We are not the same people that we have been, either in our social characteristics, in our patriotic sentiments, or in the tone of our moral and reli… - Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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.

He certainly agrees with your Majesty in thinking that the [Irish] Nationalists cannot be trusted: and that any bargain with them would be full of danger.

We are in a state of bloodless civil war. No common principles, no respect for common institutions or traditions unite the various groups of politicians, who are struggling for power. To loot somebody or something is the common object under a thick varnish of pious phrases.