MORLEY [OF BLACKBURN], JOHN MORLEY, VISCOUNT (1838-1923), English statesman and author, was born at Black burn on Dec. 24, 1838, the son of Jonathan Morley, surgeon. He matriculated at Lincoln college, Oxford, in 1856, and in 1859 came up to London to pursue a literary career. He became editor of the moribund Literary Gazette, which not all his ability could preserve from extinction. Gradually, however, he became known as a philosopher and a radical, and as one of the ablest and most incisive contributors to the literary and political press of the day. His sympathies as a thinker seem to have been at this time chiefly with positivism, and he acquired a reputation as an agnostic, which became confirmed in the popular mind when he somewhat aggressively spelt God in one of his essays with a small "g." From 1868 to 1870 he was editor of the daily Morning Star. In 1867 he succeeded G. H. Lewes in the editorship of the Fort nightly Review, which he conducted with brilliant success until 1883, when he was elected to parliament ; he then assumed in exchange, but not for long, the editorship of Macmillan's Maga zine. He had been connected with Messrs. Macmillan since the commencement under his editorship, in 1878, of the "English Men of Letters" series, in which nothing is better than the editor's own contribution, Life of Edmund Burke, an extension of his article in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia (1876) Since 188o he had also been editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, which had been turned into a Liberal paper. (See NEWSPAPERS.) In 1883 Morley, who had twice unsuccessfully attempted to enter parliament, was returned for Newcastle-upon-Tyne at a by election. The prestige thus acquired led to his presiding over a great Liberal congress at Leeds in the same year; and, although the platform never seemed his natural element, the literary finish of his style and the transparent honesty of his reasoning rapidly gained him a prominent position in the House of Commons. When, in February 1886, Gladstone returned to office as a home ruler, Morley, who had never before held any public appointment, filled one of the most important posts in the cabinet as secretary for Ireland. He had always expressed his sympathy with the Irish Nationalist movement. He had no opinions to recant, no pledges to explain away. He is credited with an especial influence over Gladstone in the matter of home rule, and in particular with having kept him steady in the Bill of 1886 to his original purpose of entirely separating the Irish from the British legislature, a provision which pressure from their own party afterwards com pelled both of them to abandon. After the severe defeat of the Gladstonian party at the general election of 1886, Morley led a life divided between politics and letters until Gladstone's return to power in 1892, when he resumed his former office. There was
a strong current of disapproval in his own constituency of his attitude to the Eight Hours' Labour Bill, which he regarded as an interference with personal liberty, and to a less degree of his anti-Imperialist views. The result was that at the election of 1895 he lost his seat, but soon found another in Scotland, for the Montrose Burghs. He had during the interval taken a leading part in parliament, but his tenure of the chief secretaryship of Ireland was hardly a success. The Irish gentry, of course, made things as difficult for him as possible, and the path of an avowed home ruler installed in office at Dublin Castle was beset with pitfalls. In the intestine disputes which agitated the Liberal party during Rosebery's administration, and afterwards, Morley sided with Sir William Harcourt, and was the recipient and practically co-signatory of his letter resigning the Liberal leadership in December 1898.
Morley's activities were now again turned to literature, the political views most characteristic of him, on the Boer war in particular, being practically swamped by the overwhelming pre dominance of unionism and imperialism. As a man of letters his work was practically concluded at this period, and may briefly be characterized. His position as a leading English writer had early been determined by his monographs on Voltaire (1872), Rousseau (1873), Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (1878), Burke (1879), and Walpole (1889). His Life of Oliver Cromwell (1900) revises Gardiner as Gardiner revised Carlyle. 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. He had the true admiration of the philosopher for the man of action, Walpole and Cromwell fascinated him for this reason, and Stafford perhaps more than they. At the same time his political experience gave him a wider view of the necessities of practical statesmanship than, for instance, Acton. Morley's contributions to political journalism and to literary, ethical and philosophical criticism were numerous and valuable. They show great individuality of char acter, and recall the personality of John Stuart Mill, with whose mode of thought he had many affinities. As in letters, so in politics. A philosophical radical of a somewhat mid-i9th-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 English politics by the indomitable consistency of his principles and by sheer force of character and honesty of con viction and utterance.