Sir Winston Churchill

his peers in history might have paid him tribute

The Earl of Chatham

There are gentlemen who bring forward their .,aecusations of inconsistency against this man. Let us talk not of consistency as if it were a virtue. I boast a sovereign contempt for it. It is he refuge of confined minds: the harbour of ailing spirits. I have not come here armed at all 1:13i1ts with speeches and memoirs to the Winston Churchill. I take my stand on me one plain maxim, that a statesman who used his vital powers through more than sixty rlears in the defence of liberty deserves the °171age of his peers. We have been summoned !re by history, not to search in all the flaws of h s ambiguity with curious mischief; not to run jrift° every twisting creek of his career. s arlY should attempt these things, I will not uffer them. We are here, who were alive in the nl°rning of liberty, to acknowledge into our e „Mnpany one who was its noblest defender yen into the evening of his life. Let him whose eattelligence is so small that it may not ,n.crimpass the greatness of this man be silent. I ice that he was born, for it is a ground on Leh I stand firm, on which I dare meet any +rn,all, that England has not breathed more nobly On in the life of this her most honoured son. speak today for history, and from the high P_Mrlacle of fame we dare write history's verdict, England lives because this man lived.

Charles James FOX

' have heard the grievance that this man has

f loved party. A grievance as though it were a :lilt in hint! Gracious God, Sir, is honour now a iirl,me? Is courage to be counted a weakness? Is `!aise in a man to follow the truth as he sees it, a exist to take the path of duty? Cannot party li,vely ?ast hut that it must destroy all that is most strn,„ in the human spirit? "Parties must be is „ and to be strong they must be united." 5t he constitutional principle on which you hi,11,,d? Is it by this that you would defend before "°rY the exclusion of the honourable u entleman from your counsels? What! had the bjov!.,e,ls of Great Britain to be torn out, her best

`"LsPilt, her treasure wasted, that your party Party remain strong and united? Your

, strong! Yet once you shut out the one io`a.tesznan who could have added strength nwit• Your party, united! Yet you scorned the 1,Y inan who could unite England. I spoke this times, when my voice was still heard in Parliament, against the prolongation of a n.ecessary wars. But I protest more fiercely 1,alrist those who have made unnecessary hiars inevitable. Today, you who once excluded anntno etzant your praises. But when tomorrow Et,..tieT Prophet arises, will you know the voice

Macaulay:

AmoncPuogue to his history g the statesmen of his time Churchill Was 1,, genius, the first. His intellect was fertile, t,„..,"`g and capacious. His animated eloquence 4 the inspiration of his countrymen and, °fen in his closing years, the life of the House thou °Irlinons. His conversation overflowed with weiight, fenny and wit. His political writings reeri ,deserve to be studied for their literary i!, and fully entitle him to a place among the jus,1Ish Classics. His historical writings united a for Lh.istorical perspective with a decent respect be ms ancestors, and where the two could not eon reconciled the former properly had to fre cecle to the latter. To the weight dez-ived

talents so great and various, he joined a magnanimity which was armour against the insidious temptations of political life. Yet he was never wholly trusted. Indeed, those ample qualities which were the source of his greatness, frequently impeded him in the contests of the political arena. For he always saw events, not in the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after their consummation, they appear to the philosophical historian. With such a turn of mind, he could not easily continue to act cordially with any body of ordinary politicians. Every faction, in the day of its insolent and vindictive triumph, uttered its censure of him; and every faction, when in distress, found in him an unrancorous protector.

Benjamin Disraeli

I see that it is counted a matter for jest that I should come here this afternoon to honour the descendant of a Whig. He was, I would remind you, no common Whig. No other provoked such a sense of gratitude in his countrymen that their generosity was not great enough to give it its proper, its decent expression. They built him a palace, but withheld the crowns, so overcome were they with the inadequacy of the mere subscription of funds to honour such a memory. It was into this palace that the right honourable gentleman we honour today was born. It is him I come to honour, and with no reluctance or feeling of impropriety. It was no Whig who in the summer of your trial called forth the men from the shires: all men of metal; the large-acred squires from Dorset; the ' yeomen from broad Lincolnshire; the stout

hearts from Devon; the loyal Puritans of Essex; from the weald they trooped on; from the dales of Yorkshire; their spirit quickened. Quickened by a Whig, you say? As well believe that the Council of Ten could have led the people of Venice against their oppressors. If it is pointed to me that the right honourable gentleman devoted so many years of his life to resurrecting the memory of his Whig forebear in a pile of three volumes, then I answer that this filial piety is the final evidence of his fortunate emancipation from Whigdom.

William Ewart Gladstone

There were other days when England forsook the cause of freedom, when the eyes of the oppressed and the humbled were turned in vain to this favourite, this darling home of so much privilege and so much happiness, where it seemed that no high aspiration was any more entertained, and whence it was doubtful that any noble blow would again be struck, where the people that had built so noble an edifice for themselves were no longer ready to do what in them lay to secure the benefit of the same inestimable boon to others, permitting the banner which once they had carried so high in the eye of heaven to droop at its staff, until one , man assisted them to raise it again, appealing, as once it had been necessary for me to appeal, to the established traditon, older, wiser, nobler far than the pretended traditional policies by which this nation has so often been misled, a tradition not which disregarded British intez ests, but which taught the people to seek for the promotion of those interests in obeying the dictates of honour and justice, in following the laws, given to us in trust by Him who alone is our guide, of truth and right, by whose sanction only dare we claim the leadership of the nations, among whom our ascendancy rests, not on military power or industrial predominance, but on the steadfastness with which we hold to the course of duty, to which the honourable gentleman • called you and your fellow-countrymen, in the rightful defence of the peoples of Poland and Czechoslovakia, as I did once to the aid of the Christians of Armenia.