SAMUEL MORLEY.*
IF it be true that, in order to justify a biography, it is necessary that the life recorded should have had "distinction," then we must admit that this book ought never to have been written. A less distinguished character and career than those of Mr. Morley could scarcely be conceived. He was a practical Christian, an admirable man of business, and a consistent Liberal. When we have said this, we have sketched his character; and his career can be almost as easily drawn.
He was born at Homerton in 1809, the youngest child of a
prosperous hosier. The shop was in London, but the family had been settled in or near Nottingham for some two hundred years, and, having been Puritans, had gradually developed into Independents. The father of Samuel Morley was a staunch Nonconformist and a Liberal, and he sent his sons to Dissenting schools in Cambridgeshire and Hampshire. At the age of six- teen, Samuel Morley entered his father's house of business in Wood Street, Cheapside, and before long became its sole master. In 1841, he married Miss Rebekah Hope, the daughter of a Liverpool banker. In 1865, he was returned for Nottingham, but was unseated on petition. He was subsequently elected for Bristol, and retained his seat till the General Election of 1885, when he retired, having in the previous summer declined a peerage offered to him by Mr. Gladstone. He died on September 5th, 1886.
It is worthy of remark that, although Samuel Morley was
brought up in the straitest sect of Evangelical theology, his early surroundings were not gloomy or repellent It would appear that his father, though a stout Independent, was no Calvinist. He trained his children in a cheerful form of religion, which recognised the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and expressed its faith in a life of active benevolence. Young Samuel Morley seems to have been a steady and conscientious boy, and nothing more. He learned his lessons at school, and then applied his mind to business ; and tried to please his father, and satisfy the customers, and, in a word, to do what, if he had learned the Church Catechism, he would have called "his duty in that state of life unto which it should please God to call him." At the age of twenty, his religious impressions were perceptibly deepened, though there was no room for that sadden transition from darkness to light which forms the staple of most stories of "conversion." There was a popular preacher in the Independent body, by name James Parsons, with whom Mr. Morley maintained a lifelong friend- ship, and it was under the influence of a sermon preached by him at the old Weigh-House Chapel, that Samuel Morley decided to surrender his whole being and life to the service of
God. It is almost needless to remark that in making this surrender, the young Dissenting tradesman did not-
" Bid, for cloistered cell,
His neighbour and his work farewell."
Contrariwise,he applied himself to business with redoubled dili- gence. His father's trade had been considerable ; but as the senior members of the firm died off or retired from business, and the administration of the concern passed more and more entirely into Samuel Morley's bands, it developed into dimensions which may fairly be termed gigantic. Seven factories in or near Notting- ham, employing, directly or indirectly, from five to ten thousand hands, are occupied in manufacturing the wares sold in Wood Street ; where two thousand letters, on an average, are received by th,s first post each morning, and from sixty to a hundred by * The Life of Samuel Morley. By Edward Hodder. London : Hodder and Stoughton. 1887. each succeeding post throughout the day. In administering this immense concern, Mr. Morley disclosed certain mental and moral qualities which stamped him a born tradesman. He had an absolute knowledge of all the technical details of the business. Shirking, slackness, laziness, trickiness, were impossible among his subordinates, for they knew that they were dealing with a man who knew all the ins and outs of the trade, and would swiftly detect and severely punish the slightest deviation from duty or honesty. Mr. Morley, though in the other concerns of life a cautious man, was in business enterprising and spirited to the verge of rashness. He was never so happy as in opening up fresh avenues of trade, forming new connections, developing his mechanical system, or converting some heavy reverse into the occasion of profitable improvements. To compare small things with great, it might be said of his career in business, as was said of the Baconian philosophy, that "a point which yesterday was invisible, is its goal to-day and its starting-point to-morrow." But not only was Samuel Morley shrewd and enterprising : he was profoundly honest. Here his religion showed itself in its most practical form. He had a keen eye for a bargain, and enjoyed it as much as any honest mercer who ever walked Cheapside. But fraud, sharp practice, intrigue, and unfair trading he abhorred. Every one who dealt with him, even in the purchase of a reel of cotton, might be sure of getting his money's worth,—fair weight and measure, and the best material. The knowledge of this fact gave the house of "I. and R. Morley" a practical monopoly. There are, it is to be hoped, not a few religious merchants whose religion makes them "true and just in all their dealing." Our experience leads us to believe that there are fewer whose religion makes them generous. The virtue of generosity Mr. Morley possessed in a high degree. An impres- sion somehow became current—we ourselves have repeatedly heard it from working men—that he was a bard master. This seems to have been the reverse of the fact. He was hard in the sense that he would not tolerate stupidity, laziness, or dishonesty in those whom he employed ; but in pecuniary matters he was liberality itself. He always gave the top price for labour, and arranged his system of pensions and annuities on a scale of unprecedented munificence. In matters outside his business, the same spirit showed itself. He was probably the largest giver of his time. This was well known, and he consequently received in every year several hundreds of begging-letters. These were all submitted to himself, and he briefly noted on the margin of each, instructions as to the answer, inquiries to be made, amounts to be sent, do. All religions institutions connected with the -orthodox Protestant communities found in him a most munifi- cent supporter ; 25,000 and 26,000 at a time was no unusual contribution for Mr. Morley. No form of secular charity appealed to him in vain. And to individuals in distress through age, sickness, failure, even imprudence, he ministered relief in the most delicate and unobtrusive forms.
With regard to Mr. Morley's politics, which occupy a con- siderable space in this book, it is not too much to say that they too were part of his religion. He was, as we have seen, brought up in the faith of Liberalism by a father who was himself a sturdy Liberal ; but it may be questioned whether, had it not been for his keen interest in religions questions, Mr. Morley would ever have taken an active part in political work. For the theory of politics he cared little. Abstract systems of govern- ment, philosophical disquisitions on the nature and limits of political power, speculations on ideal forms of polity, had not the slightest attraction for him. But what he cared for intensely were the civil and spiritual rights of English Dissenters. He himself was a Dissenter to the backbone. By birth and education he was an Independent ; and Independency, or Congre- gationalism, as it now is called, seemed to him the religions system which most exactly corresponded to the spirit and letter of the ecclesiastical organisation recorded in the New Testament. But he had a kindly feeling of sympathy and goodwill for all Protestant communions. It was only the Church of Rome, and the High, or Sacramental school of the Church of England, which be regarded with dislike or hostility. Fifty years ago, all the Protestant Dissenters were labouring under the same grievances, principally the enforcement of Church-rates. That grievance stung young Morley to the quick, and with characteristic energy he set himself to remedy it. In 1836, he began speaking in public on behalf of the Nonconformists who were imprisoned for refusal to pay Church- rates. He spoke with the vigour and animation which are inspired by passionate conviction, and called upon his brother-
Dissenters to "put down for ever these vexatious and unjust imposts."
In 1839, he joined eagerly in the attack upon the educational policy of the Government, which he conceived to be antagonistic to the interests of Noncomformity. And four years later, he co-operated eagerly in that Dissenting opposition to Sir James Graham's Factories Education Bill which Mr. Matthew Arnold has cited as one of the most signal triumphs of sectarian spirit over the movement for popular education. In 1841, he joined with Mr. Miall, and other like-minded friends, in the establish- ment of the Nonconformist, which aimed at exhibiting the inherent wickedness of all established religions. In 1844, he became an original member of the Liberation Society, from which, oddly enough, he retired as soon as he was elected to Parliament. In 1847, Lord John Russell's proposals for a system of national education reawoke the "watchful jealousy" of Nonconformists, and Mr. Morley was chosen chairman of the "Dissenters' Parliamentary Committee," which was designed to promote the return to Parliament of Dissenters pledged to oppose the Liberal Prime Minister. From this time on, as was only natural, Mr. Morley became more and more entangled in merely party and secular, as distinct from denominational and religions, politics, and great pressure was used to induce him to stand for Parliament. The claims of business for a long time made this impossible, but in 1865 he yielded to the wishes of his friends and co-religionists, and became a candidate for Nottingham, where he was returned at the General Election. His electioneer- ing programme was distinctly that of the political Dissenter. He supported the abolition of Church-rates and of University tests. He recommended a redistribution of the funds of the Church of England, according to merit, among its ministers. He wished to see the Church in the enjoyment of independence and self- governing power. His maiden speech was made in support of the Church-Rates Abolition Bill, and his second, in support of the Abolition of Teats. A month later, he was unseated ; but on his return to Parliament in 1868, he took up the same line again, cordially supporting Mr. Gladstone in the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. In the Education debates, be sided with Mr. Forster in his effort to secure religious teaching in schools, against the great majority of his fellow-Dissenters. Later on, he promoted the Bill for legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, the University Tests Bill, and the Burials Bill. Daring the Eastern Question, he was an enthusiastic follower of Mr. Gladstone, and his intense conviction that Lord Beaconsfield's Administration was pursuing an immoral and dangerous policy led him into the commission of what he himself regarded as the great error of his life. As this incident has often been made the subject of unfavourable criti- cisms from opposing sides, it ought to be described in the biographer's own words :—" There was no one whose influence was more powerful in Liberal Nonconformist circles than his, and to many constituencies, where the Nonconformist element was strong, be had, at the time of the General Election, been asked to send, and had despatched, telegrams calling upon the electors to unite their efforts to keep out Tory candidates. When a similar application was received from Northampton, Mr. Morley was asked, 'Shall we send the usual telegram ?' and, without pausing to consider what was involved in the decision, he answered, 'Yes, let it go.' " This hurried decision, and the scandal which it caused in the religious world, gave Mr. Morley the deepest pain, and he sought to repair its effects by voting steadily against Mr. Bradlaugh's claim to take his seat. In doing this he was forced to separate himself from the bulk of his party ; but his loyalty to Liberal principles as he understood them, and his confidence in Mr. Gladstone as a Christian statesman, remained unabated to the end.
As respects Mr. Morley's inner character and private life, Mr. Hodder has little to tell us. Mr. Morley was essentially a worker, and left behind him no journals, correspondence, or records of introspection such as furnish the biographer with his choicest materials. But his social, professional, and public life was a sufficiently emphatic witness to the earnest, though perhaps rather narrow, goodness of the man, and his genuine desire to serve God in the conscientious discharge of common duty. By the consistent practice of sixty years, he earned the eulogy which was inscribed on his coffin,—" A servant of Jesus Christ."
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