John Morley

The political economy of war is now one of its most commanding aspects.

Every farthing, with the smallest exceptions conceivable, of the scores or hundreds of millions which a war may cost, goes directly, and very violently, to stimulate production, though it is intended ultimately for waste or for destruction.

It is, however, more than this; for the regular commerce of peace is tameness itself compared with the gambling spirit which war, through the rapid shiftings and high prices which it brings, always introduces into trade.

Never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely a single moral action of a single man of which other men can have such a knowledge, in its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its merits, as to…

The translation of poetry into poetry, as Coleridge said, is difficult because the translator must give brilliancy without the warmth of original conception, from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord.

Always let us remember that his literary life was part of the rest of his life, as literature ought to be.

Reading with him in the days of his full vigour was a habitual communing with the master spirits of mankind, as a vivifying and nourishing part of life.

Gladstone too has a place by character and influences among what we may call the abstract, moral, spiritual forces that stamped the realm of Britain in his age.

Following Walpole and Cobden and Peel in the policies of peace, he knew how to augment the material resources on which our people depend.

Events from season to season are taken to teach sinister lessons, that the Real is the only Rational, force is the test of right and wrong, the state has nothing to do with restraints of morals, the ruler is emancipated.

Speculations in physical science were distorted for alien purposes, and survival of the fittest was taken to give brutality a more decent name.

Without bringing back the cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth century, without sharing all the idealisms of the middle of the nineteenth, he resisted with his whole might the odious contention that moral progress in the relations of nations…

There has also come prominently into view a new and powerful set of motives which, in my deliberate judgment, require us, for the sake of the United Kingdom even more than for the sake of Ireland, to push forward this question.

Every consideration which prompted our pledges, prompts the recognition of them, and their extension, rather than curtailment.

The argument that we cannot yet trust Irishmen with popular local institutions is the mischievous argument by which the conservative opposition to the Melbourne government resisted, and finally crippled, the reform of municipal…

I have from the first regarded the rising of the Soudanese against Egypt as a justifiable and honourable revolt.

But we knew the nobleness of his philanthropy, and we trusted him to the uttermost, as it was our duty to do.

Upon the whole, it seems probable that Gordon, perhaps insensibly to himself, and certainly without our concurrence, altered the character of his mission, and worked in a considerable degree against our intentions and instructions.

One of the cardinal difficulties of all free government is to make it hard for majorities to act unjustly to minorities.

You cannot make this injustice impossible but you may set up obstacles.

If England commits follies they are the follies of a strong man who can afford to waste a portion of his resources without greatly affecting the sum total....

Italy by nature stands in alliance neither with anarchy nor with Caesarism, but with the cause and advocates of national liberty and progress throughout Europe.

Never had a nation greater advantages from soil and climate, from the talents and dispositions of the people, never was there a more smiling prospect (if we may fall back upon the graceful fiction) from the Alpine tops, even down to the…

It has produced already anticipations of love and good will, which are the first fruits of what is to come.

But I will state briefly (1) my conduct in that matter was mainly or wholly governed by regard to peace, for I believed, and believe now, that in 1860 there were only two alternatives; one of them, the French treaty, and the other, war…