Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux quotes
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, was a British statesman, lawyer, and reformer renowned for his influential role in 19th-century politics. One of his major achievements was advocating for the abolition of slavery and championing education reform, including helping to found University College London. He played a key part in passing the 1832 Reform Act and left a lasting impact on legal and social reforms in Britain. Here are 18 of his quotes:
Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said, that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,-a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Sometimes rhetorical phrases are applied even by eminent Judges to propositions of law. In Lord Dungannon v. Smith Lord Brougham in eloquent language declared it as "one of the corner stones of the law," and I understand the Lord Chancellor in the same case to have considered the decision in Jee v. Audley to be "one of the landmarks."
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The corresponding Society, except about six members, consists of the most dispicable and brutal of mobs. Men whose ignorance and savage barbarity renders them fit only for being tools-indeed, they are the common day laborers about town. This party, perfectly distinct in its nature from the opposition, has done more to ruin its cause, than Pitt and his party ever could have foreseen.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux