John Morley

I do not feel the dread of disestablishment which you may probably entertain: but I desire and seek so long as standing ground remains, to avert, not to precipitate it.

I think, or rather I am convinced, that the effect either of one or two more ecclesiastical sessions of parliament such as the last, or of any prolonged series of contentious proceedings under the recent Act, upon subjects of widespread…

There is one thing I should like you to understand clearly as to my view of things, for it is an essential part of that view.

Yet if such aid should at any time be generally desired with a view to arresting some great evil or procuring for the nation some great good, my willingness to enter into counsel for the occasion would follow from all I have said.

But I deeply desired an interval between parliament and the grave.

I felt myself to be in some measure out of touch with some of the tendencies of the liberal party, especially in religious matters.

He does this not from anger, but because he says that it is absolutely necessary to party action to learn that all the duties and responsibilities do not rest on the leaders, but that followers have their obligations too.

If I had been a follower of a parliamentary chief as eminent, even if I thought he had erred, I should have been disposed rather to exhibit sympathy than to offer criticism.

For me that will be a very great change, for I do not intend to assume the general functions of leader of the opposition, and my great ambition or design will be to spend the remainder of my days, if it please God, in tranquillity, and at…

These men make very little noise and get very little applause.

The feelings of those who suffer from the removal of abuses are always stronger than those of the general public who are benefited.

As far as I can make out people are frightened—the masters were afraid of their workmen, manufacturers afraid of strikes, churchmen afraid of the nonconformists, many afraid of what is going on in France and Spain—and in very unreasoning…

I do not see that I am wanted or should be of use in the House of Lords, and there would be more discrepancy between rank and fortune, which is a thing on the whole rather to be deprecated.

I may be wrong in my view of the matter generally; but I can only judge for the best.

I tend to harden in my own view, principle and precedent seeming to me alike clear.

My own election for Greenwich after Boord the distiller, is more like a defeat than a victory, though it places me in parliament again.

It was this controversy that opened the door for immediate dissolution, though the general grounds for dissolution at some near time were only too abundant.

But he continued to resist; and, viewing the age of the parliament, I was thus driven to the idea of dissolution, for I regarded the matter as virtually involving the whole question of the value of our promises, an anticipation which has…

Let me now wind up this long story by saying that my desire in framing it has been simply to grasp the facts, and to set aside illusions which appear to me to prevail among sections of the liberal party, nowhere so much as in that section…

But, subject to the fulfilment of these conditions, my opinion is that we can do it: can frame a budget large enough and palpably beneficial enough, not only to do much good to the country, but sensibly to lift the party in the public view…

We cannot do it, unless the circumstances shall be such as to put it in our power, by the possession of a very wide margin, to propose something large and strong and telling upon both the popular mind and the leading elements of the…

And I believe that in the present state of opinion they would gain their end by something like the old game of playing redistribution against the franchise....

Had we done so, a case would have opened at once, comfortably furnished not with men opposing us on principle, like a part of those who opposed in 1866, but with the men of pretext and the men of disappointment, with intriguers and with…

It is a question of measures then: can we by any measures materially mend the position of the party for an impending election?...

As men, notwithstanding the advantage drawn from Bright’s return, the nation appears to think that it has had enough of us, that our lease is out.