John Morley

For the nature of the gods must ever of itself enjoy repose supreme through endless time, far withdrawn from all concerns of ours; free from all our pains, free from all our perils, strong in resources of its own, needing nought from us…

On the whole, I find myself free to confess, and without reluctance to admit, that the English escaped from a wretched and discreditable muddle, not without harm and damage, but perhaps in the best possible manner.

Gladstone wrote: “I can affirm with confidence that the notion of a title in the cabinet to be consulted on the succession to a cabinet office is absurd.

Gladstone said on Nov. 2, 1882: “It is no part of the duty incumbent upon us to restore order in the Soudan.

The moment it is known we have given up the game, every man will go over to the Mahdi.

The defence of our retention of Suakin is that it is a very serious obstacle to the renewal and the conduct of that slave trade which is always trying to pass over from Africa into Asia.

Gladstone went somewhat nearer to the Manchester school, and expressed his agreement with Bright in believing most wars to have been sad errors.

This is not only entirely credible, it is certain; for the only body that could carry out such a promise had not been consulted.

The proposition,” he said, “is not only untrue but ridiculous.

In the press, however, I had strenuously opposed the Forster Coercion bill of the following winter, as involving a radical misapprehension of the nature and magnitude of the case.

In the course of that controversy, arguments pressed themselves forward which led much further than mere resistance to the policy of coercion.

Special exemptions from penalties which should apply to all public men alike cannot possibly be made in favour of exceptionally valuable politicians to suit the convenience of their parties.

The old principles of the European state-system, and the old principles that inspired the vast contentions of ages, lingered but they seemed to have grown decrepit.

Divine right of kings, providential pre-eminence of dynasties, balance of power, sovereign independence of the papacy,—these and the other accredited catchwords of history were giving place to the vague, indefinable, shifting, but most…

The first breach in the ramparts of European order set up by the kings after Waterloo, was the independence of Greece in 1829.

In 1830 Paris overthrew monarchy by divine right; Belgium cut herself asunder from the supremacy of the Dutch; then Italians and Poles strove hard but in vain to shake off the yoke of Austria and of Russia.

In 1848 revolts of race against alien dominion broke out afresh in Italy and Hungary.

I do not mean so much this or that measure, as the principle on which it is to rest.

But that which is better and more weighty still is that hearts should be bound together by a reasonable extension, at fitting times and among selected portions of the people, of every benefit and every privilege that can be justly…

One of the fated words had been spoken that gather up wandering forces of time and occasion, and precipitate new eras.

What every man and woman too has a right to, is to be well governed and under just laws, and they who propose a change ought to show that the present organisation does not accomplish those objects....

My declaration was, taken generally, that all persons ought to be admitted to the franchise, who can be admitted to it with safety....

I think the party which supports your government has suffered, and is suffering, and will much more seriously suffer, from the part which as a party it has played within these recent years, in regard to the franchise.

But such influence as argument and statement without profession of political intentions can exercise upon the public mind, I heartily desire to see exercised in favour of extension of the franchise....

You have advanced the cause of freedom in foreign lands by the power and courage with which you have assailed and exposed the misdeeds and cruelties of continental tyrants.