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John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

83 quotes

“The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) said by 1923 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my creed, waste of public money is like the sin against the Holy Ghost.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) said by 1923 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) said by 1923 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Excess of severity is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is the path to the bomb.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) said by 1923 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't like that hateful heresy, proportional representation.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to John Hartman Morgan (13 July 1920), quoted in J. H. Morgan, John, Viscount Morley: An Appreciation and Some Reminiscences (1924), p. 95
“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?”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to John Hartman Morgan (July 1920), quoted in J. H. Morgan, John, Viscount Morley: An Appreciation and Some Reminiscences (1924), p. 51
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to John Hartman Morgan on the House of Lords' debate on the Irish Home Rule Bill (6 January 1921), quoted in J. H. Morgan, John, Viscount Morley: An Appreciation and Some Reminiscences (1924), p. 51
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to John Hartman Morgan on the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms (21 January 1921), quoted in J. H. Morgan, John, Viscount Morley: An Appreciation and Some Reminiscences (1924), p. 21
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (14 December 1921)
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to John Hartman Morgan (22 December 1921), quoted in J. H. Morgan, John, Viscount Morley: An Appreciation and Some Reminiscences (1924), p. 52
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Old Parties and New Policy', The Fortnightly Review, No. XXI (1 September 1868), p. 327
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘France and Germany’, The Fortnightly Review, No. XLV (1 September 1870), pp. 370–371
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Struggle for National Education. III', The Fortnightly Review, No. LXXXII (1 October 1873), p. 421
“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.)”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Durham Miners Association (5 July 1884), quoted in The Times (7 July 1884), p. 7
“[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.)”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to a conference of Liberal delegates in St. James's Hall (30 July 1884), quoted in The Times (31 July 1884), p. 7
“‘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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Joseph Chamberlain after Chamberlain delivered a speech in which he said that the propertied classes must pay a ‘ransom’ for holding property in violation of ‘natural rights’ (6 January 1885), quoted in D. A. …
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (22 March 1887)
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to a Liberal demonstration in Sheffield (22 January 1889), quoted in The Times (23 January 1889), p. 10
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Home Counties Division of the National Liberal Federation (13 February 1889), quoted in The Times (14 February 1889), p. 6
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Rochdale town hall (23 April 1890), quoted in The Times (24 April 1890), p. 6
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation (20 November 1890), quoted in The Times (21 November 1890), p. 10
“[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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Huddersfield (21 May 1892), quoted in The Times (23 May 1892), p. 7
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Newcastle (21 May 1894), quoted in The Times (22 May 1894), p. 11
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Manchester (4 July 1895), quoted in The Times (5 July 1895), p. 10
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the city hall in Brechin, Montrose Burghs (5 February 1896), quoted in The Times (6 February 1896), p. 7
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the city hall in Brechin, Montrose Burghs (17 January 1899), quoted in The Times (18 January 1899), p. 6
“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?”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the city hall in Brechin, Montrose Burghs (17 January 1899), quoted in The Times (18 January 1899), p. 6
“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.)”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech against the Boer War delivered to a meeting of the Transvaal Committee of Manchester and Liverpool in St. James's-hall, Manchester (15 September 1899), quoted in The Times (16 September 1899), p. 8
“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.)”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Palmerston Club, Oxford (9 June 1900), quoted in The Times (11 June 1900), p. 3
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords (24 November 1910). The Phrygian cap was a symbol of the French Revolution
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords during the Agadir Crisis (28 November 1911)
“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.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sir Francis Webster, president of the Montrose Burghs Liberal Association, quoted in The Times (11 May 1923), p. 12.