However much I have been blamed for not showing more deferences to a great party, and for not acting more steadily on party principles, all I have to regret is that I showed so much.

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

However much I have been blamed for not showing more deferences to a great party, and for not acting more steadily on party principles, all I have to regret is that I showed so much.

Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?

I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes.

No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion.

Of all the vulgar arts of government, that of solving every difficulty that might arise by thrusting the hand into the public purse is the most illusory and contemptible.