Sir Robert Walpole wasn’t impressed with kind of politician who pursues his own ambitions in the name of serving the country.
From the moment Robert Walpole was appointed First Lord of the Treasury in 1722, he was accused of toadying to the narrow interests of the Court, and ignoring the broader interests of the Country at large. By February 1741 the clamour for his resignation was getting noisy, but Walpole reminded the Commons that those who talk about ‘the good of the country‘ aren’t always thinking about it.
Richard Price argued that the true patriot does not scold other countries for being worse than his own; he inspires his own country to be better than it is.
In 1789, Non-conformist minister Richard Price preached a sermon urging fellow Englishmen to welcome the stirring events in Paris on July 14th that year. Only John Bull’s patriotic prejudice, he said, prevented him from admitting that what was happening was a mirror of our own Glorious Revolution of 1689, and he enlarged on what a more generous love of country, a Christian duty, should look like.
Edmund Burke expressed his frustration at the arrogance of politicians who have no regard for our Constitutional heritage.
As France descended into chaos and bloodshed in the unhappy revolution of 1789, Edmund Burke urged his fellow MPs to examine their responsibilities. An English statesman is entrusted by the People with helping them to make their country better, and they want neither the statesman who is too timid to change anything, nor the statesman who is so arrogant as to smash everything up.
The experienced nurse could not stop saving lives, even at the cost of her own.
The execution of nurse Edith Cavell (1865-1915), an Englishwoman working in a Red Cross hospital in Brussels during the Great War, was one of a number of scandals that did nothing to help the German Empire justify their claim to be the superior civilisation of Europe.
William Gladstone explains that a truly ‘exceptional nation’ respects the equality and rights of all nations.
In 1879, William Gladstone MP berated his rival Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister, for turning Russia into Europe’s bogeyman. Patriotism, Gladstone said, is a healthy thing, but the true patriot is generous, and never claims for his own country rights and dignities he denies to others.