Benjamin Disraeli

« That is an apology, not an explanation; and apologies only account for that which they do not alter. »

Speechin the House of Commons (28 July 1871)

« Without publicity there can be no public spirit, and without public spirit every nation must decay. »

Speechin the House of Commons (8 August 1871)

« Gentlemen, I am a party man. I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible. I look upon Parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly the one most suited to England. »

Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted inSelected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 492-493

« I beg to express my opinion that an agricultural labourer has as much right to combine for the bettering of his condition as a manufacturing labourer or worker in metals. If the causes of his combination are natural—that is to say, if they arise from his own feelings and from the necessities of his own condition, the combination will end in results mutually beneficial to employers and employed. »

Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted inSelected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 507-508

« Pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations, the adulteration of food, these and many kindred matters may be legitimately dealt with by the Legislature... After all, the first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people. »

Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted inSelected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 511-512

« Her Majesty's new ministers proceeded in their career like a body of men under the influence of some delirious drug. Not satiated with the spoliation and anarchy of Ireland, they began to attack every institution and every interest, every class and calling in the country... As time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government. The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea. »

Referring to William Gladstone's Liberal Government in a speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted inSelected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 513, 516

« I acknowledge that the policy of England with respect to Europe should be a policy of reserve, but proud reserve; and in answer to those statesmen—those mistaken statesmen who have intimated the decay of the power of England and the decline of its resources, I express here my confident conviction that there never was a moment in our history when the power of England was so great and her resources so vast and inexhaustible. »

Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted inSelected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), p. 522

« Gentlemen, the Tory party, unless it is a national party, is nothing. »

Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations inCrystal Palace, London(24 June 1872), quoted inSelected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), p. 524

« A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning. »

Speechin the House of Commons (11 March 1873)

« You have despoiled Churches. You have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody's affairs. You have criticized every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and nobody knows what duties he may have to perform tomorrow. This is the policy of confiscation as compared with that of concurrent endowment. »

Speechin the House of Commons (11 March 1873)

« Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends. »

Speechin the House of Commons (15 June 1874)

« I have always felt that the best security for civilisation is the dwelling, and that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind. Such dwellings are the nursery of all domestic virtues, and without a becoming home the exercise of those virtues is impossible. »

Speech at the opening of Shaftesburgh Park Estate (18 July 1874), cited inWit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Collected from his Writings and Speeches(1881), p. 38