Stanley Baldwin, speech to the Junior Imperial League (3 May 1924), quoted in Stanley Baldwin, On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 225
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We want to help to better the conditions for our own people. We want to see our people raised, not into a society of State ownership, but into a society in which, increasingly, the individual may become an owner. There is a very famous sentence of Sir Henry Maine's, in which he said that the progress of our civilisation had been of recent centuries a progress on the part of mankind from status to contract. Socialism would bring him back from contract to status.

— Stanley Baldwin

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "We want to help to better the conditions for our own people. We want to see our people raised, not into a society of State ownership, but into a society in which, increasingly, the individual may become an owner. There is a very famous sentence of Sir Henry Maine's, in which he said that the progress of our civilisation had been of recent centuries a progress on the part of mankind from status to contract. Socialism would bring him back from contract to status." in the context of "Stanley Baldwin, speech to the Junior Imperial League (3 May 1924), quoted in Stanley Baldwin, On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 225" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Henry James Sumner Maine" (Quotes about Maine) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Henry James Sumner Maine

About Henry James Sumner Maine

Sir Henry James Sumner Maine (15 August 1822 – 3 February 1888) was a British comparative jurist, historian and political proto-progressive nonetheless famous for his varied objections to Whig history.