MOEISON
MOELEY
spirited Eationalist writers of France. He
wrote under the pseudonym of " Miron "
in the Eationalist periodicals of both
France and Italy, and his drastic works
(Examen du Christianisme, 3 vols., 1862 ;
Jesus reduit a sa juste valeur, 1864 ;
Separation de Vcglise et de I etat, 1871 ; Le
pr&tre et le sorcier, 1872, etc.) did much to
secularize his countrymen. In 1876 he
was elected to the Paris Municipal Council.
D. July 5, 1888.
MORISON, James Augustus Cotter,
M.A., writer. B. Apr. 20, 1832. Ed. Oxford (Lincoln College). Morison was at Oxford with Viscount Morley and Mark Pattison, who greatly esteemed him. He took to letters, and in 1863 won recog nition by his Life and Times of St. Bernard, which, however, is weakened by a Positivist leniency to the medieval Church and some injustice to Abelard. He was one of the early writers on the Fortnightly Review, and he wrote Gibbon (1878) and Macaulay (1882) in Morley s " Men of Letters " series. He was a member of the Positivist Church, and often lectured there. From an early date he contemplated writing an ambitious history of France under Louis XIV, but he had not the health and strength to accomplish so sustained a task. Part of his material is embodied in his excellent Service of Nan : An Essay Towards the Religion of the Future (1887), a work in which he makes ample Eationalist amends for the weaknesses of his St. Bernard. He intended to supplement it, construc tively, by a second part, to be entitled A Guide to Conduct, but the state of his health prevented him. Morison was a man of the most delicate and generous character, and was deeply appreciated by the great Eationalists of his time. George Meredith dedicated to him a volume of his poems. D. Feb. 26, 1888.
MORLEY, The Right Honourable John,
Viscount Morley of Blackburn, P.C., O.M.,
M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., F.E.S., statesman
533
and author. B. Dec. 24, 1838. Ed.
Cheltenham College and Oxford (Lincoln
College). At Lincoln Cotter Morison, who
was six years his senior, greatly influenced
him in the direction of liberalism (Recol
lections, ch. ii), and when he went on to
London to study law he leaned much to
Positivism. He was called to the Bar
(Lincoln s Inn) in 1873 ; but he had begun
to edit the Fortnightly Review in 1867,
and he adopted the profession of letters.
His own virile contributions were among
the best that appeared in the thoroughly
Eationalist Fortnightly of those days. In
1874 he published his On Compromise, his
aim being " that we should learn to look
at one another with steadfast eyes, march
ing with steady step along the paths we
choose." He had already published Burke
(1867), Voltaire (1871), and Rousseau
(1873) ; and in 1878 he wrote Diderot.
From 1880 to 1883 he edited the Pall
Mall Gazette. In spite of his avowed
Agnosticism and brilliant polemic for
Eationalism, Lord Morley entered Parlia
ment in 1883. He represented Newcastle
from 1883 to 1895, and the Montrose
Burghs from 1896 to 1908. He was
Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1886 and
from 1892 to 1895, Secretary of State for
India from 1905 to 1910, and Lord Presi
dent of the Council from 1910 to 1914,
when he retired from politics as a protest
against the War. He was created Viscount
in 1908, and has been since the same year
Chancellor of Victoria University. His
chief literary work is his Life of Gladstone
(3 vols., 1903), but one finds a final and
decisive expression of his Agnosticism in
his Recollections (1917). Whatever may
be the verdict of technical politicians on
Lord Morley s work, his assertion of the
humanitarian conscience throughout his
public career an idealism that at one
time elicited the name of " honest John
Morley " and his splendid services to^he
cause of enlightenment place him among
the great Englishmen of his time. In
1919 he became an Honorary Associate
of the Eationalist Press Association.
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