John Morley

Morley was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of Jonathan Morley, a surgeon, and of Priscilla Mary (née Donkin).[2] He attended Cheltenham College.[3] While at Oxford, he quarrelled with his father over religion, and had to leave the university early without an honours degree; his father had wanted him to become a clergyman.[4] He wrote, in obvious allusion to this rift, On Compromise (1874).[5]

Morley was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1873, before deciding to pursue a career in journalism. He later described his decision to abandon the law "my long enduring regret".[2] He edited the newly Radical-Liberal Pall Mall Gazette [6] from 1880 to 1883, with W. T. Stead as his assistant editor before going into politics.[7]

Morley first stood for Parliament at the Blackburn by-election in 1869, a rare double by-election held after an election petition led to the results of the 1868 general election in Blackburn being voided.[8] He was unsuccessful in Blackburn, and also failed to win a seat when he contested the City of Westminster at the 1880 general election.[9]

Morley was then elected as Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Newcastle upon Tyne at a by-election in February 1883.[10][11]

Secretary of State for India

Portrait of Lord Morley of Blackburn by Walter William Ouless

When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman formed his cabinet at the end of 1905, Morley was made Secretary of State for India. He would have preferred to have been Chancellor of the Exchequer.[35] In this position, he was conspicuous in May 1907 and afterwards for his firmness in sanctioning extreme measures for dealing with the outbreak in India of alarming symptoms of sedition. Though he was strongly opposed by some of the more extreme members of the Radical party, on the ground of belying his democratic principles in dealing with the British Raj, his action was generally recognised as combining statesmanship with patience. While firmly opposing revolutionary propaganda, he showed his popular sympathies by appointing two distinguished native Indians to the council and taking steps for a decentralisation of the administrative government. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigned in 1908 and H. H. Asquith became Prime Minister, Morley retained his post in the new cabinet; but it was thought advisable to relieve him of the burden imposed by a seat in the House of Commons, and he was transferred to the Upper House, being created a peer with the title of Viscount Morley of Blackburn, in the County Palatine of Lancaster.[36] He was the first peer to turn down a coat of arms, although a wall panel at Lincoln's Inn incorrectly ascribes one to him.[37][2]

In September 1906, Morley wrote favourably for staunch resistance to the railway workers agitation for higher wages. Failure to do so would damage the Liberal Party with the middle class because "railways are the middle class investment... if anybody thinks we can govern this country against the middle class, he is wrong".[38] In 1909 the Liberal Chancellor David Lloyd George increased taxes in his budget (the "People's Budget") to pay for increased armaments and social reform. Morley said that behind the budget "hangs the spectre of Tariff Reform" because the public "may say that, if this is the best that can be done under Free Trade, they'll try something else". Morley viewed "the Expenditure of the country" as "the most formidable of our standing problems".[35]

In 1917, Morley published his two volumes of memoirs, Recollections. In it, he contrasted old and new Liberalism:

The theory of new Liberalism did not seem much more piquant or fertile than the respectable old. As it happened, in the fulness of time our distinguished apostles of Efficiency came into supreme power, with a share in the finest field for efficient diplomacy and an armed struggle, that could have been imagined. Unhappily they broke down, or thought they had (1915), and could discover no better way out of their scrape than to seek deliverance (not without a trace of arbitrary proscription) from the opposing party that counted Liberalism, old or new, for dangerous and deluding moonshine.[41]

During his retirement, Morley kept an interest in politics. He said to his friend John Morgan on 15 February 1918:

I'm sick of Wilson... He hailed the Russian Revolution six months ago as the new Golden Age, and I said to Page, 'What does he know of Russia?' to which Page replied, 'Nothing'. As for his talk about a union of hearts after the war, the world is not made like that.[42]

This led Morgan to ask Morley about the League of Nations: "A mirage, and an old one". Morgan asked: "How are you going to enforce it?", whereupon Morley replied: "How indeed? One may as well talk of London morality being due to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But take away Scotland Yard!"[43] When asked in 1919 about the Covenant of the League of Nations Morley said: "I have not read it, and I don't intend to read it. It's not worth the paper it's written on. To the end of time it'll always be a case of 'Thy head or my head'. I've no faith in these schemes".[44] When a prominent Liberal praised someone as "a good European" Morley remarked: "When I lay me down at night or rise in the morning I do not ask myself if I am a good European".[45] Towards the close of 1919 he was worried about Britain's guarantee to France:

Surely a permanent commitment like that is contrary to all our foreign policy. What do the words 'unprovoked attack' by Germany mean? They are dangerously vague. I've been discussing them with Rosebery and he is as uneasy as I am. He wrote a letter to the Press about it, and the Times refused to publish it.[45]

He often criticised Labour Party policies and said to Morgan: "Have you read Henderson's speech about a capital levy? It's rank piracy".[46] During a discussion on 6 May 1919 Morley remarked: "I see Lloyd George has invited the Irish republicans to a conference. It's an act of inconceivable folly—he, the King's Prime Minister!"[47] When the House of Lords were debating the Fourth Home Rule Bill Morley said to Morgan on 6 January 1921:

I should have liked to have been there if only to have got up and said, 'If Mr. G's Home Rule Bill had been passed 30 years ago could Ireland have been worse than now? Would it have not been better?' And then fallen dead like Lord Chatham.[48]

On 1 May 1921, Morley said: "If I were an Irishman I should be a Sinn Feiner". When asked by Morgan: "And a Republican?" Morley said "No".[49]

He liked Winston Churchill and said to Morgan on 22 December 1921:

I foresee the day when Birkenhead will be Prime Minister in the Lords with Winston leading the Commons. They will make a formidable pair. Winston tells me Birkenhead has the best brain in England.... But I don't like Winston's habit of writing articles, as a Minister, on debatable questions of foreign policy in the newspapers. These allocutions of his are contrary to all Cabinet principles. Mr. G. would never have allowed it.[50]

In a letter to Sir Francis Webster in 1923, Morley wrote:

Present party designations have become empty of all contents... Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits' end—when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate? How are we to measure the use and abuse of industrial organization? Powerful orators find "Liberty" the true keyword, but then I remember hearing from a learned student that of "liberty" he knew well over two hundred definitions. Can we be sure that the "haves" and the "have-nots" will agree in their selection of the right one? We can only trust to the growth of responsibility; we may look to circumstances and events to teach their lesson.[51]

Morley devoted a considerable amount of time to literature, his anti-Imperial views being practically swamped by the overwhelming predominance of Unionism and Imperialism. His position as a leading British writer had early been determined by his monographs on Voltaire (1872), Rousseau (1873), Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (1878), Burke (1879), and Walpole (1889). Burke as the champion of sound policy in America and of justice in India, Walpole as the pacific minister understanding the true interests of his country, fired his imagination. Burke was Morley's contribution to Macmillan's "English Men of Letters" series of literary biographies, of which Morley himself was general editor between 1878 and 1892; he edited a second series of these volumes from 1902 to 1919. The Life of Cobden (1881) is an able defence of that statesman's views rather than a critical biography or a real picture of the period.

The Life of Oliver Cromwell (1900) revised Gardiner as Gardiner had revised Carlyle. Morley's contributions to political journalism and to literary, ethical and philosophical criticism were numerous and valuable. They show great individuality of character, and recall the personality of John Stuart Mill, with whose mode of thought he had many affinities. After the death of Gladstone, Morley was principally engaged in his biography, until it was published in 1903. Representing as it does so competent a writer's sifting of a mass of material, the Life of Gladstone was a masterly account of the career of the great Liberal statesman; traces of Liberal bias were inevitable but are rarely manifest; and in spite of the a priori unlikelihood of a full appreciation of Gladstone's powerful religious interests from such a quarter (Morley was an agnostic), the whole treatment is characterized by sympathy and judgement. The work was very successful, selling more than 25,000 copies in its first year.[52]

Morley was a Trustee of the British Museum from 1894 to 1921, Honorary Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy of Arts, and member of the Historical Manuscripts Commission.[53] He was Chancellor of the Victoria University of Manchester from 1908 until 1923, when he resigned.[54] He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature eleven times.[55] He received an honorary degree (LL.D.) from the University of St Andrews in October 1902.[56]

A philosophical Radical of a somewhat mid-19th century type, and highly suspicious of the later opportunistic reaction (in all its forms) against Cobdenite principles, he yet retained the respect of the majority whom it was his usual fate to find against him in British politics by the indomitable consistency of his principles and by sheer force of character and honesty of conviction and utterance. His legacy was a purely moral one; although in May 1870 he married Mrs. Rose Mary Ayling, the union produced no heirs. Mrs. Ayling was already married when she met John Morley and the couple waited to marry until her first husband died several years later[57] (another similarity to John Stuart Mill). She was never received into polite society, and many of his colleagues, including Asquith, never met her. Morley had three siblings, Edward Sword Morley (1828–1901), William Wheelhouse Morley (1840 – c. 1870), and Grace Hannah Morley (1842–1925).

According to historian Stanley Wolpert in his 1967 book: "It is hardly exaggeration to speculate that, but for the socially unpardonable circumstances surrounding his marriage, Morley might well have become Britain's foreign secretary, possibly even prime minister".[58] After more than 50 years of a quietly secluded personal life, Lord Morley died of heart failure at his home, Flowermead, Wimbledon Park, south London, on 23 September 1923, aged eighty-four, when the viscountcy became extinct. After cremation at Golders Green Crematorium, his ashes were buried at Putney Vale Cemetery.[53] He was followed in death several months later by Rose. Morley's estate was valued for probate at £59,765, a surprising sum for a self-made man who devoted his life to writing and politics.

Morley inspired many leading figures of the 20th century, including Mahomed Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan.[59] The Austrian classical liberal theorist Friedrich Hayek, writing in 1944, wrote this about Morley's reputation:

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the more typically English a writer on political or social problems then appeared to the world, the more he is to-day forgotten in his own country. Men like Lord Morley ... who were then admired in the world at large as outstanding examples of the political wisdom of liberal England, are to the present generation largely obsolete Victorians.[60]

• Edmund Burke: A Historical Study (London: Macmillan, 1867).
• Critical Miscellanies (1871. Second volume; 1877).
• Voltaire (1871).[61]
• Rousseau (1873).
• The Struggle for National Education (London: Chapman & Hall, 1873).
• On Compromise (1874; Chapman & Hall, 2nd edition, revised, 1877).
• Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (London: Chapman & Hall, 1878).
• Burke (London: Macmillan, 1879) (English Men of Letters series).[62]
• The Life of Richard Cobden (1881).[63]
• Aphorisms: An Address Delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 11, 1887 (London: Macmillan, 1887). Wikisource: Full text.
• Walpole (London: Macmillan, 1889) (Twelve English Statesmen series).
• Studies in Literature (London: Macmillan, 1891).
• Oliver Cromwell (New York: The Century Co., 1900).
• The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (London: Macmillan & Co., 1903. 3 vols.).
• Notes on Politics and History (London: Macmillan & Co., 1913-14).
• Recollections (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917. 2 vols.). Vol. 1•Vol. 2

Bibliography

• Hamer, D. A. John Morley: Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford University Press, 1968).
• Hamer, David. "Morley, John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 13 Sept 2014 : doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35110
• Moore, R. J. "John Morley's Acid Test: India 1906–1910", Pacific Affairs, (Dec 1968) 41#1 pp. 333–340, in JSTOR
• Waitt, E. I. John Morley, Joseph Cowen and Robert Spence Watson. Liberal Divisions in Newcastle Politics, 1873–1895. Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD at the University of Manchester, October 1972. Copies in Manchester University, Newcastle Central, and Gateshead libraries.
• Wolpert, S. A. Morley and India, 1906–1910 (University of California Press, 1967)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Hugh Chisholm (1911). "Morley of Blackburn, John Morley, Viscount". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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