John Morley

The church of England was quickened into active antagonism by Irish disestablishment, by the extinction of sectarian tests at Oxford and Cambridge, and by the treatment of endowed schools.

Instead of zeal, the Education Act produced refrigeration and estrangement.

It is quite open to you at once to dispose of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds and to decline inquiring whether they are distinctive, upon the ground that they are not documents employed in the instruction of young children....

Obviously no one has a right to call on you to define the distinctive character of a formulary such as the Thirty-nine Articles, or of any but such as are employed in schools.

They are as we make them, and they make society.

Glad to see you lay down the broad and intelligible line that state grants go to secular education, and voluntary efforts must do the rest.

As he said afterwards to Lord Granville, “I personally have no fear of the secular system; but I cannot join in measures of repression against voluntary schools.

What is wanted is some definite willingness or resolution to recover the goodwill and confidence of the nonconformist leaders in the boroughs; for without this, reconstruction is of no value....

Finance is of great moment, and people are well pleased to see you in your old office again; but no budget will heal the soreness that has been created—it is not of the pocket but of the feelings....

The fact is, it seems to me, that the noncons. have not yet as a body made up their minds whether they want unsectarian religion, or whether they want simple secular teaching, so far as the application of the rate is concerned.

I have never been strong against the latter of these two which seems to me impartial, and not, if fairly worked, of necessity in any degree unfriendly to religion.

The former is in my opinion glaringly partial, and I shall never be a party to it.

He felt the mortification of an honourable man at the trick, of which he had allowed himself to be made the dupe in the case of the Alabama.

Though this attempt failed, neither of the two English political parties was in a position any longer to refuse arbitration in principle.

Agreement in principle is of little avail, without driving force enough for practice.

A desire to remove causes of difference between ourselves and the United States grew at a remarkable speed, for the spectacle of success is wont to have magical effects even in minds that would indignantly reject the standards of…

While benevolent feeling gained volume in this country, statesmen in America took ground that made the satisfaction of it harder.

He was alive to the extent to which England’s power in Europe was reduced by the smothered quarrel with America, but he took even higher ground than this in his sense of the blessing to the world of an absolute reconciliation in good faith…

He desired nothing so much, he said, as that entire goodwill should prevail between Great Britain and the United States, and that the settlement should be complete.

Was it in fact reasonable to contend that ironclads might be built in the Mersey, sent out a few miles beyond the river mouth, there armed from lighters, and sent off to bombard New York?

If not, was it reasonable that England should invite the arbitrators to judge the Alabama case according to one rule in the past, and then to lay down another rule for the future?

Rational co-operation in politics would be at an end, if no two men might act together, until they had satisfied themselves that in no possible circumstances could they be divided.—GLADSTONE.

The cabinet as a whole was one of extraordinary power, not merely because its chief had both aptitude and momentum enough for a dozen, but because it was actively homogeneous in reforming spirit and purpose.

This solidarity is the great element in such combinations, and the mainspring of all vigorous cabinet work.

The rescue of a sensible percentage of this valuable esculent will be a noble service rendered by scientific knowledge and skill to the general community.” But science is touchy, and wounds are sometimes too deep to be healed by words.