John Morley

Unfortunately this experience, whatever be the precise name for it, now came with disastrous promptitude, and the nation having narrowly escaped one war, found itself involved in two.

Gladstone thought that freedom was the answer; what path the others would have us tread, neither Ruskin nor his stormy teacher ever intelligibly told us.

The true question against Ruskin’s and Carlyle’s school was how you are to get the rule of the best.

I am an out-and-out inequalitarian,” a confession which Ruskin treated with intense delight, clapping his hands triumphantly.

I am a firm believer in the aristocratic principle—the rule of the best.

But, for the sake of others, not yet so completely emancipated from the yoke of facts, I simply ask at what date it was that the liberal administrations of this country adopted the “permanent sentiment” and the “matter of principle” which…

The climax of the whole matter was reached when the result of the Alabama treaty displayed to the world an England overreached, overruled, and apologetic.

The liberals, according to that ably written newspaper, have now imbibed as a permanent sentiment a “distaste for national greatness.” This distaste is now grown into matter of principle.

I value our insular position, but I dread the day when we shall be reduced to a moral insularity....

This England of ours is not so poor and so weak a thing as to depend upon the reputation of this or that administration; and the world knows pretty well of what stuff she is made....

I do not expect or believe that we shall fall into that sort of contempt which follows upon weakness.

I think we have lost greatly by the conclusion of this convention; I think we have lost very greatly indeed the sympathy and respect of the nations of Europe.

The agreement with Russia had in truth constantly tied their hands.

But within the limits of fair differences of opinion, which will always be found to arise on such occasions, I do affirm that it was their part to take the side of liberty; and I do also affirm that as a matter of fact they took the side…

I say, sir, that in this congress of the great Powers, the voice of England has not been heard in unison with the institutions, the history, and the character of England.

Its range, compass, and grasp are only matched by the simplicity and lucidity of his penetrating examination.

Gladstone wound up his labours in parliament with an extraordinarily powerful survey of all these great transactions.

By this convention England undertook to defend Turkey against Russian aggression in Asia, though concessions were made to Russia that rendered Asiatic Turkey indefensible; and Turkey was to carry out reforms which all sensible men knew to…

The instigators are those really guilty; no one can wonder at the tools.

Public men do not withstand war fevers without discomfort, as Bright had found in the streets of Manchester when he condemned the Crimean war.

Gladstone wrote to Madame Novikoff, “to find the conclusion of one war, for which there was a weighty cause, followed by the threat of another, for which there is no adequate cause at all, and which will be an act of utter wickedness—if it…

But my opinion is that the liberal party in general are firmly opposed to the vote as a silly, misleading, and mischievous measure.” He both spoke and voted.

The good cause has been further weakened by the bad conduct, in varying degrees, of many races, Magyars and Jews above all.

I have said in parliament, and I deeply feel, it is the most deplorable chapter of our foreign policy since the peace of 1815.

For us there is no excuse: there was no difficulty whatever in our doing our duty.