John Morley Honest John Archangel John : (1838-1923) known in English history as Archangel of English Liberalism for Britain: failed in election to Parliament from the Blackburn by-election in 1869 & also from City of Westminster in 1880: wrote to Auberon Herbert: “I am afraid that I do not agree with you as to paternal government. I am no partisan of a policy of incessant meddling with individual freedom, but I do strongly believe that in so populous a society as ours now is, you may well have a certain protection thrown over classes of men & women who are unable to protect themselves”: elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Newcastle-upon-Tyne in February 1883: prominent Gladstonian Liberal, declared in 1885: “I am a cautious Whig by temperament, I am a Liberal by training, & I am a thorough Radical by observation & experience.” After Joseph Chamberlain came out in favour of Tariff Reform in 1903, Morley defended Free Trade, claiming protectionism was conducive to social distress, political corruption & political unrest: Secretary of State for India end of 1905 under Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman: conspicuous in May 1907 & afterwards for his firmness in sanctioning extreme measures for dealing with first symptoms of revolutionary outbreaks & sedition, though strongly opposed by some in his party for belying his democratic principles: Campbell-Bannerman resigned in 1908 & H.H. Asquith became P.M. & transferred Morley to House of Lords as Viscount of Blackburn but let him continue as Secretary of State until 1910. The Govt. of India Act 1909 established an election system by the ingenious device of ‘separate electorate’ & ‘weightage’ favouring Mahomedans thus casting the seed of dismemberment of its Indian Empire: retired, 1914. On the Morley-Minto Reforms (1909), he said in the House of Lords on 17th December 1908: “If could be said that this chapter of reforms led directly or necessarily to the establishment of a parliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have nothing at all to do with it.”…as the authors of the Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms, 1918, observed, “The Reforms of 1909 afforded no answer & could afford no answer, to Indian political problems… Responsibility is the savour of popular government, & that savour the present councils wholly lack.” The Indian Press Act of 1910 laid down heavy fines & forfeiture of press for seditious publications, which were defined in such wide terms as to include almost any independent criticism of the Govt. Books, newspapers, or other documents containing “prohibited” matter were to be forfeited. The public life was thoroughly stifled by imposing restrictions on public meetings & press, & rendering impartial justice almost impossible. The Govt. also prosecuted quite a large number of persons, the punishments inflicted being almost always severe & in many cases vindictive. Even Morley, characterized the sentences as ‘indefensible’, ‘outrageous’ & ‘monstrous’. [Advanced History of India, R.C. Majumdar et al: 907, 909, 911, 946, 977-9]
... culmination suits the beginning as a gargoyle suits a Gothic building; for the life of John Morley is a mass of contradictions, the profession of liberalism running hand in hand with the practice of a bastard Imperialism which did the work of Satan while it mouthed liberal Scripture to justify its sins. Mr. John Morley, the principal spurrer-on of Gladstone when Egypt was enslaved, the Chief Secretary... Sri Aurobindo with Speeches Delivered during the Same Period 6.Feb-3.May.1908 Bande Mataram Om Shantih 14-April-1908 The impending promotion of John Morley, the philosopher, to the House of Lords is one of the crimes of present day Page 1041 politics. The Radical philosopher, the biographer of Voltaire and Rousseau, the admired bookman of... privileged preserve of all that is antiquated, anomalous, conservative and unprogressive, that standing negation of democratic principles, that survival of old-world privilege, the House of Lords. Honest John is to end his days as Lord John. It is a fitting reward for the work he has done as Secretary of State for India, the apostasy, the turning of his back on every principle for which he had stood in ...
... Book Two Book Two Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram By the Way - In Praise of Honest John 18-November-1907 Mr. John Morley is a very great man, a very remarkable and exceptional man. I have been reading his Arbroath speech again and my admiration for him has risen to such a boiling point that I am at... India, rejoices in Mr. Morley's fur coat and snuggles with a contented chuckle into its ample folds. Am I wrong in saying that Honest John is a wonder-worker of the mightiest and that Aaron's magic rod was a Brummagem fraud compared with Mr. Morley's phrases? Vivat John Morley! Page 756 ... civilisation. The two foulest crimes against the future of humanity of which any statesman in recent times could possibly have been guilty, have been engineered under the name and by the advocacy of honest John Morley. Truly, Satan knows his own and sees to it that they do not their great work negligently. Mr. Morley is a great bookman, a great democrat, a great exponent of principles. No man better ...
... apply to Britain or Ireland or Canada are not eternal & need not exist in India? The analogy of the fur coat need not stop with political conduct, it may be extended to moral conduct. For Mr. John Morley is a very great man, a very remarkable and exceptional man. I have been reading his Arbroath speech again and my admiration for him has risen to boiling point, so that I am at last obliged to let... perceptions who knows a fine and carefully-worked tool when he sees it and loves to handle it with the best dexterity and grace of which he is capable. There are other reasons for which I admire Mr. John Morley. I admire him for what he has done not only for the way in which he has done it. It is true he is not so great a man as his master Gladstone, who was the biggest opportunist and most adroit political... civilisation. The two foulest crimes against the future of humanity which any statesman in recent times could possibly have committed have been engineered under the name and by the advocacy of Mr. John Morley. Truly, Satan knows his own and sees to it that they do not their great work negligently. Mr. Morley is a great bookman, a great democrat, a great exponent of principles. No man better fitted ...
... has been telegraphed to England. If the object is to set ourselves right in the opinion of the world, well, that is an innocent amusement. If it is to convince Mr. John Morley, it is a futility. It is absurd to suppose that Mr. John Morley at his age is going to allow himself to be convinced. He is far too old and wise to admit inconvenient facts. The statement contains a number of facts which all Bengal... Book Two Book Two Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram A Statement 06-June-1907 Mr. John Morley has committed himself in the House of Commons to a trenchant and unqualified statement that the whole blame for the disturbances in East Bengal lies upon the Hindus who, by a violent and obstreperous boycott... of a violent enforcement of the boycott on the Mahomedans, neither has any such connexion been established by any of the judicial proceedings which have hitherto been concluded. The theory of Mr. John Morley is therefore a dead thing and of no farther interest to any human being. Of course the bureaucracy will go on playing with the bones of this dead scarecrow; it will wage war on Swadeshism on the ...
... he thinks that his menaces will have any better effect than his abuse and cajolings: it is a wild dream for him to hope that any power can make Indian Nationalism fall down and kiss the feet of Archangel John. Page 522 ... Two Book Two Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram The Statesman on Shooting 21-June-1907 While Mr. John Morley was being cross-examined by the Nationalist and Labour members in Parliament and was answering in his usual style of Demigod plus Aristides the Just plus Louis XIV of France plus the Archangel ...
... sincerity like Mr. Bradlaugh breaks the record, but that is only once in half a century. When Mr. John Morley entered politics, he entered as a literary man and austere philosopher and brought the spirit of philosophy into politics. His unbending fidelity to his principles earned him the name of Honest John, and this soubriquet, with the reputation for uprightness of which it was the badge, has survived... under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 24.Oct.1906 - 27.May.1907 Bande Mataram Mr. Morley's Pronouncement 16-May-1907 The attitude assumed by Mr. John Morley in answer to the questions in Parliament about the latest act of mediaeval tyranny, cannot surprise those who have something more than surface knowledge of English politics and English politicians ...
... sincerity like Mr. Bradlaugh breaks the record, but that is only once in half a century. "When Mr. John Morley entered politics, he entered as a literary man and austere philosopher and brought the spirit of philosophy into politics. His unbending fidelity to his principles earned him the name of Honest John, and this soubriquet, with the reputation for uprightness of which it was the badge, has survived... uprightness itself had perished in the poisoned air of office. No one can be long a Cabinet Minister in England and yet remain a man of unswerving principle...." 7 (3) In praise of honest John! "Mr. John Morley is a very great man, a very remarkable and exceptional man. I have been reading his Arbroath speech again and my admiration for him has risen to such a boiling point that I am at last... rejoices in Mr. Morley's fur-coat and snuggles with a contented chuckle into its ample folds. "Am I wrong in saying that Honest John is a wonder-worker of the mightiest and that Aaron's magic rod was a Brummagem fraud compared with Mr. Morley's phrases? Vivat John Morley!" 8 (Paragraphing ours) Page 380 (4) The Khulna comedy: "In no recent political case except Rawalpindi ...
... live it before all the world so that it may be proved a possible law of conduct both for men and nations. Lord Honest John On the converse side a passage from Mr. Algernon Cecil's "Six Oxford Thinkers" is instructive. He dwells on the self-contradictory and ironic close of John Morley's life. "He the philosophic Liberal, the ardent advocate of Home Rule, the persistent foe of war and coercion, is... anything but an oxymoron, a "witty folly", a happy and ironical contradiction in terms. But for the rest the implied criticism is just. The Failure of Europe Mr. Cecil sees in this ending of Honest John as Lord Morley the failure of Liberalism; and it must be remembered that the failure of Liberalism means the abandonment of the gospel of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity as a thing unlivable, and ...
... such opposite poles of human evolution as Mr. John Morley, the litterateur, politician, philosopher & fine perfection of the most serious & sober British culture, and the vulgar Newmaniac, the loud, ranting, blustering, impudently lying Yahoo of Hare Street. And yet it is by understanding the Newmaniac that we shall best understand not only John Morley but his whole race and understand too that the... dismay of his Indian worshippers, was the only policy he or any other Englishman could have accepted. It is the common Briton in each which forms the bond of sympathy between the Newmaniac & Mr. John Morley and makes them think so wonderfully alike. That is the only answer which we can give to the question why Englishmen professing to be just, beneficent & all that is noble & unique, have so readily ...
... the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram The New Thought Personal Rule and Freedom of Speech and Writing 28-June-1907 Mr. John Morley is reported to have delivered himself of the following fatuity: "One of the most difficult experiments ever tried in human history was whether we could carry on personal government along with free... on their propaganda all over the country without the least let or hindrance from the Cabinet or the administrative authorities, however much they might have desired to coerce them into silence. John Morley himself was the most outspoken exponent of those who sympathised with the Boers and denounced the war, but no ukase could reach him nor any Emergency Act hurry him out of England. But when the... after. The proclamation that is now brooding in a death-like hush over the Punjab and East Bengal is the amplest confirmation of the foregoing lines and disposes finally of the sickening cant of John Morley about the coexistence of free speech and personal rule. The freedom of a subject race is only the freedom to starve and die, all the rest of its existence being on sufferance from those who govern ...
... ask themselves for a reason as to why Englishmen should invariably meet all their demands for political reforms with the one unalterable answer that they are not fit to receive them. Why should John Morley whose writings and sayings are so instinct with an ardent love of liberty, so lightly flout their prayer for some concessions of a democratic nature? He not only denies the Indians the least measure... which Europe has wilfully waded her way through a welter of blood after her struggles of centuries. No, cries the irritated European, India can never be fit to govern herself. This is the secret of John Morley's point-blank refusal to satisfy Moderate aspirations; he has thrown to them a plaything or two, for they deserve nothing better. And because Mr. Morley loves and prizes liberty more highly than the... them reconsider how best to achieve this end. Surely their failure to obtain anything worth having after thirty years of patient supplication culminating in the supreme tragedy of the refusal of John Morley, the one man of whom they had expected more than of any other—even to listen to their prayers with any seriousness, ought to impel them to some introspective inquiry regarding the soundness of their ...
... Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram The Secret Springs of Morleyism 28-June-1907 The apostasy of John Morley has come as a surprise and a scandal to that numerous class of believers in British professions who looked upon him as an avatar of the spirit of philosophic Liberalism. To those who had studied... America which has inherited the legacy of Rome and Greece, of Christianity and rationalistic thought and science. Asia stands outside that charmed enclosure. That this is the mental attitude of Mr. John Morley is shown by the use which he has made of a certain passage from Mill: "Government by a dominant country is as legitimate as any other if it is one which in the existing state of the civilisation ...
... Book One Book One Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Bipin Chandra Pal 6.Aug-15.Oct.1906 Bande Mataram Schools for Slaves 27-August-1906 Mr. John Morley from his seat in Parliament professes Liberal principles as the guiding star of the Government of India; in India itself the various Governments openly and deliberately enforce reaction. The head ...
... Articles Published in Bande Mataram in November and December 1906 The Ideal 1) Bande Mataram - Nov 1. 1906 2) Prologue of Anandamath - do Mr John Morley & his Policy 1) The Settled Fact Again - Nov 2. 1906 Mendicancy 1) By the Way - Nov 1. 1906 2) By the Way - Nov 5. 1906 3) Mr. Gokhale's Vision - Nov 13. 1906 The Two Schools ...
... The Dreadful Boy Desperadoes of Dacca or The Violent Volunteers of Barisal . We have had many new things recently, the new Hinduism, the new School, the new Politics, the new Province, the new John Morley and now we have Newmania in the Englishman . The peculiarly delirious character of this disease can be easily understood from the Khulna telegram of the Secretary, People's Association. Mr. Newman ...
... Indian affairs". This is, we presume, the last and most authoritative of the special cablegrams with which the Statesman has been regaling us, for want of more substantial fare, ever since Mr. John Morley became Chief Bureaucrat for India. For, we are told, Mr. Morley will make an important announcement when introducing the Indian budget. We would call the attention of our readers to the wording of ...
... Anglo-Indian official trained in the arts of government as practised in India, brought about the great act of piracy on the banks of the Page 713 Nile, the characteristic part played by John Morley, that honest broker of injustice and oppression, in forcing foreign domination on Egypt, and the many striking lessons which the history of Nationalism in Egypt has for the new-born Nationalism in... abroad, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that the fire we have kindled is unquenchable and the impetus given is one against which no human power can stand. In Egypt Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. John Morley and their allies had only to create an excuse for armed interference and to crush a feeble military resistance in order that their nefarious work might be done. But to coerce indignation and resistance ...
... they allowed commercial greed to overcome their kingly instincts Page 955 and the punishment of demoralisation has come upon them in full measure. Their sympathy exists only in Mr. John Morley's stock of liberal cant phrases, their justice is no longer believed in and their protection is now following the other virtues. Protection is vested in a corrupt and oppressive police of which the ...
... shrewd people resolutely refused to associate themselves with any form of self-government short of absolute colonial self-government. The same kind of bait is promised to the Moderates in India by Honest John and the honest Statesman , if they will only consent to dissociate themselves from the new spirit and all its works and betray their country. The Statesman says that Mr. Redmond has been forced ...
... outworn superstitions with a healthy rapidity. The belief in British liberalism, in the freedom of the Press, in the freedom of the platform, in the Pax Britannica, in the political honesty of Mr. John Morley and many other cherished shibboleths have departed into the limbo of forgotten follies. But the greatest fall of all has been the fall of the belief in the imperturbable impartiality of British justice ...
... proposition we gather from this remarkable prophecy, that they all want to drive the British out of India is the second. It appears that their wishes are going to be granted, but whether by God or John Morley the prophet does not inform us. At some psychological stage of the process of eviction—after the wishes have been granted and the British have been driven out of India,—the Government and Mr. Sparkes ...
... which the Statesman is legislating and administering the affairs of the nation, makes one's head whirl. One day the Simla Government, no doubt laying heads together Page 491 with Mr. John Morley, issues a notice handing the Press over to the tender mercies of the local administrations, but with a rider that this is in the nature of a warning to the Press to behave itself and the effect will ...
... in the past, so it will be in the future above ordinary human calculations, with only one thing certain about it, that no external force can frustrate it and no internal intrigue divert. Neither John Morley nor Denzil Ibbetson nor Nawab Salimullah, neither false friend nor open enemy, nor even our own mistakes and weakness can come in its way, but rather they are unconsciously helping it on and working ...
... on the Moderates and as a surprise to the Extremists. It was a shock to the Moderates because of the source from which it came. They had never been able to shake off the idea that in the end Mr. John Morley, if not the sympathetic Lord Minto, would come to their help. To renounce that hope would be to reject the very keystone of the Moderate policy and turn their backs for ever on the illusions of thirty ...
... personal friendship and respect for Lala Lajpat Rai, his principles, his patriotism, his reputation as a political leader and his influence with the people in order to get the approbation of Mr. John Morley and the Statesman . A more complete unmasking could not be imagined. The Statesman not only attacks the new school,—that would be nothing new—but turns round and rends his old associates, Srijut ...
... growth of political life and incidentally to prevent men of ability and influence in the educational line from becoming a political power. This is how Lord Minto, presumably with the approval of Mr. John Morley, proposes to bring about these objects. The objects of Page 385 their benevolent and high-minded attention are divided into four classes, schoolboys, college students, schoolmasters, ...
... "waging war against the Empire," against a King seated on a throne at the other end of the world, and to be thrown into jail and kept there without trial as long as it pleased His distant Majesty. John Morley was alarmed at the Page 354 severe penalties for seditious writings. "These sentences are monstrous and outrageous and can never be supported," he wrote to Minto. "I must confess ...
... citizenship of the British Empire, for in so doing she is strictly in the wake of European tradition, and has the full justification of history as she has known and understood it. And consequently John Morley hastens to remind Indians of the "weary steps" necessary before they can attain liberty, the weary steps that the countries of Europe have had to traverse before they secured it. We fully understand ...
... philanthropic patriotism. This attitude they leave to saints and philosophers,—saints like the editor of the Indian Mirror or philosophers like the ardent Indian Liberals who sit at the feet of Mr. John Morley. They for their part speak and write frankly as politicians aiming at a definite and urgent political object by a way which shall be reasonably rapid and yet permanent in its results. We may have ...
... and ineffective debater scattering his periods in vain in that august void, he has been at once the admired of the people and the spoilt darling of the Times of India , the trusted counsellor of John Morley and a leader of the party of Colonial self-government. For some time the victim of his own false step during the troubles in Poona he was distrusted by the people, favoured by the authorities, some ...
... government concerning Sri Aurobindo. A good number of comments were made by top Anglo-Indian bureaucrats. Many letters and telegrams were sent back and forth from England to India, between Viscount John Morley, the then Secretary of State for India, and Fourth Earl of Minto, Gilbert Eliot, the then Viceroy of India. Why? A secret report of the Government, laying squarely the blame on Sri Aurobindo ...
... Council; one each to the Executive Councils of Bengal, Bombay and Madras; and two Indians to the Council of the Secretary of State for India. This was part of the Morley-Minto Reforms Act of 1909. John Morley was the Secretary of State for India (1905-1910), and Lord Minto was the Viceroy of India during the same period. Under the same Reform policy, the Anglo-Indian Machiavels reshuffled the constituent ...
... Methods" (16 Page 1178 November 1907 ) and "By the Way. In Praise of Honest John"(18 November 1907 ). These are the only handwritten drafts of matter for the Bande Mataram that still exist. Also on 2 May 1908 a separate sheet was seized that contained a partial draft of another article on John Morley that was never published. The contents of these sheets are reproduced here for the... Inevitable Repression Mr. Tilak and the Presidentship Nagpur and Loyalist Methods The Life of Nationalism By the Way. In Praise of Honest John Bureaucratic Policy By the Way SA MSS SA MSS SA MSS ...
... brilliant exhibition of his superhuman power of acting folly and talking nonsense... . 29 John Morley - critic and biographer of distinction, though an ineffective, if not cynical. Secretary of State for India - is almost skinned alive in the satirical portrait "In Praise of Honest John". Morley may have his niche in England's political and literary history, but this comic twitch to the portrait ...
... on Swaraj. There was talk at this time of political reforms being introduced in India. Lord Minto had replaced Lord Curzon as the Viceroy and in England also there was a new Secretary of State, John Morley, said to be a statesman of liberal views. There were repeated warnings by Sri Aurobindo in the Bande Mataram not to be hoodwinked by proposals of political reforms which were paper concessions ...
... Austrian and Bourbon dungeons, it was Poerio and Silvio Pellico and their fellow sufferers whose collected strength reincarnated in Mazzini and Garibaldi and Cavour to free their country. When John Morley, as Secretary of State, tried to defend the indefensible in Parliament, when he (and Lord Minto the Viceroy) tried simultaneously to brandish, in one hand the sword of repression and in the... editorial work and write the leading articles, unless Sri Aurobindo sent them from Deoghar or wherever he was camping at the time. One of Shyamsundar's successful skits was the "mock-petition" to "Honest John", a piece of vigorous and stinging satire which was printed in the inaugural issue of the Weekly edition of the Bande Mataram on 2 June 1907. When the skit was later reproduced in the Glasgow ...
... stemming the tide of nationalism (as Curzon had hoped it would achieve), merely proved the fuse that set ablaze the nation-wide conflagration of anti-British agitation. "I am bound to say," admitted John Morley the new Secretary of State in the House of Commons, "nothing was ever worse done in disregard to the feeling and opinion of the majority of the people concerned." Curzon's biographer. Lord Ronaldshay ...
... on the slightest pretext, trial for sedition or conspiracy, and fine and incarceration - or worse. These endless trials and the heavy sentences passed on the patriots seemed shocking to John Morley himself, and on one occasion he wrote to the Viceroy in an outspoken manner: I must confess to you that I am watching with the deepest concern and dismay the thundering sentences that are ...
... right of full and unqualified independence. It was, as Lord Page 158 Ronaldsay says in his Life of Curzon, "a subtle attack upon the growing solidarity of Bengali Nationalism". John Morley, speaking as Secretary of State for India in the House of Commons in 1906, said: "I am bound to say, nothing was ever worse done in disregard to the feeling and opinion of the majority of the people ...
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