Samuel Morley, 'Dissent' — Statesmen No. 115

Chromolithograph by Adriano Cecioni, one of Vanity Fair's less celebrated contributors alongside the dominant Ape and Spy. The plate labels its subject simply 'Dissent' — a pointed one-word summary of Morley's identity as Congregationalist, teetotaller, and Liberal MP for Bristol. He appears in profile, white-haired and heavy-jowled, the nose exaggerated in the magazine's habitual manner, wearing the sober double-breasted frock coat of a prosperous Nonconformist manufacturer rather than any aristocratic flourish. White gloves held loosely at his side reinforce a certain prim rectitude. The caption and costume together argue that Morley's politics are inseparable from his chapel religion — earnest, middle-class, and faintly humourless — a dig at Dissenting Liberalism even as it acknowledges his genuine parliamentary weight.