After the death of Gladstone Morley was principally engaged upon his biography. Representing as it does so competent a writer's sifting of a mass of material, the Life of Gladstone (1903), 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 appre ciation of Gladstone's powerful religious interests from such a quarter, the whole treatment is characterized by sympathy and judgment. In 1902 he received the new Order of Merit.
When Campbell-Bannerman formed his cabinet at the end of 1905 Morley became secretary of state for India. 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, in which he was bitterly attacked by some of the more extreme members of the Radical party. At the same time he showed his popular sympathies by appointing two distinguished native Indians to the council, and taking steps for a decentralization of the administrative govern ment. When Campbell-Bannerman resigned in 1908 and Asquith became prime minister, Morley retained his post in the new cabinet ; but was transferred to the upper house, with the title of Viscount Morley of Blackburn. His subsequent career at the India Office will always be associated with his extensive re modelling (1908-1909) of the system of government in India so as to introduce more fully the representative element. (See INDIA.) In his tenure of this office he showed again something of the philosopher's leaning to despotism. He admittedly kept his private conclusions out of his public actions, to a certain extent. The author of the essay On Compromise, the very Gospel of dissent, was in practice convinced that "the first duty of a govern ment is to govern," and there was never a secretary of state who treated his viceroy more despotically. (See MINTO, EARL OF.) Similarly by communicating privately with the viceroy he tended to deprive the Council of State of information and influence on foreign policy. And though primarily responsible for the first
great step towards Indian self-government, he disowned the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms as premature.
Lord Morley held the seals of the India Office till Nov. 1910. One of his last official acts had been to resist the appointment of Kitchener to the vice-royalty, pressed strongly upon ministers by King Edward just before his death. Morley remained in the cabinet as lord president of the council, and was one of the four counsellors of state to administer the kingdom during King George's visit to India in 1911-12.
In the critical period of domestic politics which began with the budget of 1909 he played a somewhat prominent part. He defended that budget in the great debate of November 1909 and, while admitting that the Lords had the legal right of rejection, said that to assert it was a "gambler's throw." Morley led the House of Lords during most of the session in which the Parlia ment bill, which he warmly supported, was passed; and it was he who read out to the House on the last night of debate that definite assurance from King George of his assent to a creation of peers which finally secured the exiguous but adequate ma jority of 17.
The entrance of Great Britain into the World War brought Morley's official career to an abrupt termination. He felt that his pacifist outlook was sufficiently well-known to make it un necessary for him to give reasons for resigning; and he retired to Wimbledon, where he wrote his Recollections (2 vols. 1917). In 1921 his publishers brought out a complete edition of his works; and he was generally regarded, during his last years, as sharing with Mr. Hardy the position of doyen of English men of letters. He died at Wimbledon on Sept. 23, 1923.
See, in addition to the Recollections, Sardan 'Ali Khan, Life of Lord Morley (1923); J. H. Morgan, John, Viscount Morley (1924) ; F. W. Hirst, Early Life and Letters of John Morley (1927). Morley's Mem orandum on Resignation, 1917, was posthumously published in 1928.