John Morley

It was soon felt that the bare possibility of Ireland putting duties on British goods—and it was not more than a bare possibility in view of Britain’s position as practically Ireland’s only market—would have destroyed the bill in every…

Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville, “I scarcely see how a cabinet could have been formed, if the inclusion of the Irish members had been insisted on; and now I do not see how the scheme and policy can be saved from shipwreck, if the…

Among his five spurious types of courage, Aristotle names for one the man who seems to be brave, only because he does not see his danger.

The giant mass of secular English prejudice against Ireland frowned like a mountain chain across the track.

A strong and proud nation had trained itself for long courses of time in habits of dislike for the history, the political claims, the religion, the temperament, of a weaker nation.

Wider reflection might have warned them that the plain people of this island, though quickly roused against even the shadow of concession when the power or the greatness of their country is openly assailed, seem at the same time ready to…

Rash experiment in politics has been defined as raising grave issues without grave cause.

Those who were moved by professional ambition, those whose object was social advancement, those who thought only of upright public service, the keen party men, the men who aspired to office, the men with a past and the men who looked for a…

For the first time since the union, the Irish case was at last to be pressed in all its force and strength, in every aspect of policy and of conscience, by the most powerful Englishman then alive.

What the occasion now required was that passion should burn low, and reasoned persuasion hold up the guiding lamp.

Of that best kind of eloquence which dispenses with declamation, this was a fine and sustained example.

But political oratory is action, not words,—action, character, will, conviction, purpose, personality.

Few are the heroic moments in our parliamentary politics, but this was one.

The direct and unsophisticated nature of his antagonism, backed by a personal character of uprightness and plain dealing beyond all suspicion, gave a momentum to his attack that was beyond any effect of dialectics.

Neither prophecy was demonstrable; both could be made plausible.

There was, above all, a grand and copious anthology throughout the debate from Burke, the greatest of Irishmen and the largest master of civil wisdom in our tongue.

Most members of parliament like to think with pretty large blinkers on, and though it may make for narrowness, this is consistent with much practical wisdom.

Popular government is at the best difficult to work.

It is supremely difficult to work in a statutory scheme with limits, reservations, and restrictions lurking round every corner.

Ireland, he declared, is not one nation, but two nations.

The charge of bad faith and hypocrisy so freely made against the Irishmen is wholly unwarranted by a single word in these proceedings.

Such strange violence in calm natures, such pharisaic pretension in a world where we are all fallen, remains a riddle.

It was a painful demonstration how thin after all is our social veneer, even when most highly polished.

The attempt to kindle the torch of religious fear or hate was in Great Britain happily a failure.

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