John Morley

What we want at present is a positive force to carry us onward as a body.

If we differ on the things to be done, this may end us in a way at least not dishonourable.

If we agree on a good plan, it must come to good, whether we succeed or fail with it.

In my opinion the very best that could happen would be that we should come back with a small majority composed of Irish home rulers and a decided minority without them; while to me it seems very doubtful whether even with home rulers…

In a word, dissolution means either immediate death, or at the best death a little postponed, and the party either way shattered for the time.

For one I am anxious to continue where we are, because I am very loath to leave the party in its present menacing condition, without having first made every effort in our power to avert this public mischief.

First, then, I do not believe that we can find this recovery of vital force in our general administration of public business.

As men, notwithstanding the advantage drawn from Bright’s return, the nation appears to think that it has had enough of us, that our lease is out.

It is a question of measures then: can we by any measures materially mend the position of the party for an impending election?...

Had we done so, a case would have opened at once, comfortably furnished not with men opposing us on principle, like a part of those who opposed in 1866, but with the men of pretext and the men of disappointment, with intriguers and with…

We cannot do it, unless the circumstances shall be such as to put it in our power, by the possession of a very wide margin, to propose something large and strong and telling upon both the popular mind and the leading elements of the…

But, subject to the fulfilment of these conditions, my opinion is that we can do it: can frame a budget large enough and palpably beneficial enough, not only to do much good to the country, but sensibly to lift the party in the public view…

Let me now wind up this long story by saying that my desire in framing it has been simply to grasp the facts, and to set aside illusions which appear to me to prevail among sections of the liberal party, nowhere so much as in that section…

But he continued to resist; and, viewing the age of the parliament, I was thus driven to the idea of dissolution, for I regarded the matter as virtually involving the whole question of the value of our promises, an anticipation which has…

It was this controversy that opened the door for immediate dissolution, though the general grounds for dissolution at some near time were only too abundant.

My own election for Greenwich after Boord the distiller, is more like a defeat than a victory, though it places me in parliament again.

I tend to harden in my own view, principle and precedent seeming to me alike clear.

I may be wrong in my view of the matter generally; but I can only judge for the best.

I do not see that I am wanted or should be of use in the House of Lords, and there would be more discrepancy between rank and fortune, which is a thing on the whole rather to be deprecated.

As far as I can make out people are frightened—the masters were afraid of their workmen, manufacturers afraid of strikes, churchmen afraid of the nonconformists, many afraid of what is going on in France and Spain—and in very unreasoning…

The feelings of those who suffer from the removal of abuses are always stronger than those of the general public who are benefited.

These men make very little noise and get very little applause.

For me that will be a very great change, for I do not intend to assume the general functions of leader of the opposition, and my great ambition or design will be to spend the remainder of my days, if it please God, in tranquillity, and at…

If I had been a follower of a parliamentary chief as eminent, even if I thought he had erred, I should have been disposed rather to exhibit sympathy than to offer criticism.

He does this not from anger, but because he says that it is absolutely necessary to party action to learn that all the duties and responsibilities do not rest on the leaders, but that followers have their obligations too.