John Morley

The error was grave, but it was natural, and one effect of it was to make every measure that proceeded from the court odious.

Hence, when the parlements took up their judicial arms in defence of abuses and against reforms, the common people took sides with them, for no better reason than that this was to take sides against the king's government.

Everything for the people, nothing by the people: this was the maxim of the Economists, and Turgot held it in all its rigour.

The royal authority was the only instrument that he could bring himself to use.

Even if he could have counted on a Frederick or a Napoleon, the instrument would hardly have served his purposes; as things were, it was a broken reed, not a fine sword, that he had to his hand.

But with them the absolute authority on which they leaned was real and most potent; with him it was a shadow.

It is a mistake to take the word of political adversaries for a man's character, but adversaries sometimes only say out aloud what is already suspected by friends.

The very austerity, loftiness, and purity, which make him so reverend and inspiring a figure in the pages of the noble-hearted Condorcet, may well have been impediments in dealing with a society that, in the fatal words of the Roman…

It was only by the gradual extinction of the vestiges of her ancient barbarisms, as occasion offered, that the Church could have escaped the crash of the Revolution.

Meanwhile, the king and the priests had their own way: the king was crowned at Rheims, and the priests exacted from him an oath to be unjust, oppressive, and cruel towards a portion of his subjects.

Turgot could only remonstrate; but the philosophic memorial in which he protested in favour of religious freedom and equality, gave the king a serious shock.

The sight of the gaiety of the people wrings my heart.

We have already said that the keyword to Turgot's political aims and social theory was not Pity nor Benevolence, but Justice.

It was Justice also, not temporary Prejudice nor Passion, that guided his judgment through the heated issues of the time.

His sublime intellectual probity never suffered itself to be tempted.

I know that excessive precision tends to deaden the fire alike of action and of composition; but there is a medium in everything.

The history of the struggle between England and France for Canada and for India acquires new point at a moment when the old rivalries are again too likely to be awakened in Madagascar, in Oceania, and in more than one region of Africa.

The history of the enlargement of the English state, the last survivor of a family of great colonial empires, has a vivid reality at a time when Australasia is calling upon us once more to extend our borders, and take new races under our…

The discussion of a colonial system ceases to be an abstract debate, and becomes a question of practical emergency, when a colonial convention presses the diplomacy of the mother-country and prompts its foreign policy.

History, it would seem, can speak with two voices--even to disciples equally honest, industrious, and competent.

This temporary fluctuation in opinion is not the first instance of men cherishing the shadow after they have rid themselves of the substance, and clinging with remarkable ardour to a sentiment after they have made quite sure that it shall…

If we are to talk about 'popular histories,' the writer who distances every competitor by an immeasurable distance is Macaulay.

Whatever may be said about that illustrious man's style, his conception of history, his theories of human society, it is at least beyond question or denial that his Essays have done more than any other writings of this generation to settle…

The Seven Years' War is in fact a turning point in our national history, as it is a turning point in the history of the world....

I would use my best endeavours to make these States independent in matters of administration.