Quote#Wisdom
After the dismission of the present worthy chancellor, the seals…
Quote byWilliam Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne · 1737–1805
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Speech in the House of Lords (9 January 1770), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XVI. A.D. 1765–1771 (1806), column 665.
English (original)
After the dismission of the present worthy chancellor, the seals would go a begging; but he hoped there would not be found in the kingdom a wretch so base and mean spirited, as to accept of them on the conditions on which they must be offered.
— William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
More from William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
Situated as we are between the old world and the new, and between the southern and northern Europe, all that we ought to covet upon earth is free trade, and fair equality. With more industry, with more enterprize, with more capital than …
He was of opinion that some precaution was necessary, and these admissions, he trusted, would at least be sufficient to exempt him from the charge of Jacobinism.—But the present bills appeared to him greatly to overshoot the mark. The …
I felt attaching the name of rebellion hastily, and traitors, to the Americans, and comparing them to the Scots at Derby—which was the language used—dangerous, and perhaps both imprudent and unjust.
The conduct, temper, and apparent disposition of the present ministers, were so strongly marked with infamy, weakness, and wickedness, that he would cheerfully co-operate with any set of men, to drag them from their present situations, and …
He condemned, in general, the madness, injustice, and infatuation of coercing the Americans into a blind and servile submission.
Noble lords would do him the justice to recollect, that not one session had passed over since 1793, in which he had not, to use a vulgar but a strong expression, bored their lordships with his prophetic admonitions.