His disregard of popular desire suggests the fatal ease with which we neglect the opinion of those who stand outside the active centre of political conflict.

Above all, his hostility to the Revolution should at least make later generations beware lest novelty of outlook be unduly confounded with erroneous doctrine.
Yet even when such deduction has been made, there is hardly a greater figure in the history of political thought in England.

Without the relentless logic of Hobbes, the acuteness of Hume, the moral insight of T.H.Green, he has a large part of the faculties of each.

He brought to the political philosophy of his generation a sense of its direction, a lofty vigour of purpose, and a full knowledge of its complexity, such as no other statesman has ever possessed.

His flashes of insight are things that go, as few men have ever gone, into the hidden deeps of political complexity.