London Evening Star Quotes
England shall not be driven from the proud pre-eminence which the blood and treasure of her sons have attained for her among nations, by a piece of striped bunting [the American flag] flying at the mastheads of a few fir-built frigates, manned by a handful of bastards and outlaws.
This article reached America where the insult proved a patriotic rallying point.
London Evening Star, 1812
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation illustrates several historical differences of the past with today. To be a world superpower, one had to have a dominant navy. Yet that navy was, in Churchill’s concept, a defensive system. It could protect the nation from invasion, and its merchant ships on the seas, but a navy provided no threat to invade towns and villages in Europe or elsewhere. Germany and France in contrast, with their large armies could invade other nations and menace Europe and Asia. It also illustrates why the navy and the army were considered completely separate departments of government in that they had different functions. The early American government had a Navy Department and Secretary but no Secretary of the Army or standing army.
There were few military thinkers at that time who would agree with Goebbels on this point.
In 1878 there was tension between England and Russia. Some in England were militant advocates of war. This song was extremely popular among them. As a result, they became known as Jingoes or Jingoists. The song became popular in America at the approach of the Spanish-American War and jingoism became part of the American political vocabulary.
The profits that England made on the North American Colonies and the Caribbean were very large. 10 years before the American Revolution most sophisticated English politicians realized that and one of the reasons the British fought so hard to keep America from Independence was that money.
Fox was one of the opposition leaders who were opposed to the heavy handed policies that the British King and Government had used.
Frederick the Great. He and many other Europeans thought that England had been so preoccupied with the American rebellion that she was ignoring Europe and other traditional foreign policy interests of theirs.
The message was conveyed by the Secretary of State, Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore). Parliament and the British King were jockeying for position in their relative powers. King James took the position that Parliament could NOT make laws that affected the American Colonies. Parliament disagreed. Later, some of the American patriots would use this quotation to claim that they were only subject to the King and not to Parliament. For related quotes on the King/Parliament issue, see {639144}, {639143}, {639142}, {639141}, {639140}, & {639137}
Earl of Cromer
He was addressing the Conservatives of Ulster, the Northern Ireland province that was the center of the Orangemen movement of Irish Protestants who were fighting to retain 'Protestant Ascendency' -- which was the social, political and cultural domination of the Protestants (the minority) over the Catholics (the majority). This was best achieved by keeping Ireland a part of Great Britain as opposed to having Ireland as a separate, independent country.
This quotation shows the level of denial that De Valera and other Irish leaders were in over Nazi Germany. See {639721} for other Irish Free State denial. Over 70,000 Irishmen and women rejected the moral stand of their government, and volunteered for the British Army to the great distress of the Free State leaders like De Valera.
