John Morley

But as often happens, what it was easy to show ought to be done, was extremely hard to do.

Never was our political system more severely tested, and never did it achieve a completer victory.

The law, when at length it became law, effected the national purpose with extraordinary thoroughness and precision.

We cannot wait for the church of Ireland to make up her mind.

We are bound, nay compelled, to make up ours.

It is idle for the leading Irish churchmen to think “we will wait and see what they offer and then ask so much more.” Our mode of warfare cannot but be influenced by the troops we lead.

Carried, as it has been, by an overwhelming and steady majority through a House of Commons, chosen expressly to speak the feeling of the country on the question, there seems no reason to believe that any fresh appeal to the people would…

The rejection of the bill, therefore, on the second reading, would only serve to bring the two Houses into collision, and to prolong a dangerous agitation on the subject.

It was three o’clock in the morning (June 19) before the close of a fine debate—fine not merely from the eloquence of the speakers and cogency of argument on either side, but because there was a deep and real issue, and because the…

Gladstone told the Queen, the House of Commons would never accept, and the first effect of persistence in such a course would be a stronger move against the episcopal seats in the House of Lords than had been seen for more than two hundred…

He ridiculed as it deserved the contention that the nation had not passed judgment on the question of disendowment, and he insisted that the government could not go further than three quarters of a million towards meeting the extravagant…

Gladstone judged it, to the peace of Ireland, and so irreconcilable with public feeling in England and Scotland.

I think in these and other prayers lies the secret of the strength of body which has been given me in unusual measure during this very trying year.

I cannot finish this statement, which I believe is accurate, without expressing my admiration at the firmness and conciliation which you displayed in directing me in all these negotiations.

I could hardly have hoped that you could so have framed, mastered, and carried through the bill from first to last so complete, so unchanged in identity of principle and detail, and let me add with such unwearying and sustained…

It is beautiful to see his intense enjoyment of the cool fresh air, the trees, the sky, the gleaming of light on the water, all that is refreshing in contrast to the din of politics.

Irish history has been said to resemble that of Spain for the last three centuries,—the elaboration of all those ideas of law and political economy most unsuited to the needs of the nation concerned.

The difficulty arose from the huge and bottomless ignorance of those in whose hands the power lay.

Still ignorance left all the more power to prejudice and interests.

The cabinet was in the main made up of landlords, lawyers, hardened and convicted economists,—not economists like Mill, but men saturated with English ideas of contract, of competitive rent, of strict rule of supply and demand.

When the Irish church question is out of the way, we shall find all Ireland, north and south alike, united in demanding something on the land question much broader than anything hitherto offered or proposed in compensation bills.

If the question is to go on without any real remedy for the grievance, the condition of Ireland in this particular will become worse, and measures far beyond anything I now contemplate will be necessary.

I am most anxious to meet the evil before it is too great for control, and my plan will meet it without wrong to any man.

The idea of adapting the law to custom in all its depth and breadth, and extending the rooted notion of tenant-right to its furthest bearings, was necessarily a plant of Irish and not of English growth.

After all, there is no English-speaking community in any part of the wide globe, where our tragic mismanagement of the land of Ireland, and of those dwelling on it and sustained by it, has not left its unlucky stamp.