The English Constitution quotes

I can conceive of nothing more corrupting or worse for a set of poor ignorant people than that two combinations of well-taught and rich men should constantly offer to defer to their decision, and compete for the office of executing it.

Vox populi will be Vox diaboli if it is worked in that manner.

And, on the other hand, my imagination conjures up a contrary danger.

The selfish instinct of the mass of peers on this point is a keener and more exact judge of the real world than the fine intelligence of one or two of them.

If the House of Peers ever goes, it will go in a storm, and the storm will not leave all else as it is.

It will not destroy the House of Peers and leave the rich young peers, with their wealth and their titles, to sit in the Commons.

… muttering in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and inculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer.

Or, if I may say so, an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.

There are two descriptions of the English Constitution which have exercised immense influence, but which are erroneous.

The comely parts of a Government have need, for they are those upon which its vital strength depends. They may not do anything definite that a simpler polity would not do better; but they are the preliminaries, the needful prerequisites of all work.

They raise the army, though they do not win the battle.

Doubtless, if all subjects of the same Government only thought of what was useful to them, and if they all thought the same thing useful, and all thought that same thing could be attained in the same way, the efficient members of a constitution would …

The lower orders, the middle orders, are still, when tried by what is the standard of the educated “ten thousand,” narrow-minded, unintelligent, incurious. It is useless to pile up abstract words.

Those who doubt should go out into their kitchens.

Let an accomplished man try what seems to him most obvious, most certain, most palpable in intellectual matters, upon the housemaid and the footman, and he will find that what he says seems unintelligible, confused, and erroneous—that his audience think him mad and wild when …

We have in England an elective first magistrate as truly as the Americans have an elective first magistrate. The Queen is only at the head of the dignified part of the Constitution. The Prime Minister is at the head of the efficient part.

The Crown is, according to the saying, the “fountain of honour”; but the Treasury is the spring of business.

Nevertheless, our first magistrate differs from the American. He is not elected directly by the people; he is elected by the representatives of the people. He is an example of “double election.”

The first and cardinal consideration is the definition of a Cabinet. We must not bewilder ourselves with the inseparable accidents until we know the necessary essence.

A Cabinet is a combining committee⁠—a “hyphen” which joins, a “buckle” which fastens, the legislative part of the State to the executive part of the State.

In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.

Nor is this the worst.

Cabinet government educates the nation; the Presidential does not educate it, and may corrupt it.

It has been said that England invented the phrase, “Her Majesty’s Opposition,” that it was the first Government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of Cabinet government.

we chose a statesman, who had the sort of merit then wanted, who, when he feels the steady power of England behind him, will advance without reluctance, and will strike without restraint. As was said at the time, “

We turned out the Quaker, and put in the pugilist.

”

Mr. Lincoln, it is true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability, yet of eminent justness. There was an inner depth of Puritan nature which came out under suffering, and was very attractive.

But success in a lottery is no argument for lotteries.

What were the chances against a person of Lincoln’s antecedents, elected as he was, proving to be what he was?

The issue was put to the French people; they were asked, “Will you be governed by Louis Napoleon, or will you be governed by an assembly?”

The French people said, “We will be governed by the one man we can imagine, and not by the many people we cannot imagine.”

The best mode of comprehending the nature of the two Governments, is to look at a country in which the two have within a comparatively short space of years succeeded each other.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

The nature of a constitution, the action of an assembly, the play of parties, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are complex facts, difficult to know and easy to mistake.

We are a more mixed people than the Athenians, or probably than any political Greeks.

We have progressed more unequally.

The slaves in ancient times were a separate order; not ruled by the same laws, or thoughts, as other men. It was not necessary to think of them in making a constitution:

whether they gave the nicest parties would be important only to the persons at those parties. A nation of unimpressible philosophers would not care at all how the externals of life were managed.

Who is the showman is not material unless you care about the show.

But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers. It would be a very serious matter to us to change every four or five years the visible head of our world.

But everything went on as usual. A few people who had no daughters and little money made it an excuse to give fewer parties, and if very poor, stayed in the country, but upon the whole the difference was not perceptible.

The queen bee was taken away, but the hive went on.

Refined and original observers have of late objected to English royalty that it is not splendid enough.

Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone.

Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.

We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants; she will become one combatant among many.

Its life is in debate. A President may be a weak man; yet if he keep good Ministers to the end of his administration, he may not be found out—it may still be a dubious controversy whether he is wise or foolish.

But a Prime Minister must show what he is.

He must meet the House of Commons in debate; he must be able to guide that assembly in the management of its business, to gain its ear in every emergency, to rule it in its hours of excitement.

I do not oppose, it is my duty not to oppose; but observe that I warn.” Supposing the king to be right, and to have what kings often have, the gift of effectual expression, he could not help moving his Minister.

He might not always turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind.

In the course of a long reign a sagacious king would acquire an experience with which few Ministers could contend. The king could say: “Have you referred to the transactions which happened during such and such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago?

A wit said that, even at the levée, he bowed so low that you could see the tip of his hooked nose between his legs. He was in the habit of kneeling at the bedside of George III while transacting business.

Now no man can argue on his knees.

The same superstitious feeling which keeps him in that physical attitude will keep him in a corresponding mental attitude. He will not refute the bad arguments of the king as he will refute another man’s bad arguments.

He may form good intentions; he may say, “Next year I will read these papers; I will try and ask more questions; I will not let these women talk to me so.” But they will talk to him.

The most hopeless idleness is that most smoothed with excellent plans.

“The Lord Treasurer,” says Swift, “promised he will settle it tonight, and so he will say a hundred nights.” We may depend upon it the ministry whose power will be lessened by the prince’s attention will not be too eager to get him to attend.

… which is always eager, which is generally obstinate, which is often wrong, which rules Ministers more than they know themselves, which overpowers them much more than the public believe, which is irresponsible because it is inscrutable, which cannot be prevented because it cannot be seen.

The benefits of a good monarch are almost invaluable, but the evils of a bad monarch are almost irreparable.

We shall find these conclusions confirmed if we examine the powers and duties of an English monarch at the breakup of an administration.

The office of an order of nobility is to impose on the common people—not necessarily to impose on them what is untrue, yet less what is hurtful; but still to impose on their quiescent imaginations what would not otherwise be there.

The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol.

Nobility is the symbol of mind. It has the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence;

but still to impose on their quiescent imaginations what would not otherwise be there. The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol.

Nobility is the symbol of mind.

It has the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence; but the “old squire” will get reverence.

But it may be said that this is no gain; that worship for worship, the worship of money is as good as the worship of rank.

Even granting that it were so, it is a great gain to society to have two idols: in the competition of idolatries the true worship gets a chance.

But it is not true that the reverence for rank—at least, for hereditary rank—is as base as the reverence for money. As the world has gone, manner has been half-hereditary in certain castes, and manner is one of the fine arts.

It is the style of society; it is in the daily-spoken intercourse of human beings what the art of literary expression is in their occasional written intercourse.

In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but an appendix to a man; in reverencing inherited nobility, we reverence the probable possession of a great faculty⁠—the faculty of bringing out what is in one.

The unconscious grace of life may be in the middle classes: finely-mannered persons are born everywhere; but it ought to be in the aristocracy: and a man must be born with a hitch in his nerves if he has not some of it.

for “position,” as they call it, for a certain intimacy with the aristocracy, some of them would do almost anything and say almost anything. But the Lords are those who give social bribes, and not those who take them.

They are above corruption because they are the corruptors.

They have no constituency to fear or wheedle; they have the best means of forming a disinterested and cool judgment of any class in the country. They have, too, leisure to form it. They have no occupations to distract them which are worth the name.

All Americans, it has been said, know business; it is in the air of their country. Just so certain classes know business here; and a lord can hardly know it.

It is as great a difficulty to learn business in a palace as it is to learn agriculture in a park.

To one kind of business, indeed, this doctrine does not apply. There is one kind of business in which our aristocracy have still, and are likely to retain long, a certain advantage. This is the business of diplomacy.

if its doors are shut against genius that cannot found a family, and ability which has not £5,000 a year, its power will be less year by year, and at last be gone, as so much kingly power is gone—no one knows how.

Its danger is not in assassination, but atrophy; not abolition, but decline.

From a consideration of these functions, it follows that we are ruled by the House of Commons; we are, indeed, so used to be so ruled, that it does not seem to be at all strange.

But of all odd forms of government, the oddest really is government by a public meeting.

Here are 658 persons, collected from all parts of England, different in nature, different in interests, different in look, and language. If we think what an empire the English is, how various are its components, how incessant its concerns, how immersed in history its policy;

Nobody will understand Parliament government who fancies it an easy thing, a natural thing, a thing not needing explanation.

You have not a perception of the first elements in this matter till you know that government by a club is a standing wonder.

There has been a capital illustration lately how helpless many English gentlemen are when called together on a sudden. The Government, rightly or wrongly, thought fit to entrust the quarter-sessions of each county with the duty of combating its cattle-plague;

This resolution got, so to say, wedged in the meeting; everybody suggested amendments; one amendment was carried which none were satisfied with, and so the matter stood over.

It is a saying in England, “a big meeting never does anything”; and yet we are governed by the House of Commons⁠—by “a big meeting.”

It may be said that the House of Commons does not rule, it only elects the rulers. But there must be something special about it to enable it to do that.

The moment, indeed, that we distinctly conceive that the House of Commons is mainly and above all things an elective assembly, we at once perceive that party is of its essence. There never was an election without a party.

You cannot get a child into an asylum without a combination.

At such places you may see “Vote for orphan A.” upon a placard, and “Vote for orphan B. (also an idiot!!!)” upon a banner, and the party of each is busy about its placard and banner.

This language is very suitable to the greater part of the House of Commons.

Most men of business love a sort of twilight.

They have lived all their lives in an atmosphere of probabilities and of doubt, where nothing is very clear, where there are some chances for many events, where there is much to be said for several courses, where nevertheless one course must be determinedly chosen …

Thirdly, it may seem odd to say so, just after inculcating that party organisation is the vital principle of representative government, but that organisation is permanently efficient, because it is not composed of warm partisans.

The body is eager, but the atoms are cool.

If it were otherwise, Parliamentary government would become the worst of governments—a sectarian government. The party in power would go all the lengths their orators proposed—all that their formulae enjoined, as far as they had ever said they would go.

He would write to gentlemen in Parliament, and say, “You were elected upon ‘the Liberal ticket’; and if you deviate from that ticket you cannot be chosen again.” And there would be no appeal for a common-minded man.

He is no more likely to make a constituency for himself than a mole is likely to make a planet.

It may indeed be said that against a septennial Parliament such machinations would be powerless; that a member elected for seven years might defy the remonstrances of an earnest constituency, or the imprecations of the latent manipulators.

Thirty years ago this was not so. The nation had outgrown its institutions, and was cramped by them.

It was a man in the clothes of a boy; every limb wanted more room, and every garment to be fresh made.

“D‑mn me,” said Lord Eldon in the dialect of his age, “if I had to begin life again I would begin as an agitator.”

The counties not only elect landowners, which is natural, and perhaps wise, but also elect only landowners of their own county, which is absurd.

There is no free trade in the agricultural mind; each county prohibits the import of able men from other counties.

This is why eloquent sceptics—Bolingbroke and Disraeli—have been so apt to lead the unsceptical Tories. They will have people with a great piece of land in a particular spot, and of course these people generally cannot speak, and often cannot think.

As to the first point, those who wish to remove the choice of Ministers from Parliament have not adequately considered what a Parliament is.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

In proportion as you give it power it will inquire into everything, settle everything, meddle in everything. In an ordinary despotism, the powers of a despot are limited by his bodily capacity, and by the calls of pleasure; he is but one man;

that such and such men did die; that this and that gun would not go off; that this or that ship will not sail. All the pretty reading is unfavourable, and all the praise is very dull.

Nothing is more helpless than such a department in Parliament if it has no authorised official defender.

The wasps of the House fasten on it; here they perceive is something easy to sting, and safe, for it cannot sting in return. The small grain of foundation for complaint germinates, till it becomes a whole crop.

They are brought young into the particular part of the public service to which they are attached; they are occupied for years in learning its forms—afterwards, for years too, in applying these forms to trifling matters.

They are, to use the phrase of an old writer, “but the tailors of business; they cut the clothes, but they do not find the body.”

Men so trained must come to think the routine of business not a means, but an end—to imagine the elaborate machinery of which they form a part, and from which they derive their dignity, to be a grand and achieved result, not a working and …

it is only the rich variegated details of the lower strata that so contrast with one another. But it needs travelling to know that the summits are the same.

Those who live on one mountain believe that their mountain is wholly unlike all others.

The application of this principle to Parliamentary government is very plain;

But there is no decision, and no possibility of a decision. The President wants one course, and has power to prevent any other; the Congress wants another course, and has power to prevent any other.

The splitting of sovereignty into many parts amounts to there being no sovereign.

The Americans of 1787 thought they were copying the English Constitution, but they were contriving a contrast to it.

he probably passed the whole of his youth in the vicious situation of the heir-apparent, who can do nothing because he has no appointed work, and who will be considered almost to outstep his function if he undertake optional work.

For the most part, a constitutional king is a damaged common man; not forced to business by necessity as a despot often is, but yet spoiled for business by most of the temptations which spoil a despot.

History, too, seems to show that hereditary royal families gather from the repeated influence of their corrupting situation some dark taint in the blood, some transmitted and growing poison which hurts their judgments, darkens all their sorrow, and is a cloud on half their pleasure.

It was the uncertainty whether the king would exercise it, and how far he would exercise it, that mainly animated the opposition.

In fact, you may place power in weak hands at a revolution, but you cannot keep it in weak hands. It runs out of them into strong ones.

An ordinary hereditary sovereign—a William IV, or a George IV—is unfit to exercise the peer-creating power when most wanted. A half-insane king, like George III, would be worse.

formerly they passed their time either in exciting action or inanimate repose. A feudal baron had nothing between war and the chase—keenly animating things both—and what was called “inglorious ease.” Modern life is scanty in excitements, but incessant in quiet action.

Its perpetual commerce is creating a “stocktaking” habit⁠—the habit of asking each man, thing, and institution, “Well, what have you done since I saw you last?”

Our physical science, which is becoming the dominant culture of thousands, and which is beginning to permeate our common literature to an extent which few watch enough, quite tends the same way. The two peculiarities are its homeliness and its inquisitiveness;

Cabinet government is rare because its prerequisites are many.

It requires the coexistence of several national characteristics which are not often found together in the world, and which should be perceived more distinctly than they often are.

The mass of uneducated men could not now in England be told “go to, choose your rulers;” they would go wild; their imaginations would fancy unreal dangers, and the attempt at election would issue in some forcible usurpation.

The incalculable advantage of august institutions in a free state is, that they prevent this collapse.

The excitement of choosing our rulers is prevented by the apparent existence of an unchosen ruler. The poorer and more ignorant classes—those who would most feel excitement, who would most be misled by excitement—really believe that the Queen governs.

The valued use of Parliament was not half so much to alter the law, as to prevent the laws being altered. And such too was its real use.

In early societies it matters much more that the law should be fixed than that it should be good.

Any law which the people of ignorant times enact is sure to involve many misconceptions, and to cause many evils. Perfection in legislation is not to be looked for, and is not, indeed, much wanted in a rude, painful, confined life.

First, you must get a good legislature; and next, you must keep it good. And these are by no means so nearly connected as might be thought at first sight. To keep a legislature efficient, it must have a sufficient supply of substantial business.

If you employ the best set of men to do nearly nothing, they will quarrel with each other about that nothing.

Where great questions end, little parties begin. And a very happy community, with few new laws to make, few old bad laws to repeal, and but simple foreign relations to adjust, has great difficulty in employing a legislature.

To keep a legislature efficient, it must have a sufficient supply of substantial business. If you employ the best set of men to do nearly nothing, they will quarrel with each other about that nothing.

Where great questions end, little parties begin.

And a very happy community, with few new laws to make, few old bad laws to repeal, and but simple foreign relations to adjust, has great difficulty in employing a legislature. There is nothing for it to enact, and nothing for it to settle.

a certain spectacle of beautiful women; a wonderful scene of wealth and enjoyment is displayed, and they are coerced by it. Their imagination is bowed down; they feel they are not equal to the life which is revealed to them.

Courts and aristocracies have the great quality which rules the multitude, though philosophers can see nothing in it⁠—visibility.

Courtiers can do what others cannot. A common man may as well try to rival the actors on the stage in their acting, as the aristocracy in their acting.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer.

The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

It is quite true that this imaginative sentiment is supported by a sensation of political satisfaction. It cannot be said that the mass of the English people are well off.

By the spectacle of this august society, countless ignorant men and women are induced to obey the few nominal electors—the £10 borough renters, and the £50 county renters—who have nothing imposing about them, nothing which would attract the eye or fascinate the fancy.

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.

And the greatest of these results is this wonderful spectacle of society, which is ever new, and yet ever the same; in which accidents pass and essence remains;

A country of respectful poor, though far less happy than where there are no poor to be respectful, is nevertheless far more fitted for the best government.

You can use the best classes of the respectful country; you can only use the worst where every man thinks he is as good as every other.

It is evident that no difficulty can be greater than that of founding a deferential nation. Respect is traditional; it is given not to what is proved to be good, but to what is known to be old.

It is evident that no difficulty can be greater than that of founding a deferential nation.

Respect is traditional; it is given not to what is proved to be good, but to what is known to be old.

Certain classes in certain nations retain by common acceptance a marked political preference, because they have always possessed it, and because they inherit a sort of pomp which seems to make them worthy of it.

A people very rarely hears two sides of a subject in which it is much interested; the popular organs take up the side which is acceptable, and none but the popular organs in fact reach the people.

A people never hears censure of itself.

No one will tell it that the educated minority whom it dethroned governed better or more wisely than it governs.

But though there was no legal limit, there was a practical limit to subjection in (what may be called) the pagan part of human nature—the inseparable obstinacy of freemen.

They never would do exactly what they were told.

To early royalty, as Homer describes it in Greece and as we may well imagine it elsewhere, there were always two adjuncts:

Many ambitious men wanted to “take the people into partnership.” Certain precedents of that time were cited with grave authority centuries after, when the time of freedom had really arrived. But the causes of this rapid growth soon produced an even more sudden decline.

Confusion fostered it, and confusion destroyed it.

The structure of society then was feudal; the towns were only an adjunct and a makeweight. The principal popular force was an aristocratic force, acting with the cooperation of the gentry and yeomanry, and resting on the loyal fealty of sworn retainers.