John Morley

I have known one man as free from suspicions as was Lord Aberdeen, but he was not a politician.

I recollect, and I dare say you better recollect, one of his sayings: “I have a habit of believing people.” To some these words may not seem to import a peculiarity.

In the simple and strong aim of the man to be good himself, it belonged to the very strength and simplicity of that aim, that he should also think others good.

Those who have read his state papers, and have admired their penetrating force and comprehensive scope, will not misunderstand me when I say that he was, in this respect, a little child; not from defect of vision, but from thorough…

I must resist the impulse, but I cannot stop without saying a word on the quality which I regard as beyond all others his own, I mean the absence from his nature of all tendency to suspicion.

To fall short of perfect candour would deprive all I have said of the little value it can possess, as that little value is all summed up in its sincerity.

So just a man will, I think, rarely attain in that department to the same measure of popularity, while a less just man might easily obtain one far greater.

Nowhere is a man so constantly and in such myriad forms tempted to partiality; nowhere can he do more for justice; but nowhere is it more clear that all human force is inadequate for its end.

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 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.

The passions will often ally themselves with generosity, but they always tend to divert from justice.

The beauty of justice is the beauty of simple form; the beauty of generosity is heightened with colour and every accessory.

I should almost dare to say there are five generous men to one just man.

It has always appeared to me that the love of justice is one of the rarest among all good qualities, I mean the love of it with full and commanding strength.

There were several mental virtues that he possessed in a degree very peculiar; there were, I think, one or two in which he stood almost alone.

If I have said that he had much in common with other distinguished men who were like him statesmen by profession, it has been by way of preface to what I have now to say; namely, that what has ever struck me in his character as a whole…

Rarely indeed have I heard him utter a word censuring opponents, or concerning those who actually were or had been friends, that could have given pain.

He was strong in his self-respect, but his respect for others, not for this man or that but for other men as men, was much more conspicuous.

Doubtless he had pondered much upon the law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It had entered profoundly into his being, and formed a large part of it.

But the loyalty of intention was in him so assisted by other and distinctive qualities, as to give it a peculiar efficacy; and any one associated with Lord Aberdeen might always rest assured that he was safe in his hands.

But you have a right to my recollections such as they are, and I will not withhold them.

It produced no inconsiderable effect for a number of years upon the legislation of various European countries, which tended less decisively than we could have desired, but still intelligibly and beneficially, in the direction of freedom of…

There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis, than the commercial treaty with France.

It enormously increased the trade between this country and France.

I, for my part, look with the deepest interest upon the share that I had in concluding—I will not say so much in concluding, but in conducting on this side of the water, and within the walls of parliament as well as in administration—the…