The constitution of England is not a paper constitution. It is an aggregate of institutions, many of them founded merely upon prescription, some of them fortified by muniments, but all of them the fruit and experience of an ancient and illustrious people.

The test of political institutions is the condition of the country whose future they regulate.

To a mother, a child is everything; but to a child, a parent is only a link in the chain of her existence.

Consider Ireland.... You have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question.

We live in age of prudence. The leaders of the people now generally follow.

We cannot learn men from books.

Ignorance never settles a question.