John Morley

Steps are being continuously taken towards obliterating distinctions of race as the test for access to posts of public authority and power.

In this path I confidently expect and intend the progress henceforward to be steadfast and sure, as education spreads, experience ripens, and the lessons of responsibility are well learned by the keen intelligence and apt capabilities of…

From the first, the principle of representative institutions began to be gradually introduced, and the time has come when, in the judgment of my Viceroy and Governor-General and others of my counsellors, that principle may be prudently…

Important classes among you, representing ideas that have been fostered and encouraged by British rule, claim equality of citizenship, and a greater share in legislation and government.

The politic satisfaction of such a claim will strengthen, not impair, existing authority and power.

Administration will be all the more efficient, if the officers who conduct it have greater opportunities of regular contact with those whom it affects, and with those who influence and reflect common opinion about it.

May divine protection and favour strengthen the wisdom and mutual goodwill that are needed, for the achievement of a task as glorious as was ever committed to rulers and subjects in any State or Empire of recorded time.

I have no choice; followed or not followed I must go on.

In my opinion—and I speak from experience—viewing the nature of that course, you will find this hardly possible.

For a justification you, I fear, will have to found upon the doctrine of ‘a new departure.’ We must protest against it, and deny it with heart and soul.

The effect of this blind and hideous crime was at once to arrest the spirit and the policy of conciliation.

While the Irish leaders were locked up, a secret murder club had taken matters in hand in their own way, and ripened plots within a stone’s throw of the Castle.

In that sinister list the murders in the Phoenix Park have a tragic place.

With one or two scandalous exceptions, the tone of the English press was sober, sensible, and self-possessed.

In England, the national attitude has been admirable.

The general strain of language has been, “Do not let this terrible and flagitious crime deter you from persevering with the work of justice.

I once asked an Irishman of consummate experience and equitable mind, with no leanings that I know of to political nationalism, whether the task of any later ruler of Ireland was comparable to Lord Spencer’s.

Assuredly not,” he replied: “in 1882 Ireland seemed to be literally a society on the eve of dissolution.

The moral cowardice of what ought to have been the governing class was astounding.

The power of random arrest and detention under the Coercion Act of 1881 had not improved the moral of magistrates and police.

I find many very ready to say what I ought to have done when a battle is over; but I wish some of these persons would come and tell me what to do before the battle.—WELLINGTON.

The most careful analysis of the various elements of society in Egypt by those best acquainted at first hand with all those elements, whether internal or external, whether Egyptian or European, and with all the roots of antagonism thriving…

So far from being a simple case, it was indescribably entangled, and even the desperate questions that rise in our minds at the mention of the Balkan peninsula, of Armenia, of Constantinople, offer no such complex of difficulties as the…

The dual control, the system of carrying on the Egyptian government under the advice of an English and a French agent, came to an end.

I would use my best endeavours to make these States independent in matters of administration.