John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."