Colonies Quotes

The die is now cast. The colonies must either submit or triumph.

It would be a very strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages [the Iroquois] could be capable or forming a scheme for such a union ... and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary.

I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons in any other land.

It is supposed an undoubted right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own consent given through their representatives.

That dense population in extreme distress inhabited an island where there was an established church which was not their church; and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom lived in distant capitals. Thus they had a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That was the Irish question.

America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, but you are the first philosopher, and indeed, the first man of letters for whom we are beholden to her.

… there is a notion of exchanging Hong Kong for a more healthy colony.

I have declined to move any such colony to any State [country] without first obtaining the consent of the government, with an agreement on its part to receive and protect such emigrants in all the rights of freemen…. Liberia and Haiti are as yet the only countries to which colonies of African descent from here could go with certainty of being received and adopted as citizens; and I regret to say such persons contemplating colonization do not seem so willing to go to those countries

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.

It is necessary to expose the false propaganda of the imperialists and thoroughly dispel the illusion that the imperialists will give up their positions in the colonies and dependent countries with good will.

The economic development of the country must come first. Education and the raising of the standards of the people will follow. Afterwards political development may be possible.

Our colonies are great and growing nationalities.

Our practical success in preserving order, securing justice and developing the material resources of many of our colonies is largely due to the fact that we have learnt to employ native agents wherever possible for detailed work of administration, and to adapt our government, where it can be safely done, to native conditions.

We beseech His Majesty to interest himself in ameliorating the condition of negroes in the colonies.

At no place in this world can I yield a single French right.

The sweetest violence to keep our enemies in check without resorting to open war is to populate the lands with our own people and fill them to such an extent that we instill respect in our feigned friends, the English, fear in our enemies, and obedience in the rebellious. Large numbers of people are the principal foundation of the Company's state in the Indies, without which it cannot exist.

Empires aren’t out there to do good. They are out there to benefit the nation state.

The idea of governing provinces and colonies by force is visionary and chimerical. The experiment has often been tried, and it has never succeeded. It ends infallibly in the ruin of one country or the other.

The British minister mistakes the Irish character. Had he intended to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar. There is no middle policy … greatly emancipate or fundamentally destroy.

Federalism, though it may be the most perfect [system] and the most capable of bringing happiness to human society, is nevertheless the most detrimental to the interests of our infant countries. Generally speaking our citizens are not yet able to exercise their rights fully and for themselves, because they lack the political virtues that charecterise true republics

Where Schools are not vigorously and Honourable Encouraged, whole Colonies will sink apace; into a Degenerate and Contemptible Condition, and at last become horribly Barbarous

The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when they were made slaves? The profit to Great Britain from the trade of her colonies, through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the price that America pays you for your protection;

The ministers and people of England might neither mean to be, nor be, the tyrants and oppressors which they were thought by the people of America, but whether they were as reasonable and prudent, or even as well justified in their measures of taxation, much less of coercion, as they supposed, is quite another question.

These ministers will destroy the empire they were called upon to save, before the indignation of a great and suffering people can fall upon their heads, in the punishment which they deserve. I affirm the war to have been a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical-war.

The test of a good colonial policy is that it shall prepare colonies for independent self—government.