Forgotten Englishmen of Stature (FEMS) Friday: John Morley!

The adventure begins . . .

Aug 26, 2022

John Morley, Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Welcome to the first installment of FEMS—forgotten Englishmen of stature. Please like, comment, and share at your discretion. Much appreciated.

Today’s subject is John Morley, or, as officially styled, Viscount Morley of Blackburn. This post addresses Morley's life and theory of liberalism. In the next edition of FEMS, we will focus on Morley's philosophy of history.

Before getting started, check out this observation about Morley from the great economist Friedrich Hayek, writing in the 1940s:

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the more typically English a writer on political or social problems then appeared to the world, the more he is today forgotten in his own country. Men like Lord Morley . . . who were then admired in the world at large as outstanding examples of the political wisdom of liberal England, are to the present generation largely obsolete Victorians.[1]

With this elegy in mind, let’s dive in.

WHO is John Morley?

In 1838, Morley was born in Blackburn—a “prosperous manufacturing town” sited in “Lancashire valley at the foot of bleak, stern, moorland ridges.”[2] His father was a surgeon “of homely stock”[3] and Anglican. Morely won a scholarship to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he lived in the same rooms as John Wesley. Though his father wanted him to become a priest, Morley had a crisis of faith while at Oxford. This led to the breakdown in his relationship with his father, suspension of his financial support, and his departure from the university.

While he qualified as a lawyer, Morley did not practice and instead became a journalist, eventually editing the then-radical Pall Mall Gazette and the prestigious literary magazine Forthnightly Review. His editing work caused him to interact with many Victorian intellectuals, including Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, and John Stuart Mill, the last of whom became a close friend and mentor. Morley also wrote a number of acclaimed biographies, including studies of Burke, Rousseau, and Cromwell. His journalistic connections with the Liberal Party led to his selection as a candidate for Parliament in 1869. Unsuccessful in his first contest, he ran in two subsequent ones, winning election in 1883 as a member representing the northern industrial city of Newcastle.

Morley rose rapidly through the Liberal ministerial ranks. He became close to Prime Minister William Gladstone, of whom he wrote a best-selling (and hagiographic) three-part biography. He served as Secretary of State for Britain’s two most important colonies, Ireland and India, and also as Lord President of the Council. Morley might have been a candidate for the premiership, but scandalously had an affair with a married woman (whom he married after the death of her husband) which likely ruined his chances of higher office. Raised to the peerage in 1908 as Viscount Morley of Blackburn, he left government in 1914 over his opposition to Britain’s alliance with Russia in World War I. After a long retirement in which he published his memoir Recollections, he died in 1923.

WHY should you know about John Morley?

Imagine if Ron Paul was genetically fused with Francis Fukuyama circa 1989. The result would be John Morley, with the pro forma throat clearing that that description is an oversimplification and unfair to everyone involved. Morley’s combination of beliefs, which may seem incompatible to us, make him not only interesting as an historical figure, but also illustrate how Anglophone liberalism may not be at odds with, and can in fact actively promote, a dynamic, nationalist state. We’ll explore each topic in turn.

Free to Choose (sort of)

In a single sentence: Morley generally believed the state should promote individual freedom and choice. In other words, he believed in liberalism. Morley was both a liberal and a Liberal—an advocate of the philosophy, and a member of the political party that advanced that philosophy. During Morley’s time, liberalism and the Liberal Party were at their zenith. The Liberals were considered the “natural party of government,” and gave the United Kingdom some of its greatest prime ministers and most prosperous years.

Like many Liberals of his day, Morley promoted individual freedom on a sliding scale—with a maximum of personal choice in the economic sphere, but not quite as much in political affairs. And he took a dim view that these liberal principles could be transferred to and adopted by other peoples, as he saw them as byproducts of a unique, English experience. Morley’s positions in three areas are instructive here: on trade and labor laws, expansion of the franchise, and foreign policy.

Economics

Morley was a free trade absolutist. Too young to have participated in the debate over the Corn Laws (which placed tariffs on grain (“corn” in English parlance) grown overseas), he nonetheless was influenced by Richard Cobden (the primary advocate for repeal of those laws) and other Radical politicians from the 1830s and 40s. (Sidenote: “Radical” isn’t used here as an adjective. In the early 1800s, the “Radicals” were a loosely organized group of MPs who were more liberal and more middle class than the aristocratic Whigs, who were the predecessors of the Liberal Party. Among other things, Radicals supported free trade, expansion of the franchise, and disestablishment of the Church of England. As many leading Whigs adopted Radical positions, the Radicals and Whigs united to become the Liberal Party in the 1850s.)

Radical economic thinking went like this: any governmental policy that interfered with the “natural” operation of market forces was unnatural, and thus bad. In addition, such policies created a class of beneficiaries that derived wealth from government largesse—beneficiaries who could use this wealth to further influence new governmental policies and entrench their position at the expense of others.

To stop such rent seekers from dominating the economy and political life, the market had to be allowed to run its course. Doing so had both social and economic benefits. Preventing governmental policy from favoring—and separating—one group from or over another fostered social cohesion, of being, as Morley put it, “all Scotchmen, Englishmen and Irishmen . . . all concerned in the commonwealth, and in making the State of which we were all citizens a strong and powerful state.”[4]

Further, removing restraints on market forces would allow prices, be them of labor, services, or physical commodities, to reach a “true” price. This price would be the most efficient and thus fairest to whomever was purchasing or consuming those items—and increase their standard of living by ensuring that they paid the lowest possible price for what they received. Doing so not only benefited the most people. It was also just, in that the person receiving the benefit of those payments did so without the means of artificial government support. “Beware of any state action,” Morley wrote, “which artificially disturbs the basis of work and wages.”[5]

Accordingly, any policy that interfered with the operation of the natural market was immediately suspect. In the 1890s, Morley—to the discomfort of some of his fellow Liberals—publicly campaigned against a law that would have limited the workday to eight hours. A limit on hours prohibited individuals from determining how much money they could make. Further, it would be wrong

. . . to enable the Legislature, which is ignorant of these things, which is biased in these things—to give the Legislature the power of saying how many hours a day a man shall or shall not work.[6]

Given that Morley’s constituency—Newcastle—was an industrial city with many workers, this stance was morally courageous. Morley’s outspokenness on labor issues eventually led him into conflict with trade unionists in Newcastle, including Keir Hardie (who went on to become the first leader of the Labour Party). When Labour affiliated candidates were defeated in a local Newcastle election in 1890, Morley wrote a colleague that he was glad to have “let the Socialists know that I’m their enemy, or rather not their friend.”[7]

Politics

While Morley ardently promoted individual freedom in the economic sphere, he was less enthusiastic about mass participation in electoral politics. Ordinary people couldn’t necessarily be trusted to pursue policies that would limit the creation of rentier groups or promote universal economic freedom. They also were, well, ordinary:

What is important is the mind and attitude, not of the ordinary man, but those who should be extraordinary. The decisive sign of the elevation of a nation’s life is to be sought among those who lead or ought to lead. The test of the health of a people is to be found in the utterances of those who are its spokesmen, and in the action of those whom it accepts or chooses to be its chiefs.[8]

That being said, Morley’s elitist attitudes coexisted with a general belief in representative government. Morley supported the Third Reform Act, which significantly extended the franchise in Britain; and was a passionate advocate of Irish Home Rule, which would have organized a devolved Irish parliament in Dublin. He also supported dramatic reform (and possible elimination of) of the House of Lords, the membership of which, at the time, was drawn exclusively from the aristocracy. Not the toothless “world’s most exclusive drinking club” of today, the Lords then had real power—it could veto legislation from the House of Commons. Morley was instrumental in passage of the Parliament Act of 1911, which ended this veto power. Both this and the Third Reform Act significantly expanded political freedom in Great Britain.

So: Morley’s liberalism pushed economic freedom to the max, and political freedom dialed back a bit from this extreme, but not by much. Did he think these freedoms could be extended to people who weren’t British?

It’s an Anglo thing

In short, not really. Morley thought that liberalism as an idea (or at least the English variety of it) was created and shaped by the character of the English people. This belief is illustrated by Morley’s treatment of India, a foreign society to which he believed liberal principles couldn’t be applied.

Before looking at Morley’s experiences in the Raj, we need to take a detour into his beliefs on national character. It used to be commonplace for thinkers of all persuasions to remark on what they thought were common characteristics of different people. For various reasons that would take too long to discuss here, this type of analysis fell out of favor after World War II, and is now considered outré, if not racist and offensive. In any event, one of the joys of reading old books is the uninhibited commentary authors will offer on foreign peoples they observe or encounter.

Morley was no different. His On Compromise (1877), begins by comparing the character of English people with those of the European countries:

A German has his dream of a great fatherland which shall not only be one and consolidated, but shall in due season win freedom for itself, and be as a sacred hearth whence others may borrow the warmth of freedom and order for themselves. A Spaniard has his vision of either militant loyalty to God and the saints and the exiled line of his kings, or else of devotion to the newly won liberty and raising up of his fallen nation. An American, in the midst of the political corruption which for the moment obscures the great democratic experiment, yet has his imagination kindled by the size and resources of his land, and his enthusiasm fired by the high destinies which he believes to await its people in the centuries to come. A Frenchman, republican or royalist, with all his frenzies and ‘fool-fury’ of red or white, still has his hope and dream and aspiration, with which to enlarge his life and lift him on an ample pinion out from the circle of a poor egoism.[9]

Now the English:

The English are as a people little susceptible in the region of the imagination. But they have done good work in the world, acquired a splendid historic tradition of stout combat for good causes, founded a mighty and beneficent empire; and they have done all this notwithstanding their deficiencies of imagination. . . . If Englishmen were not strong in imagination, they were what is better and surer, strong in their hold of the great emancipating principles.[10]

. . . there is no nation in the world the substantial elements of whose power are so majestic and imperial as our own. Our language is the most widely spoken of all tongues, its literature second to none in variety and power. Our people, whether English or American, have long ago superseded the barbarous device of dictator and Caesar by the manly arts of self-government. We understand that peace and industry are the two most indispensable conditions of modern civilisation, and we draw the lines of our policy in accordance with such a conviction. We have had imposed upon us by the unlucky prowess of our ancestors the task of ruling a vast number of millions of alien dependents. We undertake it with a disinterestedness, and execute it with a skill of administration, to which history supplies no parallel, and which, even if time should show that the conditions of the problem were insoluble, will still remain forever admirable.[11]

While we can quibble with Morley here—is the nation of Henry VIII, Shakespeare, and Darwin really lacking in imagination?—his point is that the character of the English people led to the development of, and their attachment to, liberalism.

The implication of Morley’s comparisons of the English with the Germans, Spanish, and French is that this attachment was unique.[12] If that was the case, how could liberalism be practiced by non-English peoples—not just Europeans, but the “vast number of millions of alien dependents” that comprised the Empire? Morely’s experience with those alien dependents in India provides an answer to that question.

The Raj

India was the most important colony of the British empire. Its fertile land, vast natural resources, and huge population generated enormous wealth for Britain and helped it to win two world wars. Morley lived in and helped shape the political history of India during his service in successive liberal governments.

Morley served as Secretary of State for India from 1905 to 1910. He was sympathetic to Indians who wanted to participate in the colonial government, and co-authored a set of reforms that permitted Indians to serve on local councils and in the civil administration. But he had little faith that Indians could ever fully manage a representative government, much less a self-governing colony. “The ideals of the British and the Indians,” Morley believed, “were ‘divided by a vast gulf,’ which made the British government of India seem both ‘stupendous’ and extremely ‘artificial.’ “[13]. An exchange with Gopal Gokhale, an early leader of the Indian National Congress, is even more illustrative:

[Gokhale] made no secret of his ultimate hope and design—India to be on the footing of a self-governing colony. I equally made no secret of my conviction, that for many a day to come—long beyond the short span of time that may be left to us—this was a mere dream.[14]

In addition, Morley behaved—and was criticized for doing so—in a distinctly illiberal fashion when he sanctioned harsh punitive measures against Indian rioters and independence activists. He wrote that:

I have often told you of my wicked thought that Strafford [Charles I’s deputy in Ireland who presided over a brutal authoritarian government] was an ideal type, both for governor of Ireland in the seventeenth century, and governor of India in the twentieth century.[15]

Try as he might, Morley didn’t think that liberalism could be exported to the foreign world of India—at least not for a long while, and certainly not without British oversight. The character and culture of the Indians was alien to it, and it to them.

Another liberalism

So, apart from antiquarian fun, why does any of this matter?

Liberalism is currently derided by many people as the source of all of America’s ills. Facilitation and forced acceptance of mass migration from the third world? Liberalism. Promotion of deindustrialization? Liberalism. Promiscuous armed intervention in foreign countries? Liberalism. Promiscuous sexual behavior among the youth? And on and on.

Morley’s version of liberalism—which, with apologies to Strauss, is really the ORIGINAL liberalism—shows that liberalism can be something else. If liberalism arose from a unique, English history, and was shaped by the English national character, how can it survive if English people are gradually supplanted by non-English migrants? If industry depends on a free economic space, how can it survive governmental controls on the same? If foreign cultures are unable to sustain a liberal state or society, why should offensive wars be waged to try to make them do so?

Speaking for the dead is never a good idea. But I think Morley’s answers to these questions—it can’t, it won’t, and they shouldn’t be—might suggest policies—immigration restriction, elimination of rent-seeking and onerous regulations, and a restrained foreign policy—that are labeled “illiberal” today. Or maybe even akin to the “populist” and “nationalist” movements that are the current bane of defenders of the “liberal world order.” The point is that these labels are misleading—what is professed to be “liberal” today really isn’t anything like what “liberalism” actually is.

That’s all for this week’s inaugural installment of FEMS! Thank you for reading. Please subscribe and feel free to comment.

In our next installment, in a special SEQUEL, we’ll look at Morley’s philosophy of history—a mashup of Nietzschean willpower and Whig social progress!

Observations by Myopic Eeyore

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