Earl of Aberdeen (1852-55) - Prime Minister - Parliament

George Hamilton Gordon was born in 1784. He became Prime Minister when the Earl of Derby resigned in 1852 and was initially very popular. However attitudes began to change during the Crimean War in 1854 and Aberdeen was blamed for the mismanagement of the war and he was forced to resign in 1855.

"I think it is clear that all government in these times must be a government of progress; conservative progress, if you please; but we can no more be stationary than reactionary"

Earl of Aberdeen on the Crimean War:
"As we are drifting fast towards war, I should think the Cabinet ought to see where they are going"

"I do not know how I shall bear being out of office. I have many resources and and many objects of interest; but after being occupied with great affairs, it is not easy to subside to the level of common occupations"

"I consider war to be the greatest folly, if not the greatest crime, of which a country could be guilty, if lightly entered into. (...) if a proof were wanted of the deep and thorough corruption of human nature, we should find it in the fact that war itself was sometimes justifiable."