Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux Quotes (1778-1868)

“Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.”

“Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.”

“The Judge has not organs to know and to deal with the text of the foreign law, and therefore requires the assistance of a foreign lawyer who knows how to interpret it.”

“The Sovereign can only act by advisers, and through the instrumentality of those who are neither infallible nor impeccable— answerable, indeed, for all that the irresponsible Sovereign may do, but liable to err through undue influence, and to be swayed by improper motives.”

“The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people.”

“The English Bar is in a very great degree tedious, and, to say the least of it, somewhat uncertain. I look forward with no small horror to five years' dull, unvaried drudgery, which must be undergone to obtain the privilege of drudging still harder, among a set of disagreeable people of brutal manners and confined talents.”

“In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said, that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.”

“In my mind, he was guilty of no error he — was chargeable with no exaggeration — he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve men into a box.”

“Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.”

“The more I see and hear, the more I conceive some clear, short, and firm declaration of the party necessary, separating ourselves (without offensive expressions) from the Radicals, and avowing our loyalty, but at the same time our determination to stand by the constitution, and to oppose all illegal attempts to violate it, and all new laws to alter its free nature.”

“The corresponding Society, except about six members, consists of the most dispicable and brutal of mobs. Men whose ignorance and savage barbarity renders them fit only for being tools—indeed, they are the common day laborers about town. This party, perfectly distinct in its nature from the opposition, has done more to ruin its cause, than Pitt and his party ever could have foreseen.”

“There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.”

“The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!”

“We, with all our monarchical principles—for I will not call them prejudices—we, with all our aristocratic feelings, for I will not call them superstitions—we, with all our natural abhorrence of the levelling system and a democratic form of government, were impatient of beholding a great and rising empire, founded by monarchical England's sons, a republic—a level republic—in the veins of whose members flowed the blood of aristocratic England. We saw those republican principles rooted and planted deep in the hearts and feelings of 3,000,000 of Englishmen—we saw them ruling, and conquering, and flourishing, without a king to govern, without a prelate to bless, without a noble to adorn them—we saw all this effected at the point of the sword after a series of defeat, disaster, and disgrace to the British arms. No wonder, then, that all strong feelings and deeply-rooted prejudices were called into fierce action so often as the successes of America were remembered—so often as the name of the new republic was pronounced.”

“[He said] that might, slumbering in the arms of temperate freemen, which, though he hoped the fatal experiment never would be tried, he had a confident persuasion would, if it ever should become necessary, be uplifted as manfully as it was by their forefathers, when they marshalled the way, through blood and danger, to a free constitution... Of powers thus exercised, and for so hallowed a purpose, we have now a glorious example in a neighbouring nation, which has now made your case its own, and which, after long being, as some say, your enemy, has now become your competitor in the glorious race of liberty, which, roused by unbearable oppression, groaning—but that freemen will not groan—has risen in its might, and driven, as your forefathers drove, a tyrant from the throne which he had polluted, and from a capital which he had stained with the blood of free and innocent citizens. From this castle-yard, at the close of the American war, burst forth a flame in favour of parliamentary reform, which, spreading over the country, eclipsed, during the system of terror and persecution, by fires of a less pure and holy nature, quenched by the blood shed in the name of liberty by those who called themselves its votaries in France, has at length, now that peace has been restored to us, burst forth again with renovated splendour to illuminate your hearts, and with such vigour as will ultimately destroy the abuses of your country. I hail its progress with joy and rapture! Be it mine to fan the flame, &c.!”