Representative British Orations Volume 3 (of 4) With Introductions and Explanatory Notes

Here is the state of the case. I will not go back any further than 1851. I might go back much further; it would only strengthen my case. But for 1851 I have a statement made by...

I have an illustration of this subject in the case of a society of which the honorable member for Suffolk is chairman. We have lately seen a new light spreading amongst agricult...

Mr. Fox, referring to the policy of the government of his time, which was one of constant interference in the affairs of Europe, and by which the country was continually involve...

Now, I do not know why we should not in this country have leases for land upon similar terms to the leases of manufactories, or any “plant” or premises. I do not think that farm...

For some years before 1838 the impression had become more or less prevalent that the influence of the Corn Laws was favorable to the landowners and the landowners alone. The sys...

But these great cities, says my honorable friend, the member for the University of Oxford, are virtually, though not directly, represented. Are not the wishes of Manchester, he...

Since the “Glorious Revolution,” since the enthronization of the great Norman territorial families, they have spent in wars, and we have worked for, about 2,000,000,000_l._ The...

Gentlemen, it is said, and said truly, that truth beats fiction; that what happens in fact from time to time is of a character so daring, so strange, that if the novelist were t...

It is curious to observe their course. They took into hand the army. What have they done? I will not comment on what they have done. I will historically state it, and leave you...

Has such been the intention of Spain? Whether the proceedings which have lately been practised or permitted in Spain were acts of a government exercising the usual power of prud...

Gentlemen, I am inclined sometimes to believe that those who advocate the abolition of the union between Church and State have not carefully considered the consequences of such...

In the fifteen years that followed, Mr. Gladstone came to be more and more generally recognized, not only as one of the ablest, but also as one of the most influential members o...

The privilege of representation in the House of Commons was early conferred on different localities for a variety of reasons. Before the end of the seventeenth century the const...

What, then, is the force—what is the effect of those ancient treaties? I am prepared to show to the House what it is. But before I do so, I must say, that if all the treaties to...

I know it will be said, gentlemen, that, however beautiful in theory, the personal influence of the sovereign is now absorbed in the responsibility of the minister. Gentlemen, I...

The first thing is to foster the strength of the empire by just legislation and economy at home, thereby producing two of the great elements of national power—namely, wealth, wh...

NOTE 26, p. 174.—The wit of this passage consists in its use of the expression “out-door relief.” In England the poor laws provide for two kinds of relief—that afforded in the w...

AMERICAN ORATIONS, to illustrate American Political History, edited, with introductions, by ALEXANDER JOHNSTON, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in the College o...

The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old cimeter upon a platform as a symbol o...

NOTE 61, p. 268.—This statement is not quite justified by the facts. At the conclusion of the Civil War, intense feeling of indignation pervaded the United States against Great...