# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Morris, William O'Connor

​MORRIS, WILLIAM O'CONNOR (1824–1904), Irish county court judge and historian, born in the city of Kilkenny on 26 Nov. 1824, was son of Benjamin Morris, sometime rector of Rincurran in the diocese of Cork and Cloyne. and Elizabeth, youngest daughter and co-heiress of Mamioe Nugent O'Connor of Gartnamona, near Tallamore, King's County. A delicate boy, he was placed when ten years of mm under the care of a physician at Bromley in Kent. From 1837 to 1841 he was at a private school at Epsom, and from 1841 at a school in South Wales, where, under the tuition of the rector of Laughame, in Carmarthenshire, he studied classics and history, and enjoyed ample opportunity for outdoor sports — shooting, fishing, and hunting. In Michaelmas term 1843 he entered Oriel College, Oxford, and in the summer of 1844 he was elected a scholar. Straitened circumstances, due to the great famine in Ireland, compelled a year and a half's absence (1846–7) from the univerrity, but returning in the autumn of 1847 he obtained a second class in literæ humaniores in 1848. His father had died in 1846, and Morris, having abandoned an early predilection for a military career, raised three years after leaving Oxford the necessary fees of 100l. wherewith to enter the King's Inns, Dublin, as a law student. In Michaelmas term 1852 he was admitted a member of Lincoln's Inn and he was called to the Irish bar in 1854. Choosing the home circuit, he gradually worked his way upwards, and in 1862 he was elected a professor of common and criminal law in the King's Inns. Next year he was appointed a commissioner to investigate the rights of owners of fixed nets for salmon in Ireland, hot owing to a difference of opinion between him and Sir Robert Peel, the third baronet, then chief secretary, he was compelled to resign. The county court judgeship given him later he regarded as reparation for this injustice.
Meanwhile he married, established himself at Blackrock, and became owner, through his wife, of Gartnamona. He began to contribute articles on historical, legal, social, and political subjects to the 'Edinburgh Review,' whose editor, Henry Reeve [q. v.], he had come to know. For 'The Times' he reviewed books, chiefly on military history — a favourite subject ​of study. As a landlord he paid close attention to the conditions of land tenure in Ireland, and when Gladstone, after the disestablishment of the Irish Church, announced his intention of dealing with the Irish land question, Morris, at the request of John Thadeus Delane [q. v.], contributed a series of special articles on the subject to 'The Times.' Travelling through the country he collected his information at first hand. His letters in 'The Times' (reprinted in 1870 with a map), advising the legal recognition of Ulster tenant-right wherever it existed, attracted attention, and the Land Act of 1870, though not entirely to his satisfaction, embodied many of his ideas. In 1869-70 Morris served on a commission to inquire into the corrupt practices attending the election of freemen of the city of Dublin, and his report throws light on municipal government in Ireland. In 1872 he was appointed county court judge for the county of Louth, and after six years was transferred to county Kerry. The change did not prove agreeable. He had no sympathy with the home rule movement and detested the accompanying agrarian agitation, which was violent in Kerry. Of the Land Act of 1881, which he administered, he disapproved, and he never lost an opportunity of denouncing it. He reduced rents from 15 to 20 per cent, on well-managed estates, and from 30 to 40 per cent, on badly managed ones; but his refusal to submit to local opinion led to many stormy scenes between him and the bar. In 1880 he removed with his family from Dublin to Gartnamona, and was, at his own request, transferred in 1886 to the county judgeship of the united counties of Sligo and Roscommon. His position there was easier, but his attitude towards the de Freyne tenants in 1901, and his pungent remarks on men and measures in connection with recent Irish legislation, drew down on him hostile criticism. Thenceforth Morris devoted himself largely to literary work, and published in quick succession 'Hannibal . . . and the Crisis of the Struggle between Carthage and Rome,' and 'Napoleon . . . and the Military Supremacy of Revolutionary France,' both in the 'Heroes of the Nations' series (1890); 'Great Commanders of Modern Times,' reprinted from the 'Illustrated Naval and Military Magazine' (1891); 'Moltke: a Biographical and Critical Study' (1893); 'Ireland from 1494 to 1868,' in the 'Cambridge Historical' series (1894); 'Memories and Thoughts of a Life,' being his autobiography (1895); 'The Great Campaign of Nelson' (1898); 'Ireland from '98 to '98' (1898); 'The Campaign of 1815' (1900); 'Present Irish Questions' (1901); 'Wellington . . . and the Revival of the Military Power of England,' in the 'Heroes of the Nations' series (1904); besides numerous articles in the 'Edinburgh' and several in the 'English Historical Review' on Turenne, Sedan, Waterloo, and Ireland from 1793 to 1800. He wrote too much and too superficially to become an authority of first rank on either military or Irish history. He had no personal experience of military affairs, and except in the case of Ireland of his own day his knowledge of Irish history was largely second-hand. His style was that of an accomplished journalist, content for the most part to build on other men's foundations; but such writings as his 'Napoleon' and 'Ireland from '98 to '98' possess permanent interest from their strongly personal character and independent judgment. But he often failed to take the trouble to collect all the facts on which a sound or impartial judgment could be passed. He admired Napoleon and O'Connell, but unduly depreciated their contemporaries, and formed low estimates of Moltke and Parnell. A liberal unionist of the type of W. E. H. Lecky, he united the best characteristics of the English and Irish races. Morris was in private life honest, courageous, imaginative, fond of outdoor sports, an admirable raconteur, and a just landlord.
Morris died on 3 Aug. 1904 at Gartnamona. He married in 1858 Georgiana, eldest daughter of 'handsome' George Lindsay, by whom he had five daughters and a son, Maurice Lindsay O'Connor Morris.
[Morris's autobiography and writings; Burke's Landed Gentry; The Times, 4 Aug. 1904.]
R. D.