John Morley

My own opinion has been the same from the first, and I conceive that the time for action has now come.

It is one of the commonest of all secrets of cheap misjudgment in human affairs, to start by assuming that there is always some good way out of a bad case.

Situations arise alike (M154) for individuals, for parties, and for states, from which no good way out exists, but only choice between bad way and worse.

The mischiefs that followed the course actually taken, we see; then, as is the wont of human kind, we ignore the mischiefs that as surely awaited any other.

Parnell, although totally removed from any idea of responsibility, had spontaneously written to me, and offered to take the Chiltern Hundreds, an offer much to his honour but one which I thought it my duty to decline.

He thought he saw a way of getting something done for Ireland; the Irish people had given him a commission; he should stand to it, so long as ever they asked him.

In this mood he declared himself alive to the peril and the grave responsibility of taking any course that could lead to consequences so formidable.

Unluckily, the stubborn impulses of defiance that came naturally to his temperament were aroused to their most violent pitch and swept all calculations of policy aside.

He now proceeded passionately to dash into the dust the whole fabric of policy which he had with such infinite sagacity, patience, skill, and energy devised and reared.

For every day, I may say, of these five, we have been engaged in laboriously rolling up hill the stone of Sisyphus.

Parnell’s decision of yesterday means that the stone is to break away from us and roll down again to the bottom of the hill.

I must claim entire and absolute liberty to answer that question as I may think right.

Throw me to the English wolves if you like, he said, but at any rate make sure that real home rule and not its shadow is to be your price, and that they mean to pay it.

This was to awaken the spectre of old suspicions, and to bring to life again those forces of violence and desperation which it had been the very crown of his policy to exorcise.

Let us all keep quiet,” said one important unionist, “we may now have to revise our positions.” Either way, the serpent of faction would raise its head in Ireland, and the strong life of organised and concentrated nationalism would perish…

Men on a raft in a boiling sea have something to think of besides deportment and the graces of serenity.

In gravity, dignity, acute perception, and that good faith which is the soul of real as distinct from spurious debate, the parliamentary critic recognises them as all of the first order.

If he does so, the Irish party will be kept together, the honourable alliance with Gladstonian liberals maintained, success at general election secured, home rule certain.

If he does not retire, alliance will be dissolved, election lost, Irish party seriously damaged if not wholly broken up, home rule indefinitely postponed, coercion perpetuated, evicted tenants hopelessly crushed, and the public conscience…

There was only one guarantee, he said, that could be of any (M159) value to Ireland, namely the assured and unalterable fact that no English leader and no party could ever dream of either proposing or carrying any scheme of home rule which…

He informed them that his responsibility to Ireland would not allow him to retire.

But, looking to Irish interests, I think a Parnellite Ireland infinitely better than a divided Ireland.

English interference is always at the root of mischief in Ireland.

Think what his day had been, in mere intellectual strain, apart from what strains him far more than that—his strife with persons and his compassion for the unlucky Irishmen.

It is a great and high call to work by faith and not by sight.