Political Extracts
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Political Extracts’
William Gladstone complained that some politicians talk about freedom but don’t trust the people enough to let them have any.
As a young Tory, William Gladstone had opposed extending the vote to more people; by 1878, and now a Liberal Party MP and former Prime Minister, he was all in favour of it. Justifying his U-turn at Oxford University’s newly-founded Palmerston Club, he explained that it is not enough to talk of liberty: you have to trust the people with it.
William Gladstone urges Government not to take away from people the things they have a right to do for themselves.
In 1889, at the opening of Reading and Recreation Rooms at the Saltney Literary Institute in Cheshire, Prime Minister William Gladstone spoke warmly of the benefits of lifelong, self-directed education for the working man, and warned against letting Government take it over.
The Maharaja of Jodhpur called on his subjects to do their bit and stop the Nazis.
On May 15th, 1942, Maharaja Sir Umaid Singh of Jodhpur spoke at the inauguration of the National War Front in Jodhpur. Already many thousands of Indians had volunteered to help stop Nazi Germany from taking Britain’s place as India’s Presiding Power, and now His Highness addressed himself to those left behind.
Samuel Smiles warns us against pursuing popularity for its own sake, saying that it is a kind of cowardice.
Samuel Smiles was uncharacteristically severe on those statesmen who court popularity by deceitful talk or by whipping up hatreds. By implication, however, he was equally severe on those who allow such rogues to do so simply because they will not, or dare not, think for themselves.
John Wesley wrote to a young William Wilberforce to encourage him in his campaign against the slave trade.
A few days before he died on on March 2nd, 1791, at the age of 87, John Wesley wrote to a young MP, fellow ‘methodist’ William Wilberforce. While these were not Wesley’s last recorded words (which were ‘The best of all is, God is with us’) his letter has the air of a departing Elijah wishing upon Elisha a double share of his spirit.
An irate coal merchant squares up to the oh-so-righteous gentleman who didn’t like the way he was treating his horse.
Following the death of William Wilberforce, the great anti-slavery campaigner, on July 29th, 1833, an impressive list of statesmen requested a fitting funeral in Westminster Abbey. Ordinary people grieved in their many thousands too, and a generation later Travers Buxton recalled that this affection was of long standing.