CHARLES JAMES FOX

How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world! And how much the best!

The worst of revolutions is a restoration.

All political power is a trust.

During five whole sessions I spoke every night but one; and I regret only that I did not speak on that night too.

No human government has the right to enquire into private opinions ...

Opinions become dangerous to a state only when persecution makes it necessary for the people to communicate their ideas under the bond of secrecy.

Our sovereign, the people.

[Describing Edmund Burke:] Burke was a damned wrong-headed fellow, through his whole life obstinate and jealous.

Kings govern by means of popular assemblies only when they cannot do without them.

Alexander the Great never gained more in one campaign than the noble lord has lost—he has lost a whole continent.

I cannot consent to the bloody consequence of so silly a contest about so silly an object, conducted in the silliest manner … from which we are likely to derive nothing but poverty, disgrace, defeat, and ruin.

This [passing the Prohibitory Act] puts us in a complete war with America.

… to go at once and establish a perfectly despotic government in Quebec, contrary to the genius and spirit of the British Constitution, carries with it the appearance of a love of despotism, and a settled design to enslave the American people.

The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when they were made slaves? The profit to Great Britain from the trade of her colonies, through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the price that America pays you for your protection;

If the tax was persisted in, the country would be forced into open rebellion.

[Napoleon has now] surpassed...Alexander & Caesar, not to mention the great advantage he has over them in the Cause he fights in.

There is no man who hates the power of the crown more, or who has a worse opinion of the Person to whom it belongs than I.

Toleration in religion was one of the great rights of man, and a man ought never to be deprived of what was his natural right.

Any thing that proves that it is not in the power of Kings and Princes by their great armies to have every thing their own way is of such good example that without any good will to the French one can not help being delighted by it, and you know I have a natural partiality to what some people call rebels.

So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction, that I had done my duty.

The question now was...whether that beautiful fabric [the English constitution]...was to be maintained in that freedom...for which blood had been spilt; or whether we were to submit to that system of despotism, which had so many advocates in this country.

Bonaparte's wish is Peace, nay that he is afraid of war to the last degree.

Illustrious man! deriving honor less from the splendor of his situation than from the dignity of his mind.

No human government has a right to enquire into private opinions, to presume that it knows them, or to act on that presumption. Men are the best judges of the consequences of their own opinions, and how far they are likely to influence their actions; and it is most unnatural and tyrannical to say, "as you think, so must you act. I will collect the evidence of your future conduct from what I know to be your opinions."

Persecution always says, 'I know the consequences of your opinion better than you know them yourselves.' But the language of toleration was always amicable, liberal, and just: it confessed its doubts, and acknowledged its ignorance ... Persecution had always reasoned from cause to effect, from opinion to action, [that such an opinion would invariably lead to but one action], which proved generally erroneous; while toleration led us invariably to form just conclusions, by judging from actions and not from opinions.