Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow



Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow (9 December 1731 – 12 September 1806) was Lord Chancellor of Great Britain from 1778 to 1783, and again from 1783 to 1792.

Quotes

 * I was with you, Mr. Scott—till I heard your argument.
 * Related by John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon, in Horace Twiss, The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon (1844), p. 79.


 * The accident of an accident.
 * Speech in Reply to the Duke of Grafton. Recounted in Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 142.


 * When I forget my sovereign, may my God forget me.
 * 27 Parliamentary History, 680; Annual Register, 1789. Wilkes is reported to have replied, somewhat coarsely, but not unhappily it must be allowed, "Forget you! He ’ll see you damned first". Edmund Burke also exclaimed, "The best thing that could happen to you!" —Henry Peter, Lord Brougham, Statesmen of the Time of George III (Thurlow).


 * Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.
 * Quoted in John Poynder, Literary Extracts (1844), vol. 1, p. 268.
 * This is often misquoted as "Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?"

About Edward Thurlow

 * I suppose no one ever was so wise as Thurlow looks.
 * Charles James Fox, quoted in Thomas Moore's Journal, November 26, 1818.