British Governance Quotes

Conscription would amount to the sacrifice of nine-tenths of our moral case in this war. It would not only amount to an admission—wholly unjustified—that the heart of the country is not in the war…. It will change the basis of our participation. It will no longer be the war of the British people; it will be the war of the British governing classes.

… there will be no peace for India, nor any stability of Government in the Punjab, nor any release from anxiety and costly defensive preparations on our frontier, unless the British Government, justly indignant at the unprovoked and treacherous aggression once again committed against them by the Sikhs, shall now effectually provide against future dangers by subverting for ever the Dynasty of the Sings, by converting the Punjab into a British province, and by adopting the only measure which will secure the observance of peace by the Sikhs, namely, depriving them utterly of all the means of making war.

When Hong Kong was under British administration, governors were dispatched from London to govern this city. We had no say in the matter.

British democratic values are embedded in the primacy of parliament.

We esteem our connection with and dependence on Great Britain as one of our greatest blessings; and apprehend the latter will be sufficiently secure, when it is considered that the inhabitants in the colonies have the most unbounded affection for his majesty’s person, family and government, as well as the mother country, and that the subordination to the parliament is universally acknowledged.

Lord Loudoun, so it turns out, never even visited Virginia though he had been named our governor.   But that was the least of his sins.   Despite being in America for only two short years, from 1756 when he was appointed military commander of all the British troops in North America to 1758 when he was fired, he managed to leave quite a trail of debris behind him.   And because our county was formed in 1757, we got stuck with his name.

The 1857 uprising in India did not free the subcontinent, but it changed the way the British viewed and sought to govern it.

Taking control of our laws border and money, run not by a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats in Brussels but by a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats in Britain. That ladies and gentlemen is a dream worth fighting for.

Your excellency is pleased to tell us, that declarations have been made and still subsist, that the act of parliament for granting the stamp-duties in the colonies, shall not be executed within the province. We know of no such declarations. If any individuals of the people have declared an unwillingness to subject themselves to the payment of the stamp-duties, and choose rather to lay aside all business, than to make use of the stamped papers, as we are not accountable for such declarations, so neither can we see any thing criminal in them: this house has no authority to control their choice in this matter: the act does not oblige them to make use of the papers; it only exacts the payment of certain duties for such papers as they may incline to use: such declarations may possibly have been made and may still subsist, very consistently with the utmost respect to the king and parliament.

Membership of the E.U. makes Britain literally ungovernable, in the sense that no administration elected by the people can govern the country.