Edmund Burke on Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham

“A man worthy to be held in remembrance, because he did not live for himself. His abilities, industry, and influence, were employed without interruption to the last hour of his life, to give stability to the liberties of his country, security to its landed property, increase to its commerce, independence to its public councils, and concord to its empire. These were his ends. For the attainment of these ends, his policy consisted in sincerity, fidelity, directness, and constancy. His virtues were his arts. In opposition, he respected the principles of Government; in Administration, he provided for the liberties of the people.”

“He far exceeded all other statesmen in the art of drawing together, without the seduction of self-interest, the concurrence and co-operation of various dispositions and abilities of men, whom he assimilated to his character and associated in his labours. For it was his aim through life to convert party connection, and personal friendship (which others had rendered subservient only to temporary views and the purposes of ambition,) into a lasting depository of his principles, that their energy should not depend upon his life, nor fluctuate, with the intrigues of a Court, or with the capricious fashions amongst the people; but that by securing a succession in support of his maxims, the British Constitution might be preserved, according to its true genius, on ancient foundations, and institutions of tried utility.”