William Ewart Gladstone

Think, ladies and gentlemen, of your "Men of Harlech". In my judgment, for the purpose of a national air...and without disparagement of old "God save the Queen" or anything else, it is perhaps the finest national air in the world.

This Coercion Act professes to be in the main an Act directed against conspiracy, and conspiracy is a bad thing. But under the name of conspiracy we say that it is directed against combination. Combination is not always a very good thing, …

Public economy is part of public virtue.

I have said, and I say again, "Remember Mitchelstown".

By force you have held it; by force you are holding it; by love we ask you to hold it.

I will venture to say that upon the one great class of subjects, the largest and the most weighty of them all, where the leading and determining considerations that ought to lead to a conclusion are truth, justice and humanity—upon these, …

I would tell them of my own intention to keep my counsel...and I will venture to recommend them, as an old Parliamentary hand, to do the same.

Socialism. Here I am at one with you. I have always been opposed to it. It is now taking hold of both parties, in a way I much dislike: & unhappily Lord Salisbury is one of its leaders, with no Lord Hartington (see his speech at Darwen) to …

I deeply deplore the oblivion into which public economy has fallen; the prevailing disposition to make a luxury of panics, which multitudes seem to enjoy as they would a sensational novel or a highly seasoned cookery; and the leaning of …

[An] Established Clergy will always be a tory Corps d'Armée.

I have even the hope that...the sense of justice which abides tenaciously in the masses will never knowingly join hands with the Fiend of Jingoism.

Yes; these are people struggling to be free, and they are struggling rightly to be free.

Ideal perfection is not the true basis of English legislation. We look at the attainable; we look at the practicable; and we have too much of English sense to be drawn away by those sanguine delineations of what might possibly be attained …

I am convinced that upon every religious, as well as upon every political ground, the true and the wise course is not to deal out religious liberty by halves, by quarters, and by fractions; but to deal it out entire, and to leave no …

What I hope for and desire, what I labour for and have at heart, is to decentralise authority in Ireland. We have disestablished the Church, we have relieved the tenant class of many grievances, and we are now going to produce a state of …

I have had the honour to receive the resolutions passed at the meeting recently held in Willis's Rooms, which your lordship has been good enough to forward to me. I can assure your lordship that the subject of those resolutions is engaging …

What is meant by "Boycotting?" In the first place, it is combined intimidation. In the second place, it is combined intimidation made use of for the purpose of destroying the private liberty of choice by fear of ruin and starvation.

I am not by any means much pained, but I am much surprised at this rapid development of a national sentiment and party in Egypt. ... ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’ is the sentiment to which I should wish to give scope: and could it prevail it …

As he lived, so he died — all display, without reality or genuineness.

We must fall back upon the broad, the incorruptible power of national liberty; that we decline to recognise any class whatever, be they peers or be they gentry, be they what you like, as entitled to direct the destinies of this nation …

The Government of India is the most arduous and perhaps the noblest trust ever undertaken by a nation.

What did the two words "Liberty and Empire" mean in the Roman mouth? They meant simply this: liberty for ourselves, empire over the rest of mankind.

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations …

It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase your engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do …