45 Facts About John Morley

John Morley was Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1886 and between 1892 and 1895; Secretary of State for India between 1905 and 1910 and again in 1911; and Lord President of the Council between 1910 and 1914.

John Morley is best known for his writings and for his "reputation as the last of the great nineteenth-century Liberals".

John Morley was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of Jonathan John Morley, a surgeon, and of Priscilla Mary.

John Morley wrote, in obvious allusion to this rift, On Compromise.

John Morley was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1873, before deciding to pursue a career in journalism.

John Morley later described his decision to abandon the law "my long enduring regret".

John Morley edited the newly Radical-Liberal Pall Mall Gazette from 1880 to 1883, with W T Stead as his assistant editor before going into politics.

John 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.

John Morley was unsuccessful in Blackburn, and failed to win a seat when he contested the City of Westminster at the 1880 general election.

John Morley was then elected as Liberal Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne at a by-election in February 1883.

Newcastle was a dual member constituency and John Morley's parliamentary colleague, Joseph Cowen, was a radical in perpetual conflict with the Liberal Party, who owned the Newcastle Chronicle.

John Morley had during the interval taken a leading part in parliament, but his tenure of the chief secretaryship of Ireland was hardly a success.

John Morley lost his seat in the 1895 general election but soon found another in Scotland, when he was elected at a by-election in February 1896 for the Montrose Burghs.

From 1889 onwards, John Morley resisted the pressure from labour leaders in Newcastle to support a maximum working day of eight hours enforced by law.

John Morley objected to this because it would interfere in natural economic processes.

John Morley told trade unionists that the only right way to limit working hours was through voluntary action from them.

John Morley kept his seat but came second to the Unionist candidate.

When John Morley was appointed to the government and the necessary by-election ensued, Hardie and other socialists advised working men to vote for the Unionist candidate, but the Irish vote in Newcastle rallied to John Morley and he comfortably kept his seat.

In 1885, John Morley spoke out against those Liberals who believed that all state intervention was wrong and proclaimed: "I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party".

Later that year John Morley defined his politics: "I am a cautious Whig by temperament, I am a Liberal by training, and I am a thorough Radical by observation and experience".

John Morley repeatedly expressed his hope that social reform would not become a party issue and warned voters to "Beware of any State action which artificially disturbs the basis of work and wages".

John Morley opposed the state providing benefits for sections or classes of the community as the government should not be used as a tool for sectional or class interests.

John Morley viewed imperialism and an interventionist foreign policy as increasing the power of the state.

John Morley now regretted Gladstone's budget of 1853 because it gave the Chancellor of the Exchequer "a reservoir out of which he could draw with ease and certainty whatever was asked for".

John Morley claimed that it was no coincidence that since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, Britain was the only great country in Western Europe not to experience "even a shadow of a civil convulsion".

John Morley was among the original recipients of the Order of Merit in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902, and received the order from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 8 August 1902.

When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman formed his cabinet at the end of 1905, John Morley was made Secretary of State for India.

John Morley would have preferred to have been Chancellor of the Exchequer.

John Morley was the first peer to turn down a coat of arms, although a wall panel at Lincoln's Inn incorrectly ascribes one to him.

In September 1906, John Morley wrote favourably for staunch resistance to the railway workers agitation for higher wages.

John Morley viewed "the Expenditure of the country" as "the most formidable of our standing problems".

From 1910 until the outbreak of the Great War John Morley was Lord President of the Council.

In 1917, John Morley published his two volumes of memoirs, Recollections.

John Morley said to his friend John Morgan on 15 February 1918:.

John Morley wrote a letter to the Press about it, and the Times refused to publish it.

On 1 May 1921, John Morley said: "If I were an Irishman I should be a Sinn Feiner".

John Morley liked Winston Churchill and said to Morgan on 22 December 1921:.

John Morley devoted a considerable amount of time to literature, his anti-Imperial views being practically swamped by the overwhelming predominance of Unionism and Imperialism.

John 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.

John Morley was Chancellor of the Victoria University of Manchester from 1908 until 1923, when he resigned.

John Morley was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature eleven times.

John Morley's legacy was a purely moral one; although in May 1870 he married Mrs Rose Mary Ayling, the union produced no heirs.

John Morley was never received into polite society, and many of his colleagues, including Asquith, never met her.

John Morley was followed in death several months later by Rose.

John Morley inspired many leading figures of the 20th century, including Mahomed Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan.