Ernest Barker Quotes (1874-1960)

“Collectivism...demands expert government..."the aristocracy of talent" of which Carlyle wrote. The control of a State with powers so vast will obviously need an exceptional and exceptionally large aristocracy.”

“It has indeed been a feature common to the Evangelical and Catholic sections of the English Church—and, for that matter, a feature common to both with various Nonconformist societies, which in this respect have followed the same tradition and adopted similar methods—that they have all sought to make religion a general social force.”

“I am bothered today by the abstract intellectualism of those with whom I used to associate, and by the conventional lip service to phrases in my old party—the Liberal Party. I admire more and more the practical wisdom of the good ordinary Englishman, facing the facts and "feeling" the right way through them—as a good Englishman feels his way through a new countryside... This means that I am getting nearer and nearer to you. It is a late change—at the age of 64. But I am glad that it is coming.”

“All in all, we may say that Nonconformity served as a gathering ground of the various influences (religious, political, and economic) which produced the Liberal or Manchester philosophy of the nineteenth century—a philosophy which not only inspired a party, but determined in no small measure the general life and aspect of Victorian England. "Way for individual enterprise"—this was its teaching; and backed by the manufacturing and commercial classes, which had always been the stronghold of Nonconformity, its teaching triumphed. The reluctant Peel, a Conservative and a Churchman, bowed to its logic; the subtle mind of Gladstone, nurtured in the same tenets as Peel, came under its influence and became its chosen apostle. The England which presented itself to the Continent—the England which the Continent still sees (though it is passing or passed)—was the England of this tradition: not the England of Church and King, the "land" and loyalty, but the England of chapel and counting-house, the factory and self-help. The philosophy of England which travelled abroad was the philosophy of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer; and both, whatever their religious views, were deeply imbued with the Nonconformist tradition. Spencer, as he writes in his autobiography, sprang from a family "essentially dissenting"; and his Nonconformist instincts and early training left an abiding mark, which appears in his opposition to any scheme of State education, and in the title and whole argument of The Man versus the State.”