John Morley

“ I believe there are men in the cabinet who would try to win it, if they were free to act on their own beliefs and aspirations. It is not yet too late, I say, to become competitors for that prize; but be assured that whether you mean to claim for yourselves even a single leaf in that immortal chaplet of renown, which will be the reward of true labour in that cause, or whether you turn your backs upon that cause and upon your own duty, I believe, for one, that the knell of Turkish tyranny in these provinces has sounded. So far as human eye can judge, it is about to be destroyed. ”

“ He enumerated the six principles that he thought to be the right principles for us: to foster the strength of the empire by just laws and by economy; to seek to preserve the world's peace; to strive to the uttermost to cultivate and maintain the principle of concert in Europe; to avoid needless and entangling engagements; to see that our foreign policy shall be inspired by such love of freedom as had marked Canning, Palmerston, Russell; to acknowledge the equal right of all nations. ”

“ If there be a fear abroad that England has forever abjured a resort to force other than moral force, is that fear justified by facts? In 1853, joining with France, we made ourselves the vindicators of the peace of Europe; and ten years later, be it remembered, in the case of Denmark we offered to perform the same office, but we could get no one to join us. Is it desirable that we should go further? Is England so uplifted in strength above every other nation, that she can with prudence advertise herself as ready to undertake the general redress of wrongs? ”

“ I call it great and strong more than sharp, for then only the fierceness of Death is felt when it leaves painful and rankling thoughts of the departed, or when it breaks the kindly process of nature and reverses the order in which she would have us quit the place of our pilgrimage, by ravishing away those whose life is but just opened or is yet unfulfilled. But you are now yearning over a [pg 186] Death which has come softly to your door and gone softly from it; a death in ripeness of years, ripeness of love and honour and peace, ripeness above all in character.... ”

“ Once mentioning a well-known member of parliament who always showed fine mettle on the platform, Mr. Gladstone said of him in a homely image, that he never saw a man who could so quickly make the kettle boil. This was certainly his own art here. For an hour and a half thus he held them, with the irresistible spell of what is in truth the groundwork of every political orator's strongest appeal—from Athenians down to Girondins, from Pericles to Webster, from Cicero to Gambetta—appeal to public law and civil right and the conscience of a free and high-minded people. ”

“ Retirement might indeed have silenced evil tongues; it would have spared him the toils of many turbid and tempestuous years. But public life is no idyll. Mr. Gladstone had put himself, by exertions designed for public objects, into a position from which retreat to private ease would have been neither unselfish nor honourable. Is it not an obvious test of true greatness in a statesman, that he shall hold popularity, credit, ascendency and power such as Mr. Gladstone now commanded, as a treasure to be employed with regal profusion for the common good, not guarded in a miser's strong-box? ”

“ The audacious shrewdness of Lancashire married to the polished grace of Oxford is a felicitous union of the strength and culture of liberal and conservative England; and no party in the House, whatever may be its likings or antipathies, can sit under the spell of Mr. Gladstone's rounded and shining eloquence without a conviction that the man who can talk ‘shop’ like a tenth Muse is, after all, a true representative man of the market of the world. ”

“ Rome unites the evils of the worst government and the most entire anarchy. In those countries I can hardly imagine any change that would not be for the better. But in the wild opinions of some of your political sectaries, I see the best and most available defence of the existing system with its hideous mischiefs. Almost every Italian who heartily desires the removal from Italy and from the face of the earth of the immeasurable evils which your country now suffers through some of its governments, adopts Italian union and national independence for his watchwords.... ”

“ Gladstone, “there is a future life, and if so, my not being sure of it will not prevent it, and I know of no better way of deserving it than by [pg 535] conscious service of humanity. The Universe never filled me with such wonder and awe as when I knew I could not account for it. I admit ignorance is a privation. But to submit not to know where knowledge is withheld, seems but one of the sacrifices that reverence for truth imposes on us.” ”

“ Yet this made no difference when the time came to seek a leader. “There is not,” Mr. Bright said, in the course of this quarrel with the Lords, “a man who labours and sweats for his daily bread, there is not a woman living in a cottage who strives to make her home happy for husband and children, to whom the words of the chancellor of the exchequer have not brought hope, and to whom his measures, which have been defended with an eloquence few can equal and with a logic none can contest, have not administered consolation.” ”

“ When we think of the pitfalls that lay on every side, how easily France might have been irritated or estranged, what unseasonable questions might not unnaturally have been forced forward, what mischief the voice and spirit of the demagogue might have stirred up, there can surely be no more wonderful case in history of strong and sagacious leaders, Cavour, Farini, Ricasoli, the Piedmontese king, guiding a people through the ferments of revolt, with discipline, energy, legality, order, self-control, to the achievement of a constructive revolution. ”

“ Now the sole or single-handed defence of Belgium would be an enterprise which we incline to think Quixotic; if these two great military powers combined against it—that combination is the only serious danger; and this it is which by our proposed engagements we should I hope render improbable to the very last degree. I add for myself this confession of faith. If the Belgian people desire, on their own account, to join France or any other country, I for one will be no party to taking up arms to prevent it. ”

“ Tariff reform, adjustment of burdens, invincible repugnance to waste or profusion, accurate keeping and continuous scrutiny of accounts, substitution of a few good taxes for many bad ones,—all these were not merely the love of a methodical and thrifty man for habits of business; they were directly associated in him with the amelioration of the hard lot of the toiling mass, and sprang from an ardent concern in improving human well-being, and raising the moral ideals of mankind. ”

“ The achievements of this cabinet as a whole, as we shall see, are a great chapter in the history of reform and the prudent management of national affairs. It forms one of the best vindications of the cabinet system, and of the powers of the minister who created, guided, controlled, and inspired it.
“And so,” Manning, the close friend of other years, now wrote to him, “you are at the end men live for, but not, I believe, the end for which you have lived. It is strange so to salute you, but very pleasant.... There are many prayers put up among us for you, and mine are not wanting.” ”

“ Gladstone was to visit Spurgeon's tabernacle (Jan. 1882) :—
I feel like a boy who is to preach with his father to listen to him. I shall try not to know that you are there at all, but just preach to my poor people the simple word which has held them by their thousands these twenty-eight years. You do not know how those of us regard you, who feel it a joy to live when a premier believes in righteousness. We believe in no man's infallibility, but it is restful to be sure of one man's integrity. ”

“ The Manchester men and the young radicals from the West Riding of Yorkshire were his ardent adherents when he preached economy and peace, but they were chilled to the core by his neutrality or worse upon the life and death struggle across the Atlantic. His bold and confident finance was doubted by the whigs, and disliked by the tories. But then the tories, apart from their wiser leader, were delighted by his friendly words about the Confederates, and the whigs were delighted with his unflagging zeal for the deliverance of Italy. ”

“ Gladstone described in interesting language how he stood:—
I have never swerved from what I conceive to be those truly conservative objects and desires with which I entered life. I am, if possible, more attached to the institutions of my country than I was when, as a boy, I wandered among the sandhills of Seaforth, or frequented the streets of Liverpool. But experience has brought with it its lessons. I have learnt that there is a wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have not refused to acknowledge and accept the signs of the times. ”

“ Gladstone brought the handful of conservative opposition to reason. It was five o'clock before the unflagging prime minister found his way homewards in the broad daylight.
It is impossible to imagine a question on which in a free government it was more essential to carry public opinion with the law. To force parents to send children to school, was an enterprise that must break down if opinion would not help to work it. Yet probably on no other question in Mr. Gladstone's career as law-maker was common opinion so hard to weigh, to test, to focus and adjust. ”

“ Perhaps this may partly depend upon the prime minister, partly on the height of our expectations from our fellow-creatures. If such a survey is in any degree depressing, there can be no reason why it should be more so than any other large inspection of human life. In the Octagon as in any similar repository we come upon plenty of baffled hopes, chagrin in finding a career really ended, absurd over-estimates of self, over-estimates of the good chances of the world, vexation of those who have chosen the wrong path at the unfair good luck of those who have chosen the right. ”

“ I should almost dare to say there are five generous men to one just man. The beauty of justice is the beauty of simple form; the beauty of generosity is heightened with colour and every accessory. The passions will often ally themselves with generosity, but they always tend to divert from justice. The man who strongly loves justice must love it for its own sake, and such a love makes of itself a character of a simple grandeur to which it is hard to find an equal.
Next to Lord Aberdeen, I think Sir Robert Peel was the most just of the just men I have had the happiness to know. ”

“ The lesson from the active resolution of America was confirmed by the passive fortitude of Lancashire. “What are the questions,” Mr. Gladstone asked in 1864, “that fit a man for the exercise of a privilege such as the franchise? Self-command, self-control, respect for order, patience under suffering, confidence in the law, regard for superiors; and when, I should like to ask, were all these great qualities exhibited in a manner more signal, even more illustrious, than in the conduct of the general body of the operatives of Lancashire under the profound affliction of the winter of 1862?” ”

“ Meanwhile, much against Napoleon's wish and policy, these proceedings chilled the alliance between France and England. Other powers grew more and more uneasy, turning restlessly from side to side, like sick men on their beds. The object of Russia ever since the peace had been, first to break down the intimacy between England and France, by flattering the ambition and enthusiasm of the French Emperor; next to wreak her vengeance on Austria for offences during the Crimean war, still pronounced unpardonable. Austria, in turn, was far too slow for a moving age ”

“ Gladstone and Midlothian were no better than a resplendent mistake, they forget how many objects of our reverence stand condemned by implication in their verdict; they have not thought out how many of the faiths and principles that have been the brightest lamps in the track of human advance they are extinguishing by the same unkind and freezing breath. ”

“ The creation of the empire of a united Germany showed a new Europe. The keen word of an English diplomatist expressed what was dawning in men's minds as a new misgiving. “Europe,” he said, “has lost a mistress and got a master.” Annexation wore an ugly look. Meetings to express sympathy with France in her struggle were held in London and the provinces. Still on the whole the general verdict seemed to be decisively in favour of a resolute neutrality, for in fact, nobody who knew anything of the state of Europe could suggest a policy of British intervention that would stand an hour of debate. ”

“ I cannot but hope she will have much refreshment in Scotland. Such contact with Nature's own very undisguised and noble self, in such forms of mountain, wood, breeze, and water! These are continual preachers, and so mild that they can bring no weariness. They come straight from their Maker's hand, and how faithfully they speak of Him in their strength, their majesty, and their calm. ”

“ I have known one man as free from suspicions as was Lord Aberdeen, but he was not a politician. I am far from thinking statesmen, or politicians, less honourable than other men, quite the reverse; but the habit of their life renders them suspicious. The vicissitudes of politics, the changes of position, the changes of alliance, the sharp transitions from co-operation to antagonism, the inevitable contact with revolting displays of self-seeking and self-love ”

“ II Next let us turn to reform in a different field. All the highest abstract arguments were against secret voting. To have a vote is to have power; as Burke said, “liberty is power, when men act in bodies”; but the secret vote is power without responsibility. The vote is a trust for the commonwealth; to permit secrecy makes it look like a right conferred for a man's own benefit. You enjoin upon him to give his vote on public grounds; in the same voice you tell him not to let the public know how he gives it. Secrecy saps the citizen's courage, promotes evasion, tempts to downright lying. ”

“ I do not like changes for their own sake, I only like a change when it is needful to alter something bad into something good, or something which is good into something better. I have a great reverence for antiquity. I rejoice in the great deeds of our fathers in England and in Scotland. It may be said, however, that this does not go very far towards making a man a liberal. I find, however, that the tories when it suits their purpose have much less reverence for antiquity than I have. They make changes with great rapidity, provided they are suitable to the promotion of tory interests. ”