THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, MAY 14, 1908. VISCOUNT MORLEY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14213, 14 May 1908, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, MAY 14, 1908. VISCOUNT MORLEY.

The elevation of Mr J oh a Morley to the British Peerage puts a coping stone upon the career of & man whose singleness of purpose and transparentpolitical honesty have passed into common knowledge. After graduating ab Lincoln College, Oxford, Viscount Morley gravitated to London and plunged into the world of journalism and letters, and speedily became known as a philosopher and Radical, and as ono of the ablest contributors to the literary press of the day. Ho had leanings towards the Positivist school, but lias never thoroughly identified liims'-lf with the philosophies either .of Comts or

Kant. Bub his essays, in which lie spelt God witlv a small " g," tended to gain hini a reputation as an Agnostic, which does not adequately gaugo the mentality of the man. His first literary efforts wero expended in an endeavour to bolster up tho Literary Gazette, which, despite his able editorship for two years, became moribund in 1840. It was not until the year 1883 that he succeeded in getting into Parliament, and the years prior to that were spent as editor of the Fortnightly Review, Macmillan's Magazino, and the Pall Mall Gazette. Tli© tone of the latter journal, indeed, lie changed from a. somnolent Toryism and made it a leading organ of tho Liberal party—an organ wherein he gave expression to views which at that time wero considered far too advanced for a more cautious Liberal press to seriously advocate. Indeed, Viscount Morley, like Lord Rosebery, has been again and again, compelled to plough his lonely furrow." For fidelity to a political objective made it impossible for him to compromise upon any matter of political conviction. No Liberal Statesman, not excepting Mr Gladstone himself, under whom he served as Chief Secretary for Ireland in two Administratians, has ever adopted a more unimpeachable attitude upon the question, of Home Rule than Viscount Morley. Upon this question his views have always been " Aut Cajsar aut nullus"—Home Rule or nothing. Consequently, when he accepted the Irish portfolio from her Majesty in 1886 he had 110 opinions to recant and no pledges to explain away. After the Gladstoniaii debacle which followed upon tho defeat of the Home Rule Bill, aggravated by the national feeling caused by General Goidon s death, Viscount Morley was kept out of the House until the swing of the pendulum, in 1892 brought his chief back again. He thou accepted his old post as Chief Secretary for Ireland. The Irish gentry were, of course, bitterly hostile to him, and the tenure of his position at Dublin Castle was anything but a sinecure. As member for Newcastle, where he-had obtained a large working-man majority, Ire met with much hostile criticism from the Conservative press, which initiated a campaign against him: on account of his alleged ultra-Labour and anti-Imperialistic views. He was accordingly ousted in 1895, but soon found another constituency to represent in the Montrose Burghs. In the course of the internecine disputes which agitated the Liberal party during Lord Rosebery's Administration he sided with Sir William Haranirt, aud was practically a co-signatory in resigning the Liberal leadership in, 1898. Viscount Morley was a most determined opponent of the late Boer war. But whereas the late Sir Henry Campbsll-Banner-man and the fiery Mr Lloyd-George drew down upon themselves the fiercest invective of the Conservative press and a populace too much inflamed with the war fever to recognise aught but rnalioa aforethought in the political utterances of any politician who failed to see eye to eye with themselves, Viscount Moray's letters invariably elicited a. respectful hearing, if only for the eloquence of their language and the unquestioned sincerity of their author. Perhaps the most astute diplomatist in. Europe is King Edward himself, and assuredly his choice of Viscount Morley as the first recipient of his new Order of Merit was sufficient refutation of the charge of "Little Englandism" that has been levelled against him. But as though to lay the ghost of the unworthy jibe, Viscount Morley vindicated himself absolutely under Sir Henry, Campbell-Bannerman's Administration by the plain warning he gave to those Indian agitators whose immature aspirations and seditious utterances had been encouraged by the irresponsibilities of Mr Kcir Hardie.

As a man of letters the now peer takes high rank. Indeed, his monographs alone upon Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and the encyclopaedists Burke and Walpole would give him a unique position in literature independent of his numerous contributions to political journalism and to literary, ethical, and philosophical criticism. His essays do not exhibit the brilliance of Lord Rosebery or Matthew Arnold; but there is a blunt, common-sense, persuasive vein in tlieni which make them exceedingly valuable. His Life of Cobdsn—for Viscount Morley has always boon a Colxlen of the Cobdenites—partakes rather of the nature of a pica for a recognition of the inviolability of that great man's fiscal views than a "Life" in the accepted biographical sense. His chtef d'eeuvre, of course, is his " Life and Letters of William Ewart Gladstone, ' which will probably remain the standard appreciation of tile great Liberal for all t-ime. The inclusion of such men as Vijcount Morley in the Upper House will do something to effect the deniocratisar tion of a- body still in, the toils of an out-of-date conception of hereditary privilege, and make that Chamber what it should be—a revisional house of legislation, pledged to the interests of the English l people as an entity, without regard to caste or creed.