Chief Secretaries for Ireland

"How happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another's will; Whose armor is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill!"

"Who God doth late and early pray, More of his grace than gifts to send, And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend."

"Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all."

"You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies, What are you when the sun shall rise?"

"I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff."

"Love lodged in a woman's breast Is but a guest."

"He first deceased; she for a little tried To live without him, liked it not, and died."

"Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to."

"An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth."

"The itch of disputing will prove the scab of churches."

"Hic jacet hujus sententiæ primus author: DISPUTANDI PRURITUS ECCLESIARUM SCABIES. Nomen alias quære."

"Advised a young diplomat "to tell the truth, and so puzzle and confound his enemies.""

"It became normal to have at each of the major courts a resident “ambassador”—a word defined by the English poet and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton in a punning epigram as “a man sent to lie abroad for his country’s good.” Given the time required for travel, and the hazards en route—especially in an age of dynastic and religious warfare—permanent ambassadors offered a convenient substitute for personal summitry. And their detailed reports required the attention of specialist secretaries who oversaw foreign affairs, such as Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan London or Antonio Perez at the court of Philip III. Day-to-day diplomacy tended to slip out of the hands of rulers."

"Our hopes, like towering falcons, aim At objects in an airy height; The little pleasure of the game Is from afar to view the flight."

"From ignorance our comfort flows. The only wretched are the wise."

"That if weak women went astray, Their stars were more in fault than they."

"The end must justify the means."

"Forbear to mention what thou canst not praise."

"Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives She builds our quiet as she forms our lives; Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even, And opens in each heart a little heaven."

"Be to her virtues very kind; Be to her faults a little blind; Let all her ways be unconfined; And clap your padlock — on her mind!"

"And thought the nation ne'er would thrive Till all the whores were burnt alive."

"He ranged his tropes, and preached up patience; Backed his opinion with quotations."

"Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician."

"Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart, And often took leave, but was loth to depart."

"His noble negligences teach What others' toils despair to reach."

"Till their own dreams at length decive 'em, And oft repeating, they believe 'em."

"To John I owed great obligation; But John, unhappily, thought fit To publish it to all the nation: Sure John and I are more than quit."

"Venus, take my votive glass; Since I am not what I was, What from this day I shall be, Venus, let me never see."

"Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior; The son of Adam and of Eve: Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?"

"All jargon of the schools."

"Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?"

"They never taste who always drink; They always talk who never think."

"That air and harmony of shape express, Fine by degrees, and beautifully less."

"Abra was ready ere I called her name; And though I called another, Abra came."

"For hope is but the dream of those that wake."

"Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn; And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born."

"A Rechabite poor Will must live, And drink of Adam's ale."

"The extreme advanced party is likely for the future to have on its side a great portion of the most highly cultivated intellect in the nation, and the contest will lie between brains and numbers on the one side, and wealth, rank, vested interest, possession in short, on the other."

"The new problem for statesmen will be not how the Queen's Government may be carried on, but how the National Will may be most promptly executed."

"If we survey the entire field of political action, we shall find that progress, wherever it is stayed, is stayed by the untimely relics of territorialism, and that in removing them we at once find ourselves led on to the true conditions by taking the policy of industry for our foundation. The industrial policy is emphatically the national policy... At nearly every point it is the superstition or sinister interest of the territorial power which thwarts, restrains, and depresses the harmonious adjustment of laws and administration to the needs of the public well-being."

"There is the Irish question... Underneath the surface of this, and wrapped up in it, are nearly all the controversies of principle which will agitate the political atmosphere for our time. It is a microcosm of the whole imperial question. It is the test of our fitness to deal with the other problems which modern circumstance, pressing hard against the old order of ideas and traditions, is forcing upon our attention. The functions of the State, the duties of property, the rights of labour, the question whether the many are born for the few, the question of a centralised imperial power, the question of the pre-eminence of morals in politics—all these things lie in Irish affairs."

"It is not for the candidates, but for the temper shown by the constituencies, that one may grieve, if there be matter for grief in the unmistakable proof which the elections are furnishing, that people do not recognise the necessity of giving supreme political power to supreme political intelligence."

"The evils of a military system, which, after all, every day must attenuate, are light compared with the evils of an anarchic conservatism reinstated in central Europe. Divided Germany means preponderating Russia. What can be more desirable in the interests of the highest civilisation than the interposition in the heart of the European state-system, of a powerful, industrious, intelligent, and progressive people, between the western nations and the half-barbarous Russian swarms? To the careful observer of the history of modern Europe it is plain that increasing vigour and self-conscious strength in Germany are other words for the spread eastwards of the best of those ideas, the most durable of those civilising elements, in which the difference of historic development has enabled England and France to anticipate her."

"In the American civil war partisanship with the sides there was the veil of a kind of civil war here. An unspoken instinct revealed to mutually hostile classes in England that their battle also was being fought in the contest between the free North and the slave-holding South. The triumph of the North, as has been often remarked, was the force that made English liberalism powerful enough to enfranchise the workmen, depose official Christianity in Ireland, and deal a first blow at the landlords."

"I shall not flinch if they decapitate or flagellate all the bishops and curés in Paris."

"Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat."

"Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theatre of the tragedy of man."

"Household suffrage as yet is only a thing on paper. We have still to feel its reality. The new possessors of power are still hardly aware that it is theirs. And who are the new possessors of power? The skilled artisans, the leaders of trade societies, and the like? Alas, no; it is not they but those below them, those between the artisan and the pauper, who, whenever they choose to awake, or whenever they choose in their dreams to let somebody else lead them, hold the destinies of our society in their hands."

"In plain English, a majority of those who come out of the schools cannot read a newspaper. This unfortunate class is our ruling class. Their votes can carry elections, change administrations, decide policies. As yet they have no initiative, and it may be some time before they cease to follow the initiative of others. When their time comes, and a leader, they will make terrible short work with a good deal that you hold precious now."

"The sophists of newspaper press are so busily fighting momentous practical issues with the lath sword of some little abstract theory, that they have no eyes for the gulf which is ready to open at the feet of them and the institutions which they so absurdly suppose themselves to be defending... They do not discern that the same classes who are now believed to be on the point of following the publicans and the clergy to the polls...are one day very likely to invent cries of their own, that will bring destruction where the abused reformer to-day only seeks improvement, and, where we only seek to amend, will trample, efface, obliterate."

"Evolution is not a force but a process; not a cause but a law."

"You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him."

"Do let us try to give a national, not a class tone to English politics ."

"If the country does best, where State action is least, you at least require political effort enough to reduce those noxious forms of State action which have come down to us from the imprudence of pre-scientific days. The philosopher, for example, who is most in earnest for the free play of social forces, is bound before all other men to press on for the disestablishment of the State Church."

"Germany is the power in whose strength, prosperity, and vigorous government, Europe has the most vital interest, because she is the Power best able from her position to deal with Russia."

"Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other."

"You cannot demonstrate an emotion or prove an aspiration."

"It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way."

"I'm all against your “autoritaire”. I don't believe in it, and I never did. Your Cromwells and Fredericks don't do their work half as well as slow sober free American citizens."

"Yet the Opposition refused to extend the franchise unless they were assured that there would be some manipulation or re-arrangement of seats, which, would, in fact, be taking away with one hand what was given with the other. He regretted that proportional representation should have been introduced into the debate from that side of the House, for all these schemes were but new disguises for the old Tory distrust of the people."

"Should they, whose forefathers would not endure the tyranny and misgovernment of kings, submit to the oppression and stupidity of peers? (Loud cheers.) The presence of an hereditary Chamber, which was, in fact, not much more at this moment than a Tory club with the power of unlimited veto in a free Government, was nothing more than a very bad practical joke... That great pile of Durham Cathedral had stood for eight centuries. Many a struggle had it witnessed in all these long years between feudalism and humanity, between the privileged few and the toiling multitude. In spite of many a gloomy hour the cause of humanity had conquered; it was conquering still, and if they were true to one another before many months were past they would have added another and a most glorious victory to those achievements of the past. (Loud cheers.)"

"Yes, gentlemen, be sure that no power on earth can separate henceforth the question of mending the House of Commons from the other question of mending or ending the House of Lords. (Loud cheers, the whole assembly rising and waving their hats.)"

"[W]ill any one tell me what there is to venerate in the House of Lords? (Laughter and cheers.) Will any one tell me when in the great battle of freedom they have been on the side of freedom and justice? (Cheers.) Will they tell me when they have not been against it? (“Always.”) ... Who will talk of the ripe wisdom of an assembly which resists without courage, and obstructs without straightforwardness; which asserts without approval, and gives way without conviction? (Loud cheers.) ... [I]f we have to consider a second rejection of this Bill the Liberal party will borrow an amendment of the Tory party with a slight variation, and propose, “No treatment of Parliamentary reform is satisfactory which does not include the reform of the hereditary Chamber.” (Prolonged cheers.)"

"‘Natural rights’...[is not] a true way of putting things—and certainly not the most useful and fertile way. Nature [is] simply the mastery of the strongest [and confers no rights on man]. Two savage tribes contend for a tract of land of wh. they are in need for their subsistence: nature gave the right to this land to the tribe wh. was strong enough to thrash the other. No right is worth a straw apart from the good that it brings: and all claims to rights must depend—not upon nature—but upon the good that the said rights are calculated to bring to the greatest number. General utility, public expediency, the greatest happiness of the greatest number—these are the tests and standards of a right; not the dictate of nature."

"Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism... We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new... The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? ... Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation... [O]ther countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them... In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party."

"I hope...Her Majesty's Ministers...will...say that the Soudan must be left to its own people to work out their own deliverance in their own fashion."

"And we are so often reminded, Sir, of the villainy of the character of the Irish nation, that I rejoice to be able to bring these facts forward. The whole of this Bill is based on the theory that the Irish people are incorrigible. The Commissioners have put upon public record that the Irish people are naturally honest, hard-working, and deeply attached to their country. And I say, Sir, that a man of this kind who makes such a sacrifice—and there are thousands of them in Ireland—excites my pity quite as much—as the victim of a moonlighting outrage. I say I am less anxious—anxious as I am—to secure vengeance upon 100 or 200 ruffians than I am to secure rightful and humane treatment for the thousands of poor tenants in Ireland. There is the difference between Gentlemen opposite and us on this side of the House."

"But are you so sure...that when Ulster, or the corner of Ulster knows that Great Britain has made up its mind that there is to be an effective, a real self-government in Ireland—are you so sure Ulster will turn its back upon Ireland and claim to be excluded from such Government? (“No.”) I do not believe it... I say that a good deal of this zeal for Ulster is artificial."

"I half wrote a discourse on modern democracy, how the rule of numbers is to be reconciled with the rule of sage judgment, and the passion for liberty and equality is to be reconciled with sovereign regard for law, authority, and order; and how our hopes for the future are to be linked to wise reverence for tradition and the past."

"There is a loud cry in these days for clues that shall guide the plain man through the vast bewildering labyrinth of printed volumes."

"We are told by a Lord of the Admiralty who represents a Sheffield division that it is all over with the old Manchester school, and that we have got into new days. I do not belong to the Manchester school. I have nothing to say about the Manchester school except this—that I chanced to write the life of a very important leader of that school. and what did Mr. Cobden say upon this very point? He said:—"I am willing to spend a hundred millions on the fleet if necessary". The Radical party have never been the party who denied the great proposition that lies at the bottom of British politics—namely, that we must have absolute supremacy at sea."

"We are told that we are a pack of Socialists and faddists, and that common sense is on the side of the Unionist party. Well, for my part, I am for going in for all progressive legislation step by step. I do not believe in the short cuts. If Socialism means the abolition of private property, if it means the assumption of land and capital by the State, if it means an equal distribution of products of labour by the State, then I say that Socialism of that stamp, communism of that stamp, is against human nature, and no sensible man will have anything to say to it. But if it means a wise use of the forces of all for the good of each, if it means a legal protection of the weak against the strong, if it means the performance by public bodies of things which individuals cannot perform so well, or cannot perform at all, then the principles of Socialism have been admitted in almost the whole field of social activity already, and all we have to ask when any proposition is made for the further extension of those principles is whether the proposal is in itself a prudent, just, and proper means to the desired end, and whether it is calculated to do good, and more good than harm."

"[S]o far as sick pay is concerned, I do not see how the State is to be responsible for the payment of...sick pay, how the State is to be able to exercise that efficient control over what is known as malingering, feigning sickness, though the friendly societies are able to do so."

"I confess that I am in favour, if we can, of sticking to the old system by which you yourselves shall use your own judgment and your own energy in order to cultivate the virtue of thrift, and in order to see that thrift is rewarded... I cannot conceive a more important virtue to cultivate than this of thrift."

"I am not going to enter into this chapter, but you all know that this which is called—I do not much like the name, but I confess I have not a better name—"State Socialism" is what has protected us from revolutionary socialism, which is much a worse thing. Probably a considerable portion of this audience consists of men who live on weekly wages; but I ask you not to rush at the first thing that is offered you, not to believe that because a thing sounds very pleasant—like compulsory reduction, for example, of the hours of labour—do not be quite sure until you have looked round it that it may not end in leaving your condition worse than it found it. I should deplore the advance of State Socialism, though I believe much may be hoped from it. I should regard it as a great disaster, the greatest disaster that could befall this great population, if it did anything to take away your self-reliance, the control of the individual over his own appetites and passions, his own idleness and self-indulgence, and make you look to anything but self-reliance. This, in the long run, would do more harm than good."

"I myself am no opponent of State intervention. I have never been, and never shall be, as soon as it is shown to me that State intervention can achieve some good end which cannot be reached without it. And I hope that opinion will soon turn in the direction of municipal intervention in these affairs, wherever municipal intervention is adequate, and I will tell you why...I believe that in municipalities the area of supervision is sufficiently small, that people concerned come up in sufficiently close quarters with the matters of administration to enable them to avoid all the dangers, risks, and wastes to which the general state of capitals is open."

"According to my observation, the change in my own generation is different. They have ceased either to trust or to distrust liberty, and have come to the mind that it matters little either way. Men are disenchanted. They have got what they wanted in the days of their youth, yet what of it, they ask?"

"[T]here is nothing that the most prominent men in the Liberal party more earnestly desire than that labour representation, direct labour representation, shall be as large as possible... It is sometimes said to me, "Oh! but you are against State intervention in matters of great social reform". At this time of the day it would be absurd for any man who has mastered all the Mining Regulations Acts, the Factories Acts, the great mass of regulation which affects trade; it would be absurd for any man to stand on a platform and say he was entirely against State intervention. I, for my part, have never taken that position... My own belief is that in the matters of hours and of wages for adult male labour the interference would be a bad and mischievous thing...that in such matters, for example, as housing of the poor and so forth, the proper machinery through which to carry out these operations is municipal and not Parliamentary."

"I have always been strong for a large increase of labour representation in the House of Commons... Now, I dare say the day may come—it may come sooner than some think—when the Liberal party will be transformed or superseded by some new party; but before the working population of this country have their destinies in their own hands, as they will assuredly do within a measurable distance of time, there is enough ground to be cleared which only the Liberal party is capable of clearing. The ideal of the Liberal party is that view of things which believes that the welfare of all is bound up with injustice being done to none. Above all, according to the ideal of the Liberal party—that party from which I beseech you, not for my sake, but for your own, not to sever yourselves—the ideal of the Liberal party is this—that in the mass of the toilers on land all the fountains of national life abide and the strongest and most irresistible currents flow."

"I said years ago that I would rather be the man who helped on a rational scheme which should secure the comfort of old age than I would be a general who had won ever so many victories in the field. These are, to me, the two most tragic sights in the world—a man who is able to work, and anxious to work, and who cannot get work; and the other tragic sight is that of a man who has worked until his eyes have become dim, and his natural force has become abated, and he is left to spend the declining years of a life that has been so nobly used, so honourably used, in straits, difficulties, and hardships."

"I want to take in all these labour questions from the largest possible nationalist point of view, and it is this—that while the State should do all that it prudently can to protect the health and life, not only of women and children, but of the whole assembly of workers, it is absurd, it is perilous to thrust Acts of Parliament, as I have said before, like the steam ram-rod into the delicate machinery of commercial undertakings."

"It was often asked how it was that Scotland was a democratic country. He believed that the root causes of the spirit of democracy in its truest and highest sense still prevailed and would prevail in Scotland. Some said that the Scottish people were democrats because of John Knox and the parish schools; some said it was due to Burns, who was the truest democrat who ever wrote a verse; some said it was the Presbyterian form of ecclesiastical organisation. He would be content with the result that, somehow or other, there was in that part of the island a sort of reservoir of democratic man-to-man feeling which they hardly found in any other part of the United Kingdom."

"We all know that the besetting danger of Churches is formalism; the besetting danger of State action, of corporate action, is officialism and mechanism; and we all know that it is a drawback to many modern ideals that they rest upon materialism and a soulless secularism."

"Imperialism brings with it militarism, and must bring with it militarism. Militarism means a gigantic expenditure, daily growing. It means an increase in government of the power of aristocratic and privileged classes. Militarism means the profusion of the taxpayer's money everywhere except in the taxpayer's own home. And militarism must mean war...it is not the hateful demon of war but white-winged peace that has been the nurse and guardian of freedom and justice and well-being over that great army of toilers upon whose labours, upon whose privations, upon whose hardships after all the greatness and the strength of Empires and of States are founded and are built up."

"I freely recognise that it would be most stupid not to recognise that there is a sense in which the word imperialism is used in the sense of national duty, not national vainglory, in which it is used as meaning not aggression but the service of mankind... Imperialism in this higher and better sense must be tested and measured and limited by common sense and the Liberal party will only be useful as an instrument of human progress so long as they walk persistently and steadfastly in the path of these watchwords—peace, economy, and reform. If the Liberal party abandon that path, what will they be but a body without a soul?"

"You may carry fire and sword into the midst of peace and industry—such a war of the strongest Government in the world against this weak little Republic, and the strongest Government in the world, with untold wealth and inexhaustible resources, will bring you no glory. (Renewed and prolonged cheering.) It will bring you no profit but mischief, and it will be wrong. (Hear, hear.) You may make thousands of women widows and thousands of children fatherless. It will be wrong. (Cheers.) You may add a new province to your Empire. It will still be wrong. (Renewed cheers.) You may give greater buoyancy to the South African stock and share market. (Hear, hear.) You may create South African booms. You may send the price of Mr. Rhodes's Chartereds up to the point beyond the dream of avarice. Yes, even then it will be wrong. (Loud and continued cheering.)"

"Had they thought of the relations between Imperialism and social reform? Could we continue this process of territorial expansion with our increasing Budgets? What we wanted was resolute and sustained attention to strengthening our industrial position. What was the use of conquering new markets when it was as much as we could do to hold the markets which we had already? (Cheers.) As to the Liberal policy...the day when the Liberal party forsook its old principles of peace, economy, and reform the Liberal party would have to disband and to disappear. (Cheers.) The Socialists would take its place... [I]f he were to choose between the Socialist and the Militarist, with all his random aims, his profusion of national resources, his disregard for the rights and feelings of other people, he himself declared he considered the Socialist's standards were higher and their means were no less wise. (Cheers.)"

"Simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect."

"The conference of railway men will damage us gravely with the middle class, for railways are the middle class investment, and to pull profits down...as they admit to be the effect of their demand—will frighten people. And if anybody thinks we can govern this country against the middle class, he is wrong."

"I am as cautious a Whig as any Elliot, Russell, or Grey, that was ever born."

"I have often thought that Strafford was an ideal type, both for governor of Ireland in the 17th century, and governor of India in the 20th century."

"I submit that it is an Agreement that this country may not only be contented with, but proud of."

"Define it as we may, faith in Progress has been the mainspring of Liberalism in all its schools and branches."

"[I] always had a soft place in my heart for the patrician Whigs."

"I am, and always have been, a pretty strong individualist."

"I am a theorist, but I detest the introduction of abstract principles into the great practical difficulties of this nation."

"There has been a great deal of talk about raising class prejudice. I dislike class prejudice... There has been no feeling of class prejudice in my mind; but, my Lords, there is a worse thing than class prejudice, and that is race or national prejudice. We have not had much of it, in fact I may say almost none of it, here. Still is it not true that the cry which is going to be loudly invoked in this election, the Irish cry, depends upon race and national prejudice? Talk of class prejudice. The classes will take care of themselves, I trust. The English working man in my view—and I represented a great and important group of them for many years—is not in the least a Phrygian with a red cap, though some of his fellows may talk in that vein."

"Whether France or Italy or Germany or England has made the greatest contribution in the history of modern civilisation—however that speculative controversy may be settled, this at least is certain, that those are not wrong who hold that Germany's high and strict standard of competency, the purity and vigour of her administration of affairs, her splendid efforts and great success in all branches of science, her glories—for glories they are—in art and literature, and the fixed strength of character and duty in the German people entitle her national ideals to a supreme place among the greatest-ideals that now animate and guide the world. Do not let us forget all that. German ambition is a perfectly intelligible and even lofty ambition."

"History, as Treitschke contends, is first of all the presentation of res gestae, and of active statesmen. The essential things in the statesman are strength of will, courage, massive ambition, passionate joy in the result. It needs no wizard to see how such doctrine as this lends a hand to the sinister school of political historians, who insist that the event is its own justification; that Force and Right are one."

"The noble Earl, Lord Curzon, stated that he could not understand how it is that we, the Party who have always taken the side of people rightly struggling to be free, do not sympathise with Ulster. In all the cases that he named—Italy, Greece, and so forth—there was actual oppression and hateful misgovernment. No one says there is actual oppression or hateful misgovernment in Ulster. It is all hypothesis."

"The decrepitude that ended in the Latin conquest of Constantinople at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and the Mahometan conquest in the middle of the fifteenth, is an awkward reproof to the optimist superstition that civilized communities are universally bound somehow or another to be progressive."

"I was always opposed to the Anglo-Russian agreement—so was Kitchener. Who stands most to gain out of this war? Russia. Who is the real aggressor? Russia. At the end of it we shall have her on our backs. What do you imagine will be the effect on the Indian mind of the employment of Indian troops against Europeans?"

"Censorship...ought to be confined to the temporary suppression of military and naval news which might assist the enemy... Public opinion might be fallible, but it was not half as fallible as individual opinion, and, good or bad, the Government had to lean upon it; how could they do that unless public opinion had full, free, and correct information as to facts?"

"I'm sick of Wilson ... He hailed the Russian Revolution six months ago as the new Golden Age, and I said to Page, “What does he know of Russia?” to which Page replied, “Nothing.” As for his talk about a union of hearts after the war, the world is not made like that."

"A mirage, and an old one... One may as well talk of London morality being due to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But take away Scotland Yard!"

"I have not read it, and I don't intend to read it. It's not worth the paper it's written on. To the end of time it'll always be a case of “Thy head or my head.” I've no faith in these schemes."

"Liberalism, as we have known it, is dead beyond resurrection."

"As for progress, what signs of it are there now? And all we Victorians believed in it from the Utilitarians onwards."

"There are some books which cannot be adequately reviewed for twenty or thirty years after they come out."

"The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget."

"In my creed, waste of public money is like the sin against the Holy Ghost."

"Success depends on three things: who says it, what he says, how he says it; and of these three things, what he says is the least important."

"Excess of severity is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is the path to the bomb."

"I don't like that hateful heresy, proportional representation."

"Ireland and Russia are the two most ‘Christian’ countries in Europe. To-day they are the most disfigured by violence and outrage. What do you make of that?"

"I should like to have been there if only to have got up and said, “If Mr. G.'s Home Rule Bill had been passed 30 years ago could Ireland have been worse than it is now? Would it not have been better?” And then fallen dead like Lord Chatham."

"Montagu calls himself my disciple. I see very little of my teaching in him. This dyarchy won't work. As for his strange plea for rousing the masses of India out of their “pathetic content” by reforms for which they do not ask, and which they cannot work, it's a most unwise remark. My reforms were quite enough for a generation at least."

"Let us look at the history of Ireland, the history of this chronic government by coercion. What does it mean? It was the naked government of another Kingdom by irresponsible force—irresponsible, that is to say, as regards those whom this system was to affect. Coercion Laws were passed, and were smoothly, described as being for the protection of life and property, of respect for ordinary law, and so on. All those methods proved an ugly failure."

"My only consolation has been to read up the history of Ireland in Lecky and our abominable treatment of her. All the faults of the Irish character are traceable to that."

"Present party designations have become empty of all contents...Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits' end—when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate? How are we to measure the use and abuse of industrial organization? Powerful orators find "Liberty" the true keyword, but the I remember hearing from a learned student that of "liberty" he knew well over two hundred definitions. Can we be sure that the "haves" and the "have-nots" will agree in their selection of the right one? We can only trust to the growth of responsibility; we may look to circumstances and events to teach their lesson."

"Finished Morley. A book worth having read. J.M.'s style at 80 is as bad as his style when Secretary for India was admirable. Doubt whether I can recover my sense of judicial appreciation after reading contemptuous reference by him to Keir Hardie. That reference, suggesting as it does that men, and parties and even the common people were but objects for comment and ways and means to experience intellectual and spiritual, destroys my hopes of genuine admiration. And yet he was something of a great head both to oppressed India and Ireland. Perhaps deep social resentment and revolutionary ardour take the form of aesthetic restlessness in a mind like J.M.'s."

"This is not a tragedy, but it means the disappearance of the last survivor of the heroic age. He was my first political mentor, and for more than fifty years a wise counsellor, the best of comrades, and in these last years an unfailing and devoted revered friend. Only last week I had from him an affectionate letter which I shall always treasure. English literature and the great traditions of public life are impoverished by his loss."

"As for Morley, he was never a good speaker, but he is a brilliant conversationalist. His fault in politics is that he's too negative."

"Since the death of Mr. Bradlaugh Mr. Morley was the most powerful exponent of individualism in the country... [E]very sensible man who had the future social welfare of his class at heart must be utterly opposed to Mr. Morley, who set his face against the collective ownership of land, the State ownership of railways, a legal eight hours day, and other questions of social legislation that would be useful to the community of workers."

"John Morley...should be mentioned here, not as an orator, for he would make no such claim, but as the last or almost the last exponent of the classical literary style. Just as his great Biography of Mr. Gladstone teems with splendid phrases, original without being extravagant, imaginative without being ornate, so in some of his platform speeches, delivered in the days when he addressed great popular audiences, the principles of his political creed were expounded in a garb that reminds one of the school of literary orators that ended with Canning and Macaulay. It was not rhetoric, because the sense was never sacrificed to the form, but it was an inspired form of spoken prose."

"The King...seems to have unburdened himself to Lord Morley. In the course of their discussions His Majesty pleased him greatly by observing that he looked upon him as the only representative of the old Whigs left in the Cabinet, and certainly, in so far as Whiggism is an attitude of mind, His Majesty's judgment was not wanting in acuteness."

"Lord Morley deplored Winston's Bradford speech... He took particular exception to the phrase “there are worse things than bloodshed,” which he described as “a platitude, and worse, a Tory platitude.” The subject cropped up at luncheon in Downing Street, when the Prime Minister instanced the enthusiasm with which the speech was received, and the cheers with which Winston was greeted in the House of Commons, as a proof that it corresponded to the feelings of the party. Lord Morley reminded them that a great Prime Minister, who once lived in that house, on being told of the popular delirium with which the declaration of war had been welcomed, replied, “They are ringing the bells now, but in no long time they will be wringing their hands.” He went on to say, so he told me, “You may talk as you like of bloodshed, but I venture to say this, that the first blood shed in Ireland, not in mere civil commotion, but in conflict between the Ulster Volunteers and the forces of the Crown, will mean the end of Home Rule.” Such a declaration from such a source has tremendous significance, but will it have much effect?"

"The menace of European war has come with startling abruptness. I received this afternoon the intimation that the Cabinet had decided to initiate the precautionary stage in the preparations for war. In a few minutes' talk I had with Lord Morley, I discovered that the step met with his keen disapproval, and that, upon its being followed by mobilisation, he would cease to incur further ministerial responsibility. Sympathetic as he is towards France in her secular struggle with Germany in the world of ideas, he cannot brook this country becoming a party to what he regards as a Slavonic movement against Teuton influence. Russia and all she stands for is still for him identified with barbarism, and he looks upon any tendency hostile to Germany that has its roots in Slav aspirations as prejudicial to the interests of civilisation."

"Twelve months ago you were below the gangway, now you are one of the foremost, most popular, most trusted leaders of the Party, after having discharged with signal ability and success the duties of the most difficult post in the Cabinet. I doubt whether our political history has any parallel for so swift, so sure, so well-deserved a rise. The future of the Liberal party will (if your life is spared), be coloured, influenced, controlled by you."

"I came across the articles written by John Morley in the Pall Mall Gazette during the Irish coercion period of Gladstone's Government. When read in sequence they seemed irresistible in their argument that coercion was not, under modern conditions, possible as a permanent system of governing Ireland. The only alternative was Home Rule. I was intellectually convinced: Morley seemed to be clear and consistent in his thought about Ireland."

"The best stroke the labour party could do would be to defeat Mr. Morley. He did not think Mr. Morley dishonest, or lacking in moral character or backbone, but his ideas were antagonistic to the new ideas which were beginning to find vent amongst the common people, and...it became a duty to prove to Mr. Morley and those who thought with him that the old school of Liberalism had had its day, and must now give place to the new... Mr. Morley was honest, but that was not everything. Mr. Morley was too much a man of the study, and was not in touch with his working-class fellows, and it was their sacred duty to try and bring about his defeat."

"If only Morley had let politics alone, he might have been the Gibbon of his age."

"The conversation passed into politics and particularly upon Germany, and I was astonished to find how “unrealistic” (as I thought) his views were about Germany's attitude (this was in 1909) and how far more he leaned towards Goethe than towards Comte. A three hours' talk with Morley was a delightful experience."

"It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the more typically English a writer on political or social problems then appeared to the world, the more is he to-day forgotten in his own country. Men like Lord Morley or Henry Sidgwick, Lord Acton or A. V. Dicey, who were then admired in the world at large as outstanding examples of the political wisdom of liberal England, are to the present generation largely obsolete Victorians."

"It is the end of a chapter and of a life which has consoled me more than anything else for the horrors, cruelties, and perversities of this hateful age with its false prophets and professional impostors, its office seekers, profiteers, wirepullers – all obsequious worshippers of Force, Popularity, and Pelf."

"Compromise, written by John Morley, Mill's favourite disciple, explores some of the subsidiary problems that revolve round the question how far self-respecting men may submit to false conventions and employ economies of truth in public and private life. Morley often told me that he intended Compromise to be a supplement to Mill's Liberty; and the two books have provided many of us with a philosophic faith."

"In his fascinating treatise On Compromise, John Morley pointed out that even a man who is convinced that his own opinions are right is not necessarily intolerant; and he might have added that even those who are intolerant in private life are not necessarily believers in public coercion or persecution. The Bolshevik threat — "Be my brother, or I slay thee" — is the sign of a weak, as well as of a ferocious faith. It only requires a little common sense and a little knowledge of the world to recognise the truth of the old adage — "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." In Morley's words, "you have not converted a man because you have silenced him." Submission or acquiescence in a political system or a religious dogma when obtained by law, imprisonment, torture, threats or coercion of any kind "is as worthless and as essentially hypocritical as the conversion of an Irish pauper to Protestantism by means of soup tickets, or that of a savage to Christianity by the gift of a string of beads.""

"It was pleasant and interesting to be in almost daily intercourse with a friend with whom I had much in common, and whose conversation, when he was in the humour for it, was most agreeable to listen to. But he was not always in the humour, for, as his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, J. E. Ellis, said to me in describing him, he was "a man of moods." No truer word was ever spoken, and he had his bad days as well as his good ones. These variations in his temperature were naturally inconvenient, and made him less pleasant as a chief than he ought to have been: he was charming, but there was a sense of insecurity. Of all the Secretaries of State under whom I served he was the most intellectually brilliant, and, though he took to politics rather late in life, he had speedily raised himself to a conspicuous position; but he certainly was, in my opinion, born to be a thinker and a writer rather than a practical statesman and administrator."

"Politically, I suppose he was very far from me, and some of his Gods I hope never to revere. But he always talked from a full mind and a full heart. He liked the men who really count and the lamp of reason burned the more brightly for his presence. Some of his work seems to me very first rate — in literary criticism the essays on Macaulay and Carlyle, in political criticism those on Maine and Condorcet; the biographies of Voltaire and Diderot, the essays on Machiavelli and Robespierre. I have always liked the life of Cobden as a great picture of that era, and disliked the Gladstone as a tombstone rather than a book, though it has great occasions. As I look back the striking thing about the long hours I used to spend there was his wide and generous attitude to life. And many of his heroes were mine — especially Cromwell, Voltaire and Mill. And I think he did some great political work — Ireland, India and South Africa are all tributes to his insight."

"I do wish Morley had lived a few months longer to see MacDonald Prime Minister. The old man had talked of it so eagerly and so often."

"Morley was the last of the great, the true, Liberals."

"This inner conflict between the man of letters and the man of politics in Morley pursued and paralysed him all through his life."

"In action he was sometimes wanting in courage and in promptitude, but he never shrank from taking any risk on what he considered a matter of basic principle. He used to laugh at the epithet of “Honest John”, but he fully deserved it; with all his little weaknesses and his small and human vanities, he was emphatically a noble figure. He hated cruelty, he was humane, he was consistent. He might see the faults of the poor, but in heart and soul he was always with them. When I was talking to him once about the tragedies that lay behind the brilliant surface of aristocratic society, and suggested what material these things might give to a dramatist or novelist of genius, Morley almost impatiently replied that he took no interest in their rotten joys or their rotten sorrows; he was more interested in the poor wage-earner, who had to keep wife and children on scanty and uncertain resources. To sum him up; he failed, so far as he did fail, because he was a philosopher and not a bruiser."

"Christianity represents man as being by nature sinful, and the evils of the world as being due to the inherent imperfections in his nature. This doctrine Mr. Morley regards as entirely fatal to an efficacious doctrine of progress."

"Mr Morley has never entirely deserted literature for politics; he has brought his political training to bear on literature; witness his admirable studies of Sir Robert Walpole and of Oliver Cromwell, books which abound in wise saws and pregnant reflections that could never have been inspired in the study. They are the fine flower of political experience, ripened in the senate and the market-place, quickened by the habit of dealing directly with men, and perfected by rare literary skill."

"The effect of Peel's conduct in 1829 and 1846 has always seemed to me deplorable. The only person among our statesmen who has a right to propose a Home Rule Bill is Mr. John Morley."

"After my return to Parliament as member for Blackburn, my wife and I became friendly with Lord Morley, who was a native of the town. We often visited him at his house in Wimbledon, and our conversations with him remain among the happiest of our recollections. He was a charming conversationalist, and his penetrating comments on his political contemporaries were illustrating and fascinating."

"In the afternoon we journeyed down with Haldane to see Lord Morley, who for some unexplained reason desired to see us. We have never been on terms of friendship with John Morley. We have neither liked nor disliked him; and we have always assumed a similar attitude on his part. But it seems that in his political prime he was acutely aware of the socialist criticism of Gladstonian politics and deeply resented it. To-day he is a dignified, benevolent and infirm old man, pathetically anxious to make his peace with the new world of social democracy. In his old age he is more open-minded to the new thought than he was when he had the vigour to grasp its meaning. The catastrophe of the great war has compelled his pacifist soul to seek comradeship in the international socialist movement... As Sidney said goodbye he said wistfully “There is no malice between us?”—as if our visit had been one of reconciliation. We have been quite unconscious of any relationship—good or bad—between us and him."

"For it would now seem that the policy and vanity of the Court equally concurred in endeavouring to keep out of sight whatever can manifest our pre-eminence, which they undoubtedly feel, but have not yet learned to make the proper use of. It is, however, in vain to attempt arresting the progress of human knowledge. I am, indeed, very much mistaken if all the authority and address of the Tartar Government will be able much longer to stifle the energies of their Chinese subjects. Scarcely a year now passes without an insurrection in some of their provinces. it is true they are soon suppressed, but their frequency is a strong symptom of the fever within. The paroxysm is repelled, but the disease is not cured."

"The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom."

"The breaking-up of the power of China (no very improbable event) would occasion a complete subversion of the commerce, not only of Asia, but a very sensible change in the other quarters of the world. The industry and the ingenuity of the Chinese would be checked and enfeebled, but they would not be annihilated. Her ports would no longer be barricaded; they would be attempted by all the adventures of all trading nations, who would search every channel, creek, and cranny of China for a market, and for some time be the cause of much rivalry and disorder. Nevertheless, as Great Britain, from the weight of her riches and the genius and spirits of her people, is become the first political, marine, and commercial Power on the globe, it is reasonable to think that she would prove the greatest gainer by such a revolution as I have alluded to, and rise superior over every competitor."

"It should be never absent from our recollection that there are now two distinct nations in China--the Chinese and the Tartars--whose characters essentially differ, notwithstanding their external appearance be nearly the same. They are both subject to the most absolute authority that can be vested in a Prince(Qianlong), but with this distinction--that to the Chinese it is a foreign tyranny, to the Tartar a domestic despotism. The latter consider themselves as in some degree partakers of their Sovereign's dominions over the former, and that imagination may, perhaps, somewhat console them under the pressure of his power upon themselves--like the house servants and house negroes belonging to a great landlord in Livonia or planter in Jamaica, who, though serfs themselves, look down upon the peasantry and field negroes as much their inferiors."

"The Government, as it stands, is properly the tyranny of a handful of Tatars over more than three hundred millions of Chinese."

"Yet it cannot be concealed that the nation in general is far from being contented. The frequent insurrections in the distant provinces are ambiguous oracles of the real sentiments of the people. The predominance of the Tartars and the Emperors's partiality for them are the common subjects of conversation among the Chinese whenever they meet together in private. There are certain mysterious societies in every province, who, though narrowly watched by the Government, find means to elude its vigilance, and often hold secret assemblies, where they revive the memory of ancient independence, brood over recent injuries, and meditate revenge"

"It is fit that justice should be administered with great caution."

"Although our powers are great, they are not unlimited—they are bounded by some lines of demarcation."

"I am extremely unwilling that we should take upon ourselves to exercise a jurisdiction which the law does not vest in us."

"A presumption of any fact is, properly, an inferring of that fact from other facts that are known; it is an act of reasoning; and much of human knowledge on all subjects is derived from this source."

"In drawing an inference or conclusion from facts proved, regard must always be had to the nature of the particular case, and the facility that appears to be afforded, either of explanation or contradiction. No person is to be required to explain or contradict, until enough has been proved to warrant a reasonable and just conclusion against him, in the absence of explanation or contradiction."

"Prima facie, every estate, whether given by will or otherwise, is supposed to be beneficial to the party to whom it is so given."

"I know of no privileged class of society, and I do not know an esquire has any privileges a yeoman has not."

"We cannot suffer a person by his affidavit to arraign the whole justice of the country and its administration."

"Human society was so constituted, for human nature was so constituted, that the honour and dignity of a father were connected with that of a son; and there was no son who must not be disturbed and disquieted by imputations on his father."

"Whether the associations of the Imperial name are bad, as Mr. Gladstone thinks, I will not discuss. Splendid and imposing they certainly were, not only in the age of the Antonines, but in the best days of the mediaeval Empire, from Otto the Great to Frederick II. But that splendour they have lost. ... In fact, the title of King is now the less common of the two, and, with such associations as our kingship has, it is far more dignified. There has been a King of the English ever since the ninth or tenth century; no other Monarchy in Europe (except the lands of our Scandinavian kingsfolk and except the Crown of St. Stephen) can boast of anything like an equal antiquity. ... Why endanger the pre-eminence of style of the only European Crown which combines the glories of ancient legitimacy with those of equally ancient constitutional freedom?"

"He was opposed on principle to an Established Church."

"In regard to public expenditure, the practice and rule of the Liberal Government had been economy and retrenchment, while that of the Tory Government was extravagance and waste. The cause of the extravagance of the present Government had been their foreign policy, which was one of "blustering and flustering.""

"Russia...crushed Poland; but I ask hon. Members whether they desire to see this country imitate the methods by which Poland has been crushed? This force of nationality is a great force in human affairs... I do not say that it is always a good thing. It is one of those sentiments which, though primarily and usually good, because it binds men together by a common devotion to a fine idea, may also become a destroying power and the instrument of evil. It works for good or ill, just as you choose to treat it. But it is a force which Governments ignore at their peril. I submit that the wise and prudent course for statesmen to take is by giving such recognition as they can to the principle of nationality to make it what it ought to be, a fertilizing stream, and not a devastating torrent—a means of fostering and ennobling national life, and not a source of disaffection and hatred."

"I believe that Ireland will be better legislated for in a Legislature in Dublin by its own Members, because that Legislature will be in sympathy with the feelings and will understand the needs of its fellow-citizens... It is idle to think of legislating satisfactorily for Ireland in a House in which the Irish Members constitute a small minority out of sympathy with the majority—a House chiefly composed of Members who have never been in Ireland, and have no direct personal knowledge of Irish conditions and Irish sentiment—a House whose acts and votes are checked and nullified by another and an irresponsible House, in which there is not a single Representative of Irish national feeling."

"Liberalism was a plant which did not thrive in stagnant waters, and the waters of London, to their shame be it spoken, were stagnant. Where there was a want of active zeal all the worse and baser instincts which had power in politics told against the Liberal party. The money power was against the Liberal party, and so was the liquor power."

"The educated classes were apt to speak in a patronizing tone of the "masses of the people", and to talk of political education as if it were only needed by those masses, but the fact was that the middle classes needed education, especially on this Irish question, quite as much as the masses. The whole trouble and difficulty of our dealings with Ireland had arisen from our ignorance. ... He confidently believed that the country would arrive at but one conclusion, and that that would be in favour of Home Rule. The work would not be a long one, because two or three years would undoubtedly see the solution of this question in the sense which they desired to see it concluded—a consummation which was so much to be desired not only in the interests of Ireland but also of England, Scotland, and Wales."

"In answer to a question, Mr. Bryce said that if Scotch Home Rule meant that Scotland was to have such a complete constitution as Mr. Gladstone's Bill of 1886 proposed to give to Ireland, then he did not think that that was at all desirable and that Scotland wanted it. (Hisses and cheers.) At the same time he was bound to say that if Scotland did want it she was entitled to get it. (Loud cheers.)"

"The best justification for the despotic system described is to be found in the administration of British India. That administration is no doubt in some respects imperfect. ... But it is incomparably better than the administration of any subject territory by an alien and distant race of conquerors than has ever been before. It had in particular attained three great objects. It has established perfect internal peace and security through a vast area, much of which is still inhabited by wild tribes; it has secured a perfectly just administration of the law, civil as well as criminal, between all races and castes; and it has imbued the officials with a feeling that their first duty is to do their best for the welfare of the natives and to defend them against the rapacity of European adventurers. These things have been achieved by an efficiently organized Civil Service inspired by high traditions, kept apart from British party politics, and standing quite outside the prejudices, jealousies, and superstitions which sway the native mind. Only through despotic methods could that have been done for India which the English have done."

"[Bryce] expressed his cordial agreement with what Mr. Washington had said as to the importance of basing the progress of the coloured people of the South upon industrial training. Having made two or three visits to the South he had got an impression of the extreme complexity and difficulty of the problem which Mr. Washington was so nobly striving to solve. It was no wonder that it should be difficult seeing that the whites had such a long start of the coloured people in civilization. He believed that the general sentiment of white people was one of friendliness and a desire to help the negroes. The exercise of political rights and the attainment to equal citizenship must depend upon the quality of the people who exercised those rights, and the best thing the coloured people could do, therefore, was to endeavour to attain material prosperity by making themselves capable of prosecuting these trades and occupations which they began to learn in the days of slavery, and which now, after waiting for 20 years, they had begun to see were necessary to their well-being."

"Whatever be the issue, one can dwell with unmixed satisfaction upon the absence among ourselves of any recrudescence of mediaeval intolerance towards a people whose peculiar defects are fairly chargeable upon what they have been forced in the past to suffer, whose possession of some peculiar merits cannot be denied, and who have made within recent times extraordinary contributions to learning and philosophy, to science and to one, at least, of the arts."

"He had said from the first that the war had been a hideous blunder, and he had supported that opinion in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) ... Stop the farm-burning; it had been a great mistake and was against British ideas. (Cheers.) Recognize that they were dealing with men whose bravery and tenacity they could admire, and offer terms to the representatives of the two Republics and to the burghers who were now in arms."

"[T]here had been many changes in the national ideals in this country during the past 50 years. ... liberty, so far as it regarded political power, freedom of opinion, and freedom of action, was rather more in men's minds in the fifties as an essential element in the making of national happiness and well-being than it was in the present day. ... Republicanism was then a thing much talked of in England. It was curious to note how completely that had gone, and the discovery made that the true enemy of liberty and democracy was not a monarchy, but money, and the power that money exerted."

"With the old ideal of liberty there was a great and urgent passion for freedom of opinion and freedom of speech. In the present day we cared very much less for freedom of opinion as an element in our national life than we did in those days. But we ought always to be on our guard against giving the smallest encouragement to any attempt of any kind of any dominant party to put down the free expression of anything which was not criminal."

"One of the most remarkable changes was the extent to which indifference had come to prevail in matters of religious opinion. With regard to freedom of action, there would have been a stronger objection then than there was now in allowing the great majority of persons engaged in any particular trade to coerce the minority into their wishes. On the question of non-interference, he pointed out that the difficulties of laissez faire were now far more generally recognized than they were 40 or 50 years ago. For one reason or another there was now far less disposition to accept the doctrines of laissez faire than there was then, and they played a much smaller part in the ideal we formed of what was good for a nation."

"In those days it was thought that only through the principle of nationality could freedom be established, and here, again, the changes which had happened had made this ideal seem less needed than it was. The principle of nationality was held to make for peace and was quite consistent with cosmopolitanism, which played a leading part in conceptions of what was needed for the happiness of the world. There was rather more in the old ideals of the moral element and less of the material element than there was to-day; there was, too, rather more of a sanguine spirit, and the golden age seemed nearer then it seemed now."

"Having condemned the policy of severity which had been adopted with the object of bringing the [[Second Boer War|[Boer] war]] to a conclusion, he said that it might be doubted whether anything short of the restoration of the independence of the two Republics—subject of course to a measure of British control—would have the effect of inducing the Boers to lay down their arms. The passion for independence was strong; it had been the cherished ideal of those people ever since they quitted Cape Colony and won the country for themselves. Our demand for unconditional surrender was a fatal blunder."

"What was a reasonable offer? In the first place, there ought to be an amnesty. ... The second point in the terms should be a grant of money to rebuild the burned homesteads and restock the devastated farms. ... Nothing would do more to accelerate the return of peace and order than to give the people occupation and a chance of living. Then, it should be part of any reasonable offer to the Boers that there should be a speedy restoration of self-governing institutions."

"The danger which threatened the natives in the future, at any rate in the mining districts, would arise from the desire to obtain a constant and cheap supply of native labour for the mines. It would be the duty of those in authority to guard the native against the oppressive laws which were in force in the Dutch Republics. In conclusion, he protested against a policy of harshness and violence in South Africa. We should try to inculcate forbearance, wisdom, and the generosity into the minds of those who had the government of the country."

"He would admit that British landowners would benefit by a tax on foreign grain, because it would enable them to exact higher rents for the land. The British farmer would not benefit one penny. The manufacturer would lose by paying a much higher price for his materials and by paying higher wages, which was a part of Mr. Chamberlain's scheme... [T]he artisan would not gain unless his wages rose, and if his wages were raised certain branches of trade would cease, because they would not be able to compete against foreign competition."

"[T]he Liberal party stands to-day firmly upon the ground which it has occupied during the last 60 years—namely, on the ground of free trade, peace, and good-will among the nations; that the Liberal party has the wish to apply that policy to Germany in like manner as to other peoples, and that the idea of using force as a means for meeting commercial competition is completely foreign to British Liberalism."

"The United States are deemed all the world over to be pre-eminently the land of equality. This was the first feature which struck Europeans when they began, after the peace of 1815 had left them time to look beyond the Atlantic, to feel curious about the phenomena of a new society. This was the great theme of Tocqueville's description, and the starting-point of his speculations; this has been the most constant boast of the Americans themselves, who have believed their liberty more complete than that of any other people, because equality has been more fully blended with it."

"In how many and which of these senses of the word does equality exist in the United States? Not as regards material conditions. Till about the middle of last century there were no great fortunes in America, few large fortunes, no poverty. Now there is some poverty (though only in a few places can it be called pauperism), many large fortunes, and a greater number of gigantic fortunes than in any other country of the world."

"[Bryce] thought she [Russia] was becoming a menace to Europe with her vast and rapidly increasing population and her also rapidly increasing prosperity. The Duma was no check on the ambitions of the official class. Germany, he thought, was right to arm and she would need every man."

"[T]he learned had been at work in exploring the fields of history and philology. The origins of the several families of mankind were investigated and their affinities set forth. The old annals were edited and republished, the old poems popularised. The ancient exploits of the race were held up to admiration, and each people was supplied by historians and poets with fuel to feed the flame of national pride. It was all natural, and in one sense it was laudable. Men's souls are raised by the recollection of great deeds done by their forefathers. But the study of the past has its dangers when it makes men transfer past claims and past hatreds to the present. A sage friend remarked to me lately while we were discussing the complications of South-eastern Europe: "How much better if we could get rid of history altogether!" The learned men and the literary men, often themselves intoxicated by their own enthusiasms, never put their books to a worse use than when they filled each people with a conceit of its own super-eminent gifts and merits."

"That glorification of national virtues and achievements on which I have been dwelling, might at other times have been a harmless form of pleasure. But it came at a time of keen rivalry, when everything that tended to stimulate racial vanity was caught up and used by those statesmen and other leaders who sought to embark on policies of expansion and aggression even at the cost of rousing national jealousies or embittering national animosities. We all know how vanity may, in individual men, become a powerful spring of action, and intensify energy even while it disturbs the balance of judgment. It is the same with nations. When convinced of their own superiority they may wish to assert it by force, contemning their neighbours, and fancying that they hold a commission from Providence or Fate to improve the rest of the world against its will. As we see to-day that science has made war more hideous and terrible, so we must also confess that learning and literature have done something to prepare nations for war. A sounder learning and a deeper insight might have corrected this danger and taught the peoples that they have at least as much to gain by co-operation as by competition and more to gain from friendship than from hatred. But there is a faculty in man that is sometimes prone to choose the evil and reject the good"

"Let us repress the spirit of hatred. We are justly indignant at the way in which the enemy Powers have waged war. We trust that our victory will warn the world that such methods must never be resorted to again, and that those guilty of them will be punished. But is it wise to talk of banning a whole people for all time to come? The German people are under a harsh and tyrannous rule, which has not only deceived and misled them, but silences any protest—and there are those who wish to protest—against its crimes. Some day, we hope, they will overthrow it, when they have learnt the truth. To indulge revenge will be to sow the seeds of future wars. Nations cannot hate one another for ever, and the sooner they cease to do so the better for all of them. We must of course take all proper steps to defend ourselves in future from any dangers that might arise if after the war the enemy countries were to resume an insidious hostility. That is at present no more than a possibility which may never arise."

"Let us consult reason rather than passion. If severe terms have to be imposed, let that be done only so far as is necessary for securing future peace, not in the vindictive spirit which, in perpetuating hatreds, would end by relighting the flames of war. In settling the terms of peace, let us as far as possible respect the principles of nationality. Contentment and tranquillity are most to be expected where frontiers follow feelings. Can any international machinery be created after the war is over whereby the peoples that desire peace can league themselves to restrain aggression and compel a reference of controversies to arbitration or conciliation?"

"[N]owhere in the world was there a higher idealism than that which possessed the American people... America in this war represented the conscience and judgment of the world."

"[T]he Charter was demanded by those who complained of the irregular and arbitrary violence of King John, and the restrictions it imposed upon the Crown's action became the corner stone of English freedom. Its provisions, never repealed, though varied and to some extent amplified in subsequent instruments similarly extorted from subsequent monarchs, were solemnly reasserted in the famous declaration by Parliament in 1628 which we call the Petition of Right, and were finally re-enacted in the Bill of Rights of 1689. Thus the Charter of 1215 was the starting-point of the constitutional history of the English race, the first link in a long chain of constitutional instruments which have moulded men's minds and held together free governments not only in England but wherever the English race has gone and the English tongue is spoken."

"[P]erhaps may we find the chief contribution of England to political progress, in the doctrine of the supremacy of law over arbitrary power, in the steady assertion of the principle that every exercise of executive authority may be tested in a court of law to ascertain whether or no it infringes the rights of the subject... It was this guarantee of personal civil rights that most excited the admiration of Continental observers in the eighteenth century, and caused the British Constitution to be taken as the pattern which less fortunate countries should try to imitate. If it be said, and truly said, that this fundamental principle could not have been maintained in England without the assertion by the Parliaments of the fifteenth and, again more forcibly and persistently, by those of the seventeenth century, of control over the power of the Crown, it is to be remembered that their efforts might not have succeeded had not the earlier resistance to that power by the men who secured Magna Carta created and fostered in the minds of the upper and middle classes that firm and constant spirit of independence, that vigilant will to withstand the aggressions of the executive, which overthrew Charles the First and expelled James the Second."

"What do you think of J. M. Keynes's book? ... The condemnation of the work of the Conference as a whole is none too severe. I remember few cases in history where negotiators might have done so much good, and have done so much evil."

"I venture to hope that...the Government will approach the question with a desire to deal in the most liberal manner they can with Ireland, and to give her, if need be, more than justice requires, in order that we may bring about peace. That would be good policy in the long run."

"When repeated experiments have failed, when every policy that has been proposed as a remedy for the ills of Ireland has been tried in succession and found wanting, is it not time to try some other experiment? I think the only experiment that can be tried is to make the Irish people masters of their own fortunes. Throw responsibility upon them, make them feel that it is to their interest to preserve law and order. Make them feel that the laws they are to obey are laws made by themselves, and that if they adopt a policy it will not be reversed by people sitting at Westminster, who have not that intimate knowledge of Irish conditions and wishes which can be possessed only by those who live in the midst of the people."

"No one in our time has contributed more largely to create and foster this temper between the two great kindred peoples than our distinguished Ambassador, now once more at home among us, Mr. Bryce."

"He was told that the day before Lord Bryce's death, the secretary of the academy received from him a type-written copy of a short notice which Lord Bryce had written with regard to the late Lord Reay... The last sentence of that notice...was:—"To his friends who thus saw him (in his later years) he will remain an unforgettable example of dignified strength and nobility of soul." That which was so happily written about Lord Reay was no less applicable to the man who wrote it."

"Although the work of a visitor, the reputation of The American Commonwealth has stood very high in the United States. It has been continually quoted as a standard authority by contemporary American historians, and was used as a text-book throughout the country for over thirty years. It is much better known there than in England. When Edward Lawrence Godkin of the New York Nation was asked by an English member of parliament whether he had ever heard of a book called The American Commonwealth he answered ‘You bet’."

"As ambassador at Washington, an office which he filled from February 1907 until April 1913, Bryce was particularly successful in gaining the approval of the American people and in becoming an American institution. Whenever he attended the Old Presbyterian church at Washington he was as a matter of course ushered into Abraham Lincoln's pew. ‘Old man Bryce is all right’ was the reputed verdict of a miner in Nevada, and this popular sentiment gave him power in that great democracy which does not allow itself to be governed by the opinions of its politicians."

"It is due to the memory of Lord Bryce to recall the fact that the name of the Commonwealth of Australia was suggested by his great work on the American Commonwealth. It lay constantly on the table of successive Federal Conventions, and was of the utmost service to members in framing the new Constitution."

"The announcement of the death of Lord Bryce will carry sorrow into every home in America. He was sincerely loved in my country, intensely admired, and completely trusted. I think no Ambassador that has ever come to us achieved quite his measure of success. His penetrating and sympathetic insight into our life...was extraordinary in the last degree. His American Commonwealth became a text-book immediately upon its appearance, and is still unsurpassed as a treatise upon American political and social conditions."

"To this day, the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. This is strange, since the historical evidence of what happened is plentiful. Western observers like the US ambassador in Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, wrote detailed reports about what was being done - including the telling statement of Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the Interior Minister, that all the Armenians had to perish because 'those who were innocent today might be guilty tomorrow'. Western missionaries too wrote harrowing accounts of what they witnessed. Their testimony formed an important part of the wartime report on 'The Treatment of the Armenians' compiled by Viscount Bryce, who had also investigated the German atrocities in Belgium in 1914."

"During the war three Committees were appointed in the French, British, and Italian Parliaments, with the idea that by meeting together they should promote unity, explain difficulties, and remove differences... Lord Bryce was the chairman of the British Committee, and was pre-eminent among us. In a series of remarkable speeches, delivered in fluent and scholarly French and Italian, he left upon all who heard him the indelible impression of a great European. His tact was of inestimable service in our social intercourse, and his caution and world-wide experience in our councils."

"I regarded Lord Bryce as an old friend and a trusted counsellor to whom I could always turn, confident in the strength and wisdom of his advice, and my loss is one which will be shared not only by our own country and America, where he was so beloved and respected, but among all English-speaking people."

"Lord Bryce's death will be deeply mourned everywhere in America, everywhere that democratic institutions are established and beloved, everywhere that the aspirations of the peoples lead them toward such institutions. His writings on American democracy enhanced America's introduction to the world and made mankind understand the great experiment this nation was undertaking. More than that, he gave us Americans the best vision of ourselves, because it represented the observations of the sincere friend and kindly critic... [I]n his latest work comparing the world democracies he performed a monumental service at precisely the right moment in behalf of the rightly guided evolution of popular institutions everywhere."

"In a fine letter to me in November last, "in these days," he says, "of darkness and confused groping," he recalls how we were inspired by hopes of "some 55 years ago in the struggle for social and political progress." And this spirit he maintained to the last. Of all his many qualities and gifts, that which impressed me most was his staunchness to principle, to colleagues, to righteousness."

"The American Commonwealth appeared in 1888. It met with immediate and enthusiastic acclaim in two hemispheres, and during the half-century that followed, remained the classic work in the field... No other foreigner, indeed no American writer on American democracy, enjoyed so great a prestige, or wielded so great an influence in the United States as did Lord Bryce. Our language and history were also his, and he brought to his task a thorough knowledge of the English background in which, despite the "Frontier Theory," so many of the ideals and institutions of America are rooted."

"Bryce's picture of American democracy was much more nearly in accord with America's own ideas about itself. Although "originally written with a view to European rather than American readers," the work was widely read by the general public in the States, and studied by thousands of students in American colleges and universities, where the abridged edition became a standard textbook in classes on civics and comparative government. Hence Bryce interpreted American democracy not only to Europeans but to Americans themselves, contributing much toward shaping and formulating their philosophy and thought about their own government. The American Commonwealth passed through numerous editions, those of 1899 and 1910 representing thorough revisions in the light of new conditions. Altogether more than 166,000 copies of the work were sold in the United States."

"In his penetrating analysis of the party system and the manner in which it functioned in state and municipal life, Bryce made a startling contribution to American politics. His exposé of the highly organized party machine with the political Boss at the top—ruthless, all powerful and often corrupt—was a revelation even to those who were fairly familiar with our political life. To many thoughtful Americans it was a challenge which did not go unheeded, and it is safe to say that America owes a great deal to Viscount Bryce for the steady improvement in municipal government during the last quarter of a century."

"Thoroughly convinced of the merits of the democratic form of government, Bryce was equally aware of its faults and dangers. These he exposed with a courage and an objectivity that aroused a great deal of enmity against him in this country. As time passed, this too disappeared, and the author of the American Commonwealth has become recognized as the ablest European interpreter of American institutions."

"The amiable Bryce steadily exerts what influence he has here on behalf of the Pacifist crowd, who are really the tepid enemies of the Allies."

"The loss suffered by England by his death, great though it was, was as nothing to the irreparable loss suffered by the Greeks and Armenians still living under the terrible yoke of Turkish oppression. His name had become known throughout the Near East as that of the greatest champion of the oppressed, and he was loved by them on account of the successful appeals he made on their behalf to the conscience of mankind."

"I had a long and delightful friendship with Viscount Bryce. He was one of the most remarkable of men, the most accurate in his analysis, and actually encyclopaedic in his knowledge. His histories were admirable and his American Commonwealth is a monument to his ability, in the acquisition of facts and the organisation of them as a basis for the history of the country he had no equal. He was fond of the United States and stood as high in the estimation of Americans as he can have in that of his own fellow-countrymen. We had a real affection for him and a generous appreciation of how greatly he contributed to the maintenance of cordial relations between the two countries."

"In February, 1907...he was appointed...Ambassador to the United States. ... It must be said that before that time his influence on American sentiment towards Great Britain had not been fortunate. ... His opinions on English politics were, for that time, of an extremely advanced, almost Republican type; and while this attitude of mind naturally commended him all the more to the sympathy of patriotic Americans, his language and views undoubtedly encouraged hostility to British monarchical and aristocratic institutions. Whatever harm he may have done, however, was nobly set off by his services as Ambassador."

"Few men have had so long and so honourable a record of intellectual productivity. Nor have many men, certainly few of his generation, had more friends or been held in such high esteem by large circles in almost every country in the world. He spoke the principal European languages with ease; and to those who met him he appeared to have been everywhere, known everybody, and read everything."

"Gordon's journals are splendid, I delight in an eccentric man upsetting the odds which routine, formality, "Foreign" and other offices always have on their side, and making the latter appear ridiculous."

"I must say that in my judgment Swinburne's claims are immeasurably superior to those of any Englishman now living... Please read in the Volume I send, published two years ago, the 'Seamew,' the 'Jacobite's Exile,' the 'Threnody on Inchbold,' and 'The Commonweal,' his Jubilee Ode, and then consider whether any can touch him as a Poet. I believe that in the long run Public opinion will be more shocked by his neglect than by his recognition."

"It would be hard to imagine anyone less like a professional politician than George Wyndham, either in his appearance or in his outlook on the world. In political cartoons he was sometimes shewn as a typical guardsman, but here again the target was missed. He seemed to belong to a less specialised age than our own, when men developed many sides of their nature at once, and it was more possible than it is today for one man to express himself in a single life as a statesman, a soldier, and an artist; there was an element of all these in Wyndham, and the artist in him was in frequent revolt against the routine of the statesman. At my first meeting with him, and even more when I stayed with him, I felt that he had little in common with a world of mass-production and centralised business; it would not be difficult to imagine him in one of Marlborough's campaigns advancing to greet the enemy and courteously offering the first shot in the battle to the other side, but to many of his friends this chivalrous and generous figure seemed to belong to an earlier period and to have leapt suddenly, armed with sword and pen, out of the mists of the Middle Ages."

"It suited him better to write a verse, hunt a fox and sit talking with his friends into the early hours, and he was one of those rare people who rise from their beds to watch the dawn. His days were crowded with physical and mental energies. The vowel-sounds and rhythms of Shakespeare's sonnets, the song of Roland, the water supply of the prehistoric men of the downs, the fortifications of Maiden Castle, or the result of the latest manœuvres on Salisbury plain, were all subjects which fell within the range of his talk; this interest in a multitude of problems of literature, soldiering or archaeology was not detached but always eager and pursuing, as though the quarry lay a short way in front of the hunter."

"Lord Pembroke and George Wyndham were the handsomest of the Souls."

"As a fact, the one Front-Bench man who seemed in the days of my youth still eternally young was for me, in those days, on the opposite Front-Bench. The wonderful thing about George Wyndham was that he had come through political life without losing his political opinions, or indeed any of his opinions. Precisely what gave him such a genius for friendship was that life had left in him so much of himself; so much of his youth; so much even of his childhood."

"Wyndham was enthusiastic, he was a Romantic, he was an Imperialist, and he was quite naturally a literary pupil of W. E. Henley. Wyndham was a scholar, but his scholarship is incidental; he was a good critic, within the range allowed him by his enthusiasms; but it is neither as Scholar nor as Critic that we can criticize him. We can criticize his writings only as the expression of this peculiar English type, the aristocrat, the Imperialist, the Romantic, riding to hounds across his prose, looking with wonder upon the world as upon a fairyland."

"[H]e had been in high favour with Balfour, although the rank and file had never cottoned to his dandified and over-polished parliamentary manners, which led one Tory member to mutter in my hearing, after one of Wyndham's Burke-conscious perorations, "Damn that fellow; he pirouettes like a dancing master.""

"Democrats are told that they are dreamers, and why? Because they assert that, if power be placed in the hands of the many, the many will exercise it for their own benefit Is it not a still wilder dream to suppose that the many will in future possess power, and use it not to secure what they consider to be their interests, but to serve those of others? Is it imagined that artisans in our great manufacturing towns are so satisfied with their present position that they will hurry to the polls to register their votes in favor of a system which divides us socially, politically, and economically, to classes, and places them at the bottom with hardly a possibility of using? Is the lot (of the agricultural labourer) so happy a one that he will humbly and cheerfully affix his cross to the name of the man who tells him that it can never be changed for the better? We know that artisans and agricultural labourers will approach the consideration of political and social problems with fresh and vigorous minds For the moment, we demand the equahsation of the franchise Our next demands will be electoral districts, cheap elections, payment of members, and abolition of hereditary legislators When our demands are complied with, we shall be thankful, but we shall not rest On the contrary, having forged an instrument for democratic legislation, we shall use it."

"I recall a phrase of that incorrigible cynic Labouchere, alluding to Mr. Gladstone's frequent appeals to a higher power, that he did not object to the old man always having a card up his sleeve, but he did object to his insinuating that the Almighty had placed it there."

"Labouchere was the incurable cynic who mocked, at everybody, including himself."