rule will work. The only true lasting benefit which the statesman can give to the poor man is so to shape matters that the greatest possible opportunity for the exercise of his own moral and intellectual qualities shall be offered to him by the law; and therefore it is that in my opinion nothing that we can do this year, and nothing that we did before, will equal in the benefit that it will confer upon the physical condition, and with the physical will follow the moral too, of the labouring classes in the rural districts, that measure for free education which we passed last year. It will have the effect of bringing education home to many a family which hitherto has not been able to enjoy it, and in that way, by developing the faculties which nature has given to them, it will be a far surer and a far more valuable aid to extricate them from any of the sufferings or hardships to which they may be exposed than the most lavish gifts of mere sustenance that the State could offer.

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.

We are a Teutonic people. We hold steadily to our opinions.

It is true that there had been spread about in the world the impression that we should never fight again, and that every adversary had only to press hardly and boldly upon us to be certain that we should yield. It was a gross miscalculation on their part. (Cheers.) I have no doubt that the converse is true, and now that we have shown what powers we can exercise, what qualities we can display, how really we can copy the brilliant example of those who have gone before us, that the power of England is not only illustrated by the example, but that it is safe—that the cause of peace is now more secure than it was before the strength of England was conclusively shown. (Cheers.)

There can be no finality in politics.

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.