John Morley

Indignation, he said in a thoroughly characteristic sentence, indignation is froth, except as it leads to action; mere remonstrance is mockery.

Once again, it was not words that made the power of the orator, it was the relation in purpose, feeling, and conviction between him and his audience.

Gladstone had both displayed a sure instinct as to the most effective method of popular approach, and at the same time did justice to his own burning and innate hatred of all cruelty and oppression, whether in Bourbon or Bashi-Bazouk.

Humanity was at the root of the whole matter; and the keynote of this great crusade was the association of humanity with a high policy worthy of the British name.

But it now seems to be all but avowed, that the fear of danger, not to Europe, but to Islam,—and Islam not from Russia, but from the Christians of Turkey,—is to be a ground for stinting their liberties.

Surely the best resistance to be offered to Russia,” he said, “is by the strength and freedom of those countries that will have to resist her.

There is no barrier like the breast of freemen.” The union of the Principalities would raise up antagonists to the ambitions of Russia more powerful than any that could be bought with money.

You will find, that is to say, the man of fluctuating hope without firm calculation of fact, the man of half-shaped end with no sure eye to means.

It was difficult for the ruler who had risen to power by bloodstained usurpation and the perfidious ruin of a constitution, to keep in step with a statesman, the inspiring purpose of whose life was the deliverance of his country by the…

Without the sword of France the work could not have been begun; but it was the people and statesmen of northern and central Italy who in these eight months made the consummation possible.

The plébiscite, though stigmatised as a hypocritical farce, and often no better than a formal homage paid by violence or intrigue to public right, was a derivative from the doctrines of nationality and the sovereignty of the people then…

Italy bore the stroke with wise fortitude, but England when she saw the bargain closed for which she had herself prepared the way, took fierce umbrage at the aggrandisement of France, and heavy clouds floated into the European sky.

The Cross seemed in truth as grave a danger in one quarter of Europe as was the Crescent in another, and the pope was now to undergo the same course of territorial partition as had befallen the head of a rival faith.

The politician, he used to tell his friends, must above all things have the tact of the Possible.

I do not ask you to leave any greater duty undone, but to bear in mind the singular claims on your commiseration of these most unhappy persons, if occasion offers.

Naples has a government as bad as anarchy; Rome unites the evils of the worst government and the most entire anarchy.

In those countries I can hardly imagine any change that would not be for the better.

Do not think it presumption, for it is the mere description of a fact, if I say, we in England cannot bring our minds to this mode of looking at the Italian question.

All our habits, all our instincts, all our history lead us in another direction.

All our experience has been to the effect that the champion of liberty should take his ground, not upon any remote or abstract proposition, but upon the right of man, under every law divine and human, first to good government, and next to…

It is hardly possible for me to pass a judgment upon his resignation as a political step: but I think few will doubt that the moral character of the act is high.

When in reply to all that, we fling in his face the truce of Villafranca, he may reply—and the answer is not without force—that he stood single-handed in a cause when any moment Europe might have stood combined against him.

Her Majesty’s government were bound to admit that the Italians themselves are the best judges of their own interests.

Vattel, that eminent jurist, had well said that when a people for good reasons take up arms against an oppressor, it is but an act of justice and generosity to assist brave men in the defence of their liberties.

Her Majesty’s government did not feel justified in declaring that the people of Southern Italy had not good reasons for throwing off their allegiance to their former governments.