John Morley

I am the more pained and grieved, because I have for the last five-and-twenty years received from the government and people of America tokens of goodwill which could not fail to arouse my undying gratitude.

Gladstone circulated a rejoinder to Lewis, arguing for representation to the two combatants from England, France, and Russia—a representation with moral authority and force, of the opinion of the civilised world upon the conditions of the…

I regard myself as an outside workman, engaged in the preparation of materials, which you and the party will probably have to manipulate and then to build into a structure.

For though I do not wish to shut the door upon the government, I despair of them, after so many invitations and so many refusals....

From this body there has never on any occasion within my memory proceeded the impulse that has prompted, and finally achieved, any of the great measures which in the last half century have contributed so much to the fame and happiness of…

Yet all these things have been done; and done by other agencies than theirs, and despite their opposition.

She is not a country that, when she enters into a campaign, has to ask herself whether she can support a second or a third campaign.

She enters into a campaign which she will not terminate till right is done.” This was a hardly veiled threat to Russia, it was encouragement to Turkey, it was incitement to a war party in Great Britain.

He has little foreign or eastern knowledge, and little craft; he is rough of tongue in public debate, but a great gentleman in private society; he is very remarkably clever, of unsure judgment, but is above anything mean; has no Disraelite…

In a word the appointment of Lord Salisbury to Constantinople is the best thing the government have yet done in the eastern question.

Gladstone, however, found comfort in the thought that by the agitation two points had been gained: the re-establishment of the European concert, and extrication from a disgraceful position of virtual complicity with Turkey.

I felt so proud of my leader—the chief I have always clung to through good report and ill report—because, wise or unwise as he might seem in this or that, he was always noble of soul.

Such a sense of solitary struggle I never remember.

At last I rose on the main question nearly in despair as to the result; but resolved at least not to fail through want of effort.

I appeal to an established tradition older, wider, nobler far—a tradition not which disregards British interests, but which teaches you to seek the promotion of these interests in obeying the dictates of honour and justice.

Are we to dress up the fantastic ideas some people entertain about this policy and that policy in the garb of British interests, and then, with a new and base idolatry, fall down and worship them?

Or are we to look, not at the sentiment, but at the hard facts of the case, which Lord Derby told us fifteen years ago—viz., that it is the populations of those countries that will ultimately possess them—that will ultimately determine…

They have told you that they do not seek alliance with Russia, or with any foreign power, but that they seek to be delivered from an intolerable burden of woe and shame.

That burden of woe and shame—the greatest that exists on God’s earth—is one that we thought united Europe was about to remove; but to removing which, for the present, you seem to have no efficacious means of offering even the smallest…

But, sir, the removal of that load of woe and shame is a great and noble prize.

I believe there are men in the cabinet who would try to win it, if they were free to act on their own beliefs and aspirations.

The destruction may not come in the way or by the means that we should choose; but come this boon from what hands it may, it will be a noble boon, and as a noble boon will gladly be accepted by Christendom and the world.

Like every other grand missionary—the abolitionist, the gospel missionary, the free trader, the peace man, the temperance man—he could not believe that the truths, arguments, and appeals, of which he was the bearer, could fail to strike in…

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

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