Consent Quotes - page 5
Government in reality, as has abundantly appeared, is a question of force, and not of consent. It is desirable that a government should be made as agreeable as possible to the ideas and inclinations of its subjects and that they should be consulted, as extensively as may be, respecting its construction and regulations. But, at last, the best constituted government that can be formed particularly for a large community, will contain many provisions that, far from having obtained the consent of all its members, encounter even in their outset a strenuous, thought ineffectual opposition.
William Godwin
No sooner was the Baltic open to our merchants, than corn was bought up there for importation into England; at the same time the continent was glutted with English goods, which, because the supply greatly exceeded the demand, were sold at less than their prime cost, and upon which the foreign governments soon laid new duties...to prevent the ruin of their own manufactures. This might have been a salutary lesson, if nations were ever rendered wise by experience; it might have taught us that, however willing one part of this nation might be to see the other ruined by the free admission of foreign grain, foreign governments would never consent to have their fabrics destroyed by the unrestricted introduction of British goods. It is a sound maxim in politics, whatever it may be in morals, that charity begins at home.
Robert Southey