God Does Not Trust The British In The Dark.
The 19th-century politician Lord Salisbury complained that the £1.5 million spent on colonial defence by Britain in 1861 merely enabled the nation "to furnish an agreeable variety of stations to our soldiers, and to indulge in the sentiment that the sun never sets on our Empire." A Sri Lankan news source credits Colvin R. de Silva with coining the famous response: "That's because God does not trust the British in the dark."