GEORGE CANNING

I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.

But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend!

In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch Is offering too little and asking too much. The French are with equal advantage content, So we clap on Dutch bottoms just twenty per cent.

Here's to the pilot that weathered the storm.

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

A steady patriot of the world alone, The friend of every country but his own.

We conceive the recovery of her colonies by Spain to be hopeless,,, We aim not at the possession of any portion of them ourselves. We could not see any portion of them transferred to any other power with indifference.

The deed is done, the nail is driven, Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English

The thing is so done... The Yankees will shout in triumph; but it is they who lose most by our decision. The great danger of the time – a danger which the policy of the European System would have fostered – was a division of the world into European and American, republican and Monarchical; a league of worn-out governments, on the one had, and of youthful and stirring nations, with the United States at their head, on the other. We slip in between; and plant ourselves in Mexico. The United States have gotten the start of us in vain; and we link once more America to Europe. Six months more – and the mischief would have been done.

The conservation of monarchy in any portion of South America will tend to break the shock of that inevitable divorce by which the New World is about to be divided by the Old... But as to putting it forward, as a project or proposition of ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal democracy, and prevent the drawing of the line which I almost dread – America versus Europe. The United States, naturally enough, aim at this division and cherish the democracy which leads to it.

the avowed pretension of the United States, to put themselves at the head of the confederacy of all the Americas, and to sway that confederacy against Europe (Great Britain included), is not a pretension identified with our interests, or one that we can countenance or tolerate. It is, however, a pretension which there is no use in contesting in the abstract; but we must not say anything that seems to admit this principle.

I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the old.

Save me from the Candid Friend.

... a cure for the evils of universal democracy.

Every nation for itself and God for all of us.

Intimately concerned as we are with the system of Europe, it does not follow that we are therefore called upon to mix ourselves on every occasion, with a restless and meddling activity, in the concerns of the nations which surround us.

If the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Menace not intended is an engine which Great Britain could never condescend to employ.

The arm which should have launched the thunderbolt was occupied in guiding the pen.

The force of blood again prevails, and the mother and daughter stand together against the world.

The sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy was broken

Is the balance of power a fixed and unalterable standard? Or is it not a standard perpetually varying, as civilization advances, and as new nations spring up, and take their place among established political communities?

Gentlemen, all power is, or ought to be, accomplished by responsibility. Tyranny is irresponsible power. This definition is equally true, whether the power be lodged in one or many; — whether in a despot, exempted by the form of government from the control of the law; or in a mob, whose numbers put them beyond the reach of the law. Idle, therefore, and absurd, to talk of freedom where a mob domineers!

Away with the cant of “Measures, not men!”—the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

We are hated throughout Europe and that hate must be cured by fear.