Essays Upon History and Politics

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Chapman and Hall, 1864 - Great Britain - 407 pages

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Page 176 - Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
Page 74 - ... sad opulence descending on it by inheritance, always at compound interest, and always largely increased by fresh acquirement on such immensity of standing capital ; opulent in that bad way as never century before was! Which had no longer the consciousness of being false, so false had it grown ; and was so steeped in falsity, and impregnated with it to the very bone, that, in fact, the measure of the thing was full, and a French Revolution had to end it.
Page 126 - There St John mingles with my friendly bowl The feast of reason and the flow of soul...
Page 380 - It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect.
Page 176 - It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect. Therefore every honourable connexion will avow it is their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the state.
Page 24 - But a truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the novelist has appropriated. The history of the government and the history of the people would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they can be exhibited justly, in inseparable conjunction and intermixture. We should not then have to look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology in Old Mortality; for one half of King James in Hume, and for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel.
Page 132 - ... a king, in the temper of whose government, like that of Nerva, things so seldom allied as empire and liberty are intimately mixed, co-exist together inseparably, and constitute one real essence...
Page 132 - He must be seen subdued, bound, chained, and deprived entirely of power to do hurt. In his place, concord will appear, brooding peace and prosperity on the happy land : joy sitting in every face, content in every heart ; a people unoppressed, undisturbed, unalarmed ; busy to improve their private property and the...
Page 176 - Without a proscription of others, they are bound to give to their own party the preference in all things; and by no means, for private considerations, to accept any offers of power in which the whole body is not included...
Page 86 - a stout chest, with lock on it, for household purposes ; must be of such and such dimensions, six feet six in length especially, and that is an indispensable point — in fact, it will be longer than yourself, I think, Herr Zimmermann ; what is the cost; when can it be ready?

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