Quotes About Parliament

Mr Moffat was a young man of very large fortune, in Parliament, inclined to business, and in every way recommendable. He was not a man of birth, to be sure; that was to be lamented;

Do something on your own hook. You men in Parliament are so much like sheep! If one jumps at a gap, all go after him, — and then you are penned into lobbies, and then you are fed, and then you are fleeced. I wish I were in Parliament. I'd get up in the middle and make such a speech. You all seem to me to be so much afraid of one another that you don't quite dare to speak out.

He had already known many members of Parliament to whom no outward respect or sign of honour was ever given by any one; and it seemed to him, as he thought over it, that Irish members of Parliament were generally treated with more indifference than any others. There were O'B–––– and O'C–––– and O'D––––

A gentleman over fifty, popular in London, with a seat in Parliament, fond of good dinners, and possessed of everything which the world has to give, could hardly have wished to run away with his neighbour's wife

But I should never have had patience to sit all night upon that bench in the House of Commons. How men can do it! They mustn't read. They can't think because of the speaking. It doesn't do for them to talk. I don't believe they ever listen. It isn't in human nature to listen hour after hour to such platitudes. I believe they fall into a habit of half-wakeful sleeping, which carries them through the hours; but even that can't be pleasant

We shall see. You may be sure at any rate of this, — that I shall never ask them to do so. Things seem to be so different now from what they did. I don't care for the seat. It all seems to be a bore and a trouble. What does it matter who sits in Parliament? The fight goes on just the same. The same falsehoods are acted. The same mock truths are spoken. The same wrong reasons are given. The same personal motives are at work.

So also to Sir Robert Peel was Catholic Emancipation horrible, so was Reform of Parliament, so was the Corn Law Repeal. They were horrible to him, horrible to be thought of, horrible to be expressed. But the people required these measures, and therefore he carried them, arguing on their behalf with all the astuteness of a practised statesman.

IRELAND NOW HAD its Parliament formally swallowed up in that of the United Kingdom by an Act which came into force on 1 January 1801.

Daniel O'Connell had to wait until Parliament reassembled to commence his parliamentary career. He finally took his seat on 4 February 1830.

Catholic priests could not be Members of Parliament.

The real political life in Russia unfortunately is not in the parliament but on the streets and in the media.

The British general election of 2010 returned only three MPs to the Commons who described their professions as "science or research" (compared with thirty-eight barristers).

and punches being thrown. It wasn't a gig so much as a small riot with accompaniment from an r'n'b band. It made Saturday night in the Northwood Hills look like the State Opening of Parliament.

Quando assunse l'incarico di primo ministro in uno dei principali Stati europei, governato da oltre cinquant'anni con un regime parlamentare, Mussolini aveva 39 anni. Non solo era il più giovane primo ministro della storia d'Italia, ma era deputato appena da un anno e non aveva mai avuto altra esperienza di governo.

The evils of a bad tax are quite sure to be pressed upon the ears of Parliament in season and out of season; the few persons who have to pay it are thoroughly certain to make themselves heard.

A legislature continuously sitting, always making laws, always repealing laws, would have been both an anomaly and a nuisance.

The working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament with public opinion. They are left out in the representation, and also in the thing represented.

There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a bona fide traveler to read. If you wish him to read, you must make reading pleasant. You must give him short views, and clear sentences.

The great bulk of treaties could wait a little without harm, and in the very few cases when urgent haste is necessary, an autumn session of Parliament could well be justified, for the occasion must be of grave and critical importance.

And so the permanent public servant will be teased by the wits, oppressed by the bores, and massacred by the innovators of Parliament.

The experiment of a strictly Parliamentary Republic—of a Republic where the Parliament appoints the executive—is being tried in France at an extreme disadvantage, because in France a Parliament is unusually likely to be bad, and unusually likely also to be free enough to show its badness.

Penalties were established for refusal to work, for leaving a place of employment to seek higher pay, and for the offer of higher pay by employers. Proclaimed when Parliament was not sitting, the ordinance was reissued in 1351 as the Statute of Laborers.

One by one, members of the Commons, speaking in turn at a lectern in the center of the chamber, added their charges and complaints. The King's councillors, they said, had grown rich at the cost of impoverishing the nation; they had deceived the King and wasted his revenues, causing the repeated demands for fresh subsidies. The people were too poor and feeble to endure further taxation. Let Parliament discuss instead how the King might maintain the war out of his own resources.

The idea of a census was considered an intolerable intrusion. Providing information to "place-men and taxmasters," it was denounced by a Member of Parliament in 1753 as "totally subversive of the last remains of English liberty." If any officer should demand information about his household and family he would refuse it and if the officer persisted he would have him thrown into the horsepond.