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John Morley

Blackburn, England, 1838 - 1923, Wimbledon, England

Biographyhttp://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79045510
Morley, John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923), politician and writer, was born on 24 December 1838 in Blackburn, Lancashire, the second of the four children of Jonathan Morley (d. 1862), surgeon, and Priscilla Mary Donkin (d. 1870). Jonathan was the son of a manufacturer of woollen cards and cotton who lived at Mytholmroyd in the Calder valley, Yorkshire. Morley's mother came from a North Shields shipowning family. Both were Wesleyans. They met in North Shields where Jonathan was apprenticed as a medical student.
Education: early journalistic career in London
John Morley was educated at the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Blackburn and at Hoole's Academy. He appears to have been a very bookish student who learned to commit large sections of scripture to memory. In later life Morley liked to learn by heart poems and classical texts. In 1852 his father sent him to University College School, London. From February 1855 to December 1856 he attended Cheltenham College where he did well as a scholar.

Morley won an open scholarship to Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1856 and was assigned rooms once occupied by John Wesley. Morley later expressed contempt for the rector and most of the fellows, apart from Mark Pattison. He occasionally spoke at the Oxford Union. But he seems to have made little impact at Oxford and it made little impact on him. In 1896, when he was awarded the degree of DCL by Oxford University, he described himself as ‘one whose opinions, whether in politics or deeper things than politics, Oxford does not favour’ (Morley, 2.102). He later (1903) became an honorary fellow of All Souls.

Morley's father, now an Anglican communicant, wanted him to enter holy orders. But at Oxford, Morley lost his faith and a serious quarrel developed. His allowance was cut off and he had to leave Oxford in 1859 with only a pass degree. That this was a traumatic experience is shown by numerous echoes of it when as biographer he examined similar crises in the lives of others. He became friendly with contemporaries such as Leslie Stephen and Frederic Harrison who had undergone a similar experience, and concluded that an inevitable aspect of ‘an epoch of transition in the very foundations of belief and conduct’ was that the opinions of fathers and sons should diverge in this traumatic way (Hamer, 2). He remained to the end of his life a freethinker and something of a stoic with a particular attraction to the philosophical stance of Marcus Aurelius.

Morley's parents went to live at Lytham, where his father died in 1862 and his mother in 1870. Morley was particularly close to his sister Grace, two years younger than himself. He often wrote to her, and she gave him constant encouragement. One of his two brothers, William, died in India, leaving a son, Guy, whom Morley adopted in 1877.

Morley's move to London in 1860 marked the beginning of the critical phase in his intellectual development. Being not at all well off, he took lodgings first at a lawyers' inn in Holborn, where he saw something of London poverty, then in King's Bench Walk at the Temple. He found employment teaching and tutoring, and undertook a range of miscellaneous literary and journalistic work. His first editorial responsibility was on the short-lived Literary Gazette (1858–62); Morley was the fourth of five editors, probably in 1861. He may also have worked on The Leader, which expired at about this time. In 1863 he joined the staff of the Saturday Review, for which he was required to write anonymously—a practice which he strongly opposed thereafter. His Saturday Review ‘middles’ were published in Modern Characteristics (1865) and Studies in Conduct (1867), the latter of which he withdrew from sale shortly after it was published. He later ignored these works in reviewing his literary achievements. Although he read for the bar and was called (Lincoln's Inn, 1873), economic circumstances left him with no real alternative to a career in journalism. He later described his stillborn legal career as ‘my long enduring regret’ (Morley, 1.32). In 1893 he was elected a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, where he often dined.

During this period Morley widened his circle of acquaintances and secured an entrée into London's literary world. A new friend who made a particular impact was the novelist George Meredith. In 1867, with the aim of gaining ‘freedom from journalistic urgencies’ (Hirst, 1.59) by finding alternative sources of income, he became a reader for the publishing house Macmillans. He later described Alexander Macmillan as his earliest and greatest benefactor. One of his tasks was to report on some early writings by Thomas Hardy; his adverse comments have long been held against him, although he did acknowledge Hardy's potential. A significant part of his work in the 1870s consisted of literary criticism. This has a wider range and a good deal more sympathy with the avant-garde than an often cited puritanical review of Swinburne might indicate.

Morley visited the United States in 1867. An intended book on the ‘dominant social ideas’ of that country was never completed. The visit was important for its effect on his views about the Irish question, particularly because of what he discovered about the depth of feeling concerning British rule in Ireland among Irish immigrants. After his return, on 28 May 1868, he gave an address at Blackburn on ‘Ireland's rights and England's duties’ which marked a significant development in his interest in issues which dominated much of his political career.
Marriage and personal life; editorship of the Fortnightly Review
There has long been considerable mystery about Morley's marriage with Rose Mary Ayling (1840–1923). Some uncertainties may never be cleared up, given the shortage of documentary information on some crucial aspects and Morley's own reticence on the subject. They lived together, it seems, for a period, possibly from 1867, before marrying on 28 May 1870. Lord Rosebery later referred to Morley as unsuitable for the foreign secretaryship because he had anticipated the ceremony of marriage. Hirst described Rose as ‘slim, but not tall, with flaxen hair and light blue eyes, a good walker and afterwards an ardent cyclist, fond of the country, of trees and plants and birds’. He also says that she ‘never cared much for politics, books, or society; seldom visited, or dined out’ (Hirst, 1.60), which meant that there was a large part of her husband's life that she did not share. Rose already had two children of uncertain paternity. In November 1907 one of them, John, was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude in Scotland. He had forged Morley's signature on letters which sought money in return for promises of political influence. At a time when he believed himself to be held in high general regard, this came as a grievous blow to Morley. He wanted to retire from public life but was persuaded not to by Asquith. In 1870 Morley moved to Surrey, always his favourite county, where he liked to walk on the heaths. He rented a series of houses. In 1873 Mrs Morley fell ill and the doctors recommended that they move to Tunbridge Wells. Continuing concern about her health led to a move to Brighton in 1875. Although he missed Surrey greatly and was not very fond of the sea, Morley came to like Brighton. In 1879, finding it too far from his work, he moved to Wimbledon, to a large house called Berkeley Lodge, near Putney Heath. From the later 1880s he lived at Elm Park Gardens, South Kensington. In later years he lived at a house called Flowermead in Wimbledon, where he died.

In 1867 Morley was appointed to succeed G. H. Lewes as editor of the Fortnightly Review (founded in 1865 and by this time a monthly). He also edited the Morning Star from June 1869 until its final issue on 13 October. By 1872 he had increased the circulation of the Fortnightly from 1400 to 2500. It became a leading journal of opinion, carrying a wide range of essays on topics of current interest. Morley wrote about one-eighth (some 200) of the articles which appeared during his editorship. One of the best-known stories about his spell as editor is that he allowed the word ‘god’ to be printed without a capital. The secret of his success lay in his ability to develop the Fortnightly as a participant in and reflection of the major currents of thought in an age of exceptional intellectual ferment. If possible, every controversial contribution received its response from someone with an alternative and thoughtful point of view. He insisted that all articles should be signed so that there should not appear to be any ‘auto- Fortnightly’ or ‘universal essence and absolute idea of Fortnightly’.

Morley was initially very optimistic about political prospects after 1867. He hoped to see an alliance of ‘brains and numbers’ (Hamer, 71) and looked forward to a new ‘party’ ‘out of doors’, working on public opinion and ultimately replacing the Liberals as the ‘party of progress’ (Hamer, 103). He saw his role as preparing ideas and policies for the time when the masses awakened to a realization of their new political power. He placed particular weight on the development of a relationship between practical politicians and intellectuals such as himself. Such a partnership was essential to steer the nation through the perils of the new democratic era.
Positivism and John Stuart Mill; personal characteristics
At this time Morley was closely associated with the positivists, the English disciples of the French sociologist Auguste Comte. The appeal of this self-confident group, who claimed to have found the key to understanding the evolution of human society as well as a substitute for religious faith, was strong. Morley's interest in positivism was a double search: for a new faith relevant to the modern age which would replace outworn Christian shibboleths but also for a faith whose adoption would give less pain to adherents of the old faith—such as parents—than straight adoption of a freethinking or agnostic position. Positivism provided a view of order in history and, while being strongly evolutionary in structure, was considerably more moral than Darwinism, about which Morley showed much less enthusiasm.

John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1859) profoundly affected Morley. Impressed by an essay which Morley wrote for the Saturday Review in 1865, Mill wrote asking to make his acquaintance, and subsequently introduced Morley to an alternative circle of non- or anti-positivist intellectuals. A close friendship developed. Mill saw in the young journalist a disciple who would propagate the Millite creed very effectively. Mill, who had been interested in Comtism but had rejected it as a system, influenced Morley away from a doctrinaire positivist position. Morley came to prefer ‘the critical, individualist, scheme of things, wh[ich] my protestant upbringing and the influence of Mill have made congenial to me’ (letter to Richard Congreve, 8 January 1874, BL, Add MS 46241, fols. 61–2; Hamer, 28). To the positivists' great disappointment, Morley moved the Fortnightly in a Millite direction, developing it as a forum for ‘the unbiased expression of many and various minds’.

Writing did not come particularly easily to Morley, but, when it did, it was invariably highly polished. He was well known for the neatness of his manuscripts. He hated untidiness and liked to write with a clean shirt and a clean desk. His style was at first somewhat overwrought, but he became a powerful stylist, capable of writing prose of great force and lucidity. He was a master—in both conversation and writing—of appropriate allusion to an immense range of literature. He was not a particularly effective parliamentary debater, his style being at its best when there had been time for polishing. Nor did he enjoy addressing large audiences out of doors, though he could be very effective on the public platform, especially when well prepared.

Contemporaries found Morley a fascinating companion and conversationalist. Although customarily gracious and urbane (‘exquisitely polite’, according to J. A. Spender; (Spender, 116), he was well known for his prickliness and sensitivity about imagined slights. He was capable of great friendship but as a friend could be very demanding. Many of his friendships were punctuated by episodes of strain and divergence which, however, were usually amicably settled. Lord Samuel thus described him at the age of sixty: ‘a man of slight build, not tall; with keen twinkling eyes; the nose strong, the chin somewhat receding; he had a voice that was clear and friendly, his manner was kindly and gentle’ (Robertson Scott, 46).
Two trades: literature and politics; into parliament
Morley was interested in a political career from an early stage. Although highly talented as a writer and very successful as biographer, critic, and essayist, he was constantly beset by a craving for a life of action. He once remarked that the ‘bane’ of his life had been a continual conflict between the claims of literature and of politics. When he came to write his Recollections he feared that his career would seem to lack coherence, disorganized as it had been by the oscillation of interest between his ‘two trades—letters and politics’ (Hamer, 59). He was ambitious but lacked the political skills needed to fulfil his ambitions. His fondness for intrigue sometimes got the better of him, as in the succession crisis of 1894 when he tried to execute devious plans with an excess of calculation. He tried to avoid having to settle definitively for one career or the other. Literary work continued throughout his time in politics. The result was that he had careers of almost equal distinction in both spheres running in parallel over almost half a century.

Morley stood unsuccessfully for parliament at a by-election at Blackburn in 1869 and for Mill's old constituency, Westminster, in 1880. Shortly after the general election of 1880 he failed to get the Liberal nomination for the Nottingham by-election. His financial position and his reputation as a freethinker were obstacles to winning a seat.

Morley's essays and other miscellaneous pieces were published in two series of Critical Miscellanies (1871 and 1877). In 1867 he published Edmund Burke: an Historical Study. He later (1879) wrote a study of Burke for his English Men of Letters series. He greatly admired Burke, especially for rejecting the idea of basing politics on abstract doctrine. French topics engaged much of his attention in the 1870s. Morley wrote a series of studies, varying from short essays to full-scale biographies, of French intellectuals of the eighteenth century: Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Vauvernargues, Holbach, Turgot, Condorcet. He prided himself on being prepared to study and take seriously individuals such as de Maistre and Rousseau who had political outlooks and personal traits very different from his own. The major works were Voltaire (1872), Rousseau (1873), and Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (1878). Although Morley's work appeared rather miscellaneous in focus, a systematic purpose eventually emerged. He intended that his writings should culminate in a history of the French Revolution. The general theme was a ‘survey of the intellectual preparation of the French Revolution’ (Hamer, 39). The only study of the revolution itself which he published was an essay on Robespierre in 1876. In it is plainly evident an intention to study how the French proceeded to ‘translate the word’ of the philosophes into ‘social action’. When Morley was ill in 1877 Joseph Chamberlain advised him to abandon thoughts of a parliamentary career and lent him money to help him write the history. He did not complete it, turning his attention instead to the biography of Richard Cobden, published in 1881. This important work (dedicated to John Bright) set a new benchmark for documentation and analysis in political biography, and provided a vital exposition of the character of Cobdenite radicalism: the issue-by-issue approach to reform politics which Morley—at least initially—sought to emulate. The book also sold very well, especially in the north of England, where Cobden was most widely revered. Morley studied de Maistre as well as Voltaire, Burke as well as Rousseau, and manifestly had little sympathy for the French revolutionaries. He was sometimes accused of being too sympathetic to French atheism and communism because of his strong interest in French literature and political thought. Yet he distrusted the French and was strongly Germanophile—even though he frequently visited France and seldom visited Germany or wrote about German culture. Positivism, despite the influence of Mill, was an obvious influence, and Morley owed much to discussions with the French positivist Pierre Lafitte.

Morley's radicalism was characteristic of an era when radicalism was associated particularly with views on the role of the church in national life. Strongly anti-clerical, he supported disestablishing the Church of England. He was drawn into political controversy by the nonconformist reaction to the Education Act (1870). Although a freethinker himself, he sought to identify himself with nonconformity. When attending a conference of a nonconformist pressure group, the National Education League, in 1873, he met Joseph Chamberlain, the radical mayor of Birmingham (1873–6). Sensing his great potential as a radical leader, Morley cultivated him, working to establish a partnership between this man of action and himself as the supplier of ideas. A close personal friendship developed. Morley saw the relationship as complementary, each compensating for qualities lacking in the other. Chamberlain was impressed by Morley's knowledge and learning, while Morley gained vicarious satisfaction from Chamberlain's political advancement, especially after he entered parliament in 1876. In 1873 Morley invited Chamberlain to launch a new political movement with a manifesto in the Fortnightly. He himself assisted the cause by a series of articles on the education issue. These were published as The Struggle for National Education (1873). But he soon turned away from ‘national education’, regarding it as too narrow; he had no interest in enlarging it into a campaign for more general educational reform. He turned to disestablishment as a rallying cause for Liberals concerned to destroy the regime of ‘privilege’. He assisted the Liberation Society to prepare a scheme of disendowment. By 1876 he was losing his enthusiasm for this issue, seeing it as too narrowly nonconformist to secure the support of working men and ‘secular Liberals’.

Morley's health gave concern at various times in the 1870s. The basic problem appeared to be overwork and stress. His financial situation threatened to limit his ability to fulfil his political ambitions. His attempts to enter the house in 1868–9 left him financially drained and bitter at the advantage that wealth conferred in politics. In 1873 he referred to himself as ‘a poor man who lives up to his income’ (Hamer, 123). As editor of the Fortnightly he earned about £800 per annum, adding some £500 more through royalties and other employment. Chapman paid him £500 for Rousseau. His finances were also strained by his frequent moves. He was very careful about money matters, a habit which he learned in his early years in London. For instance, he ensured that he had good life insurance cover. As editor of the Pall Mall Gazette he earned £2000 a year; he left a personal estate of nearly £60,000.

One of Morley's most influential books was On Compromise (1874), a study in political ethics and one of his few pieces of extended non-biographical writing. Through it he transmitted into later nineteenth-century liberalism some of the key Millite messages. It was wrong, he insisted, to see error as having a social utility. Adherence to error involves hypocrisy and damages prospects of social progress. He believed in rule by an educated, progressive élite and devoted himself in On Compromise to advising those who aspired to form that élite on how to conduct themselves in public life, explaining, for example, when it was justifiable to compromise one's principles. He preached the duty of the ‘well-instructed’ to involve themselves in political life. This aspect of the book made a strong impression on younger Liberals in the 1880s and 1890s.

Morley edited the Pall Mall Gazette from 1880 to 1883. This marked a further step towards direct involvement in practical politics, as it was a form of journalism that required responses to events as they arose. Numerous able young journalists worked for him, including W. T. Stead, E. T. Cook, and Alfred Milner. Morley entrusted a good deal to Stead as assistant editor, especially when he was researching and writing the Life of Cobden. In Stead's opinion, Morley, because he lacked interest in most of the matters that concerned the general reader, was not suited to the life of a journalist. He ‘had no eye for news, and he was totally devoid of the journalistic instinct. To him a newspaper was simply a pulpit from which he could preach’ (F. Whyte, The Life of W. T. Stead, 1925, 7.79). Morley retired from editing the Fortnightly in October 1882, lamenting the absence of system in political thinking and acknowledging the deficiencies in remedying this state of affairs of a journal committed to ‘open-sidedness’. In order to have an income to support his political career, he edited Macmillan's Magazine from May 1883 until summer 1885.

The Newcastle Liberals had been interested in Morley as a candidate for some time. The problem was the need to discover the right sort of relationship to establish with Joseph Cowen, the maverick independent radical member who had a substantial local following. Morley was anxious not to stand directly against Cowen. This problem was avoided when a by-election became necessary in 1883 following the death of the second member for Newcastle. But Morley soon found Cowen an impossible colleague. Morley had in effect become the ‘caucus’ candidate and member, his position being contrasted by Ostrogorski and other critics of the caucus system with the independent anti-caucus position of Cowen. Morley accepted the necessity of party politics and the caucus, reminding himself that Mill had been a good party man in the house. He tried to reconcile the two spheres of his life, telling Chamberlain that ‘it is exactly because I hope to become a thoroughly useful political writer that I lean to parliament’ (Hamer, 126) and by analysing in his book on Burke how Burke had made a very similar career move and locked away ‘the fragments of [a] History’ on which he had been engaged (ibid.). Not being a local man and maintaining his residence and journalistic interests in London, Morley became dependent on the Newcastle Liberal machine and its leader, Robert Spence Watson, for his hold on the seat. In 1885, when he had a ‘safe seat free of expense pressed upon me’ at Leeds, he said that ‘I feel bound to stick to my friends on the Tyne, as long as they stick to me’ (Hirst, 2.223).

Meanwhile Morley's alliance with Chamberlain was coming under increasing strain. From 1880 Chamberlain was a member of the Gladstone cabinet whose Irish and imperial policies Morley criticized. Because of their close relationship Chamberlain was suspected of using Morley to advance his own causes. Morley gained notoriety when W. E. Forster resigned the Irish secretaryship in 1882 after a sustained campaign against his policies in the Pall Mall. In 1883–4 Morley was prominent in the campaign for parliamentary reform and advocated ‘mending or ending’ the House of Lords.
Gladstone's main prop: home rule and the social question
Morley reacted unenthusiastically to Chamberlain's ‘unauthorised programme’ (1885), partly because of antagonism to programmes and partly through concern at Chamberlain's use of the rhetoric of ‘natural rights’ in relation to land reform, an issue which concerned property rights. To Morley such talk was dangerously close to French Jacobinism. This was not ground on to which he wished to see English radicalism venturing. He came to see Chamberlain as having allowed dangerous ‘socialist doctrine’ to seep through into radical policy. Chamberlain, for his part, found Morley ‘dreadfully timid’ (Hamer, 157). Although he contributed a chapter on religious equality to the Radical Programme of 1885, Morley became increasingly detached from the development of radical strategy. He did not approve of Chamberlain's plan for refusing to join any Liberal government which did not adopt the programme.

By 1885 Morley was convinced that home rule was the only answer to the Irish crisis. He decided that it must be given principal place among policies because no other reforms could be attended to until the obstructive presence of the Irish question—and in particular of the Irish nationalist members of parliament—was removed. After the 1885 election, which left the Parnellites holding the balance of power, he opposed leaving the Conservatives in office. He decided to support Gladstone's leadership, seeing him as the indispensable leader to guide the country through this crisis, while Gladstone came to regard Morley as ‘about the best stay I have’, and ‘a main prop to me’ (Hamer, 181). He was one of the few prominent Liberals to declare approval of Gladstone's alleged intentions with regard to Irish policy. He offered to write editorials for the Daily News ‘turning’ it in the direction of support for Gladstone if the latter would tell him what was in his mind. According to Morley, Gladstone did so, and he had already written three of the editorials and had embarked on the fourth when Gladstone invited him to call and on 31 January 1886 offered him the post of Irish secretary. This was interpreted as a signal of Gladstone's intention to proceed with the preparation of a Home Rule Bill. Morley's acceptance effectively ended his alliance with Chamberlain, though the latter also joined the government, resigning two months later.

Morley was one of the principal architects in 1886 of the Home Rule Bill. He stood out from other Liberals as largely untrammelled by earlier statements on the Irish question which could be used to allege an opportunistic reversal of position to win Irish support. Leading Conservatives acknowledged that he was a ‘Home-Ruler by conviction’ (Hamer, 210). He thus held a unique position in the leadership of the party now that it was committed to home rule. But Morley was always aware that his position was fragile, dependent as it was on the continuation of that commitment and especially on the maintenance of Gladstone's leadership. Some thought he harmed his prospects for future leadership by concentrating so exclusively on Ireland.

Morley saw great advantage for the Liberal Party in being preoccupied with the Irish question. Although reduced in size and out of power, it was now much more disciplined and focused. He was one of the most hostile of the Liberal leaders to the compromises that would have been required for Liberal reunion, as discussed with Chamberlain at the round table conference early in 1887. He saw home rule as an ‘unselfish’, moral issue untainted by distinctions of class, and tried to use it to redevelop a distinction between traditional Liberalism and reactionary toryism, as manifested in Balfour's coercionist regime in the late 1880s. Thus he placed home rule in the tradition of the great reforms that Liberals had promoted in the past. He strongly favoured excluding the Irish members from the British parliament once Ireland had its own parliament.

Morley was never comfortable with social and economic questions, and, though he also knew that they ought not to be evaded, welcomed the opportunity which the Irish preoccupation afforded for going slow in this area of policy. But he took more interest in social problems than did many of his political contemporaries: it seems that the memories of the poverty he had seen when he first came to London in 1860 never left him. He had long believed that Liberals needed to rethink the role of the state with regard to social questions. It was an issue to which he kept returning without being able to define clear principles to guide safe action in this area. He came under increasing pressure from radicals and socialists in Newcastle to define where he stood on social and labour questions. They were less and less ready to accept the Irish ‘obstruction’ as an excuse for non-commitment. Local government and temperance reform attracted his attention. In December 1888 he outlined at Clerkenwell a programme which he thought appropriate to the social problems of London. He became associated with a group of younger Liberals, of whom R. B. Haldane, H. H. Asquith, and Edward Grey were the most prominent, who sought to prevent ‘dangerous’ radicals such as Henry Labouchere from filling what they perceived as a vacuum in domestic policy. They had admired Morley's On Compromise and looked to him now to be a guide to right political conduct in these challenging circumstances. In November 1889 he gave an important speech at the Eighty Club on Liberalism and social reform. Morley did his best to help these young men gain political promotion. Later he and they fell out when their policies moved towards ‘Liberal Imperialism’ which was completely against Morley's Cobdenite and ‘Little England’ principles.

The issue which most seriously damaged Morley's efforts to bring Liberalism into the social area was the proposal, which he opposed, legally to enforce a maximum working day of eight hours. This proved to be a major turning point for Morley's reputation and career. As the issues on which his reputation as a radical had been made faded, notably those associated with the role of the church, and as social questions came to the fore, he began to be regarded as a conservative, even reactionary, influence in the Liberal Party. He saw the ‘eight hours’ issue as a test case and his stand as one of principle against ‘socialism’. His outspokenness concentrated on himself the enmity of socialists who sought an issue that might cause working men to rebel against the Liberal Party. In the general election of 1892 Morley came second in the two-member constituency of Newcastle, behind the tory candidate for whom the socialists had urged working men to vote. When he faced the voters again, following appointment as a minister, a strong rally to him by Irish voters enabled him to win comfortably. Afterwards he abandoned any serious effort to come to terms with the ‘new Liberalism’ and adhered to a fairly strict Cobdenism in social and economic policy.

Morley's literary work did not altogether cease. He edited the Twelve English Statesmen series for Macmillan and contributed Walpole (1889). In 1891 a collection of his miscellaneous writings appeared as Studies in Literature. A biography of Oliver Cromwell was published in 1900.
Ireland and the succession crisis; Gladstone's biographer
The Parnell divorce crisis of 1890–91 was a severe blow, but Morley remained resolutely in favour of home rule. He gave lukewarm support to the attempt to widen the Liberals' appeal via the Newcastle programme of 1891. He was again chief secretary for Ireland from 1892 to 1895, first in Gladstone's government and then from March 1894 under Rosebery. He frequently visited Ireland to witness conditions at first hand. His particular role since 1886 had been to maintain contact with the Irish party and act as a go-between in negotiations. Following the Parnellite split of 1891 he had to hold the ring between contesting nationalist factions. This was difficult for one who believed that the Irish should be administering their own affairs. The requirement that he administer the law and even on occasions sanctio

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