John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn, (1838-1923), was a British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor.
Initially a journalist in the North of England and then editor of the newly Liberal-leaning Pall Mall Gazette from 1880 to 1883, he was elected a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party in 1883. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1886 and between 1892 and 1895; Secretary of State for India between 1905 and 1910 and again in 1911; and Lord President of the Council between 1910 and 1914.
Morley was a Trustee of the British Museum from 1894 to 1921, Honorary Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy of Arts, member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and Chancellor of the Victoria University of Manchester from 1908 until 1923. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature eleven times and received an honorary degree (LL.D.) from the University of St. Andrews in October 1902.
Machiavelli, the Morley’s essay which we propose to our readers today, dedicated to the life and personality of the great diplomat, philosopher, historian, writer of the Renaissance, internationally famous for his political work The Prince, is based on a Romanes Lecture delivered by the British writer and statesman in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on June 2, 1897.
