Great Throughts Treasury

"Public opinion is compounded by folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs."

"The Peelian Principles - Peelian Principle 1 - “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.” Peelian Principle 2 - “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.” Peelian Principle 3 - “Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.” Peelian Principle 4 - “The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.” Peelian Principle 5 - “Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to the public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.” Peelian Principle 6 - “Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.” Peelian Principle 7 - “Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.” Peelian Principle 8 - “Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.” Peelian Principle 9 - “The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”"

"Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws."

"But after this natural burst of indignation, no man of sense, courage, or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings."

"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."

"I may be a Tory - I may be an illiberal -but the fact is undeniable, that when I first entered upon the duties of the Home Department, there were laws in existence which imposed upon the subjects of this realm unuasual and extraordinary restrictions."

"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."

"If the spirit of the Reform Bill implies merely, a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses, and the redress of real grievances,?in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions."

"I feel and know that the Repeal [of the Act of Union 1801] must lead to the dismemberment of this great empire; must make Great Britain a fourth-rate power in Europe, and Ireland a savage wilderness."

"If you had to constitute new societies, you might on moral and social grounds prefer cornfields to cotton factories, an agricultural to a manufacturing population. But our lot is cast, and we cannot recede."

"It was impossible to reconcile the repeal of the Corn Laws by me with the keeping together of the Conservative party, and I had no hesitation in sacrificing the subordinate object, and with it my own political interests."

"Much is said about English severity, but not a word about Irish provocation."

"If wheat were at this moment subject to a duty of twenty shillings the quarter, and if Indian corn were virtually excluded, next winter would not pass without a convulsion endangering the whole frame of society, without the humiliation of constituted authorities forced to yield after a disgraceful struggle...if their [the Protectionists] advice had been taken, we should have had famine prices for many articles, and a state of exasperated public feeling and just agitation, which it would require wiser heads than theirs to allay. So far from regretting the expulsion from office, I rejoice in it as the greatest relief from an intolerable burden. To have your own way, and to be for five years the Minister of this country in the House of Commons, is quite enough for any man's strength. He is entitled to his discharge, from length of service. But to have to incur the deepest responsibility, to bear the heaviest toil, to reconcile colleagues with conflicting opinions to a common course of action, to keep together in harmony the Sovereign, the Lords and the Commons; to have to do these things, and to be at the same time the tool of a party?that is to say, to adopt the opinions of men who have not access to your knowledge, and could not profit by it if they had, who spend their time in eating and drinking, and hunting, shooting, gambling, horse-racing, and so forth?would be an odious servitude, to which I will never submit. I determine to keep aloof from party combinations."

"My belief is, from all that I have seen of the French people and their Government, that they are much more likely to presume upon our weakness than to take offence at our strength."

"On the Wednesday evening - that is, the day I saw her Majesty on this particular point - I had the opportunity of conferring with all those whom I proposed to submit to her Majesty as Ministers."

"My object, having a surplus to deal with, is to consider how I can deal with it to the greatest advantage to the consumer? how, without inflicting any injury on Canada, I can secure the most substantial benefit to this country, to the manufacturing, to the commercial, and to the agricultural interests...The real way in which we can benefit the working and manufacturing classes is, unquestionably, by removing the burden that presses on the springs of manufactures and commerce."

"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."

"Our object was to avert dangers which we thought were imminent, and to terminate a conflict which, according to our belief, would soon place in hostile collision great and powerful classes in this country. The maintenance of power was not a motive for the proposal of these measures; for, as I said before, I had not a doubt, that whether these measures were accompanied by failure or success, the certain issue must be the termination of the existence of this Government... in proposing our measures of commercial policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them...The name which ought to be, and will be, associated with the success of those measures, is the name of one who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned: the name which ought to be chiefly associated with the success of those measures, is the name of Richard Cobden... In relinquishing power... I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honorable motives, clamors for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labor, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice."

"Peelian Principle 1 - The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder."

"Peelian Principle 3 - Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public."

"Peelian Principle 4 - The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force."

"Peelian Principle 2 - The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions."

"Peelian Principle 5 - Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to the public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law."

"Peelian Principle 6 - Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient."

"Peelian Principle 7 - Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."

"The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."

"The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions."

"Peelian Principle 8 - Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary."

"The distinction of being without an honor is becoming a rare and valuable one and should not become extinct."

"Peelian Principle 9 - The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."

"The police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public."

"The Reform Bill has destroyed the ancient conduits and strainers, and brings Public Opinion to act upon the government with the rapid, turbulent, and uncertain violence of a flood!"

"The real truth is, the number of convicts is too overwhelming for the means of proper and effectual punishment. I despair of any remedy but that which I wish I could hope for - a great reduction in the amount of crime."

"There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics."