On Tory principles the case presents much that is painful, but no perplexity whatever. Ireland must be kept, like India, at all hazards: by persuasio… - Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

I have for so many years entertained a firm conviction that we were going to the dogs that I have got to be quite accustomed to the expectation.

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.

Half a century ago, the first feeling of all Englishmen was for England. Now, the sympathies of a powerful party are instinctively given to whatever is against England. It may be Boers or Baboos, or Russians or Affghans, or only French speculators—the treatment these all receive in their controversies with England is the same: whatever else my fail them, they can always count on the sympathies of the political party from whom during the last half century the rulers of England have been mainly chosen. .. . It is striking, though by no means a solitary indication of how low, in the present temper of English politics, our sympathy with our own countrymen has fallen. Of course, we shall be told that a conscience of exalted sensibility, which is the special attribute of the Liberal party, has enabled them to discover, what English statesmen had never discovered before, that the cause to which our countrymen are opposed is generally the just one. ... For ourselves, we are rather disposed to think that patriotism has become in some breasts so very reasonable an emotion, because it is ceasing to be an emotion at all; and that these superior scruples, to which our fathers were insensible, and which always make the balance of justice lean to the side of abandoning either our territory or our countrymen, indicate that the national impulses which used to make Englishmen cling together in face of every external trouble are beginning to disappear.