On Liberty, Gladstone said....

"The finance of the country is intimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which English Liberty has been gradually acquired … It lies at the root of English Liberty, and if the House of Commons can by any possibility lose the power of the control of the grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison …That power can never be wrenched out of your hands… That powerful leverage has been what is commonly known as the power of the purse – the control of the House of Commons over public expenditure – your main guarantee for purity – the root of English liberty. No violence, no tyranny, whether of experiments or of such methods as are likely to be made in this country, could ever for a moment have a chance of prevailing against the energies of that great assembly. No, if these powers of the House of Commons come to be encroached upon, it will be by tacit and insidious methods, and therefore I say that public attention should be called to this." Contained in a link in a comment to an article in this morning's Daily Telegraph, containing many interesting quotes on the present state of play in the Greek crisis, linked here, which concludes with the following apt point for mid August 2010 in the EU: Chris Pryce, of Fitch Ratings, said Greece is teetering on the edge of junk status but can still claw its way back........ "Everybody is away on holiday. When they get back they will have to face their miserable new world going into the autumn, and then we will see," he said.