John Morley

I affirm with profound conviction that this movement of nationalities has attained in Italy, in Hungary, in Vienna, in a great part of Germany, and in some of the Slavonian populations, a degree of importance that must at no distant period…

In those days there were idealists; democracy was conscious of common interests and common brotherhood; a liberal Europe was then a force and not a dream.

The honour paid him was I think his due as a most singularly simple, disinterested, and heroic character, who had achieved great things for Italy, for liberty well-understood, and even for mankind.

The Manchester men agreed to help in the result, because in Cobden’s words they were convinced that a revolution had been at last wrought in the mischievous policy of incessant intervention.

Cobden had been foreign secretary, instead of Lord Russell, I fully believe this country would occupy a position proud and noble compared to that which she occupies at this moment.

July 8.—This debate ought to be an epoch in foreign policy.

The best form of government is that which doth actuate and dispose every part and member of a state to the common good.

If, instead of concord and interchange of support, one part seeks to uphold an old form of government, and the other part introduce a new, they will miserably consume one and other.

No man could guide the new advance, now so evidently approaching, unless he clearly united fervour and capacity for practical improvements in government to broad and glowing sympathies, alike with the needs and the elemental instincts of…

The resurrection of Italy could only be vindicated on principles of liberty and the right of a nation to choose its own rulers.

Gladstone’s special activities as a reformer brought him into contact with the conditions of life and feeling among the workmen, (M36) and the closer he came to them, the more did his humane and sympathetic temper draw him towards their…

This reaction seemed to set up the doctrine that the masses must be in standing antagonism to the law, and it resulted in severities that well justified antagonism.

The outcome of this stream of new perceptions and new feeling in his mind was a declaration that suddenly electrified the political world.

Then, was not the state of the actual case something of a scandal, with less than one-tenth of the constituencies composed of working men, and with less than one-fiftieth of the working men in possession of the franchise?

How could you defend a system that let in the lower stratum of the middle class and shut out the upper stratum of the working class?

In face of such dispositions as the workmen manifested towards law, parliament, and government, was it right that the present system of almost entire exclusion should prevail?

I call upon the adversary to show cause, and I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger, is morally entitled to come within the pale of the…

Further, the right of Irish members to take part in purely English as well as imperial business would be seized upon by English politicians, whenever it should answer their purpose, as a pretext for interfering in Irish affairs.

Some partisans of imperial federation took it into their heads that the plan for Ireland would be fatal to a plan for the whole empire, though others more rationally conceived that if there was to be a scheme for the empire, schemes for…

Some sages, while pretending infinite friendship to home rule, insisted that the parliament at Westminster should retain a direct and active veto upon legislation at Dublin, and that Irish members should remain as they were in London.

Speaking generally, the feeling against this provision was due less to the anomaly of taxation without representation, than to fears for the unity of the empire and the supremacy of parliament.

Vivid pictures were drawn of a train of railway trucks two miles long, loaded with millions of bright sovereigns, all travelling from the pocket of the British son of toil to the pocket of the idle Irish landlord.

The foundations of human character are much the same in all historic ages, and every public crisis brings out the same types.

The Land bill he thought quite wrong, for why should so enormous an effort be made for one interest only?

I do not believe that with regard to the Irish question “the resources of civilisation are exhausted”; and I think the plan of your bill is full of complexity, and gives no hope of successful working in Ireland or of harmony between…