The Earl of Beaconsfield

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J.M. Dent, 1905 - Great Britain - 267 pages

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Page 99 - ... to me of conservative principles; but he does not inform me what they are. I observe indeed a party in the State whose rule it is to consent to no change, until it is clamorously called for, and then instantly to yield; but those are concessionary, not conservative principles. This party treats institutions as we do our pheasants, they preserve only to destroy them.
Page 100 - We owe the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation of the Church; the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the elder Stuarts; and the borough-mongering of our own times.
Page 21 - The Bar — pooh! law and bad jokes till we are forty; and then, with the most brilliant success, the prospect of gout and a coronet. Besides, to succeed as an advocate, I must be a great lawyer; and, to be a great lawyer, I must give up my chance of being a great man.
Page 37 - he had caught up from us. ' Kalo, kalo ' was my rejoinder. He roared ; I smacked him on the back. I remember no more. In the middle of the night I woke. I found myself sleeping on the divan, rolled up in its sacred carpet ; the Bey had wisely reeled to the fire. The thirst I felt was like that of Dives.
Page 170 - It is a privilege to live in this age of rapid and brilliant events. What an error to consider it an utilitarian age ! It is one of infinite romance. Thrones tumble down and crowns are offered, like a fairy tale...
Page 104 - An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariate of what is called a representative government. Your House of Commons, that has absorbed all other powers in the State, will in all probability fall more rapidly than it rose.
Page 103 - Where, then, would you look for hope?' 'In what is more powerful than laws and institutions, and without which the best laws and the most skilful institutions may be a dead letter, or the very means of tyranny in the national character. It is not in the increased feebleness of its institutions that I see the peril of England; it is in the decline of its character as a community.
Page 51 - A thick heavy mass of jet black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctuously — ' With thy incomparable oil, Macassar...
Page 225 - It ought, further, to have been accompanied by the institution of some representative council in the metropolis, which would have brought the Colonies into constant and continuous relations with the Home Government. All this, however, was omitted, because those who advised that policy — and I believe their convictions were sincere — looked upon the Colonies of England, looked even upon our connection with India, as a burden upon this country, viewing everything in a financial aspect, and totally...
Page 93 - What, then, was the duty of an English Minister ? To effect by his policy all those changes which a revolution would do by force. That was the Irish question, in its integrity.

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