Acton

“ Never before had a young man come into the presence of such intensity of conviction as was shown by every word Lord Acton spoke. It took possession of the whole being, and seemed to enfold it in its own burning flame. And the fires below on which it fed were, at least for those present, immeasurable. More than all else, it was perhaps this conviction that gave to Lord Acton's Lectures their amazing force and vivacity. ”

“ It is impossible not to regret that Acton has not made his mark in literature as the writer of a great book, or in politics as a great statesman; but he preferred to know, and the men who know as Acton knew are few. The world is the richer whilst they are with us, and the poorer when they go. Acton will not be forgotten at Cambridge. ”

“ He always writes as the student, never as the littérateur. Even the memorable phrases which give point to his briefest articles are judicial, not journalistic. Yet he treats of matters which range from the dawn of history through the ancient empires down to subjects so essentially modern as the vast literature of revolutionary France or the leaders of the romantic movement which replaced it. In all these writings of Acton those qualities manifest themselves, which only grew stronger with time, and gave him a distinct and unique place among his contemporaries. ”

“ Doubtless one who gave himself no credit for practical aptitude in public affairs, admired a man who had gifts that were not his own. But what Acton most admired was what many condemned. It was because he was not like Lord Palmerston, because Bismarck disliked him, because he gave back the Transvaal to the Boers, and tried to restore Ireland to its people, because his love of liberty never weaned him from loyalty to the Crown, and his politics were part of his religion, that Acton used of Gladstone language rarely used, and still more rarely applicable, to [Pg xxiv] any statesman. ”

“ Nothing could well be further from the truth. To me it seemed that Acton never read of an action without appraising its significance and morality, never learnt a fact without fitting it into its environment, and never studied a life or a period without considering its effect upon the progress of humanity.
"His judgments were severe but just. Neither glamour of reputation nor splendour of achievement blinded him to moral iniquity. He had a wealth of righteous indignation which upon occasion blazed out fiercely. ”

“ Born in the early days of the July monarchy, when reform in England was a novelty, and Catholic freedom a late-won boon, Acton as he grew to manhood in Munich and in England had presented to his regard a series of scenes well calculated to arouse a thoughtful mind to consideration of the deepest problems, both of politics and religion. ”

“ Two other tendencies dominant in Germany—tendencies which had and have a great power in the minds of scholars, yet to Acton, both as a Christian and a man, seemed corrupting—compelled him to a search for principles which might deliver him from slavery alike to traditions and to fashion, from the historian's vice of condoning whatever has got itself allowed to exist, and from the politician's habit of mere opportunist acquiescence in popular standards. ”

“ Lord Acton was, or seemed to be, a man of the world first and foremost; a politician and a lover of society; a gossip, and, as his "Letters" show, not always a friendly gossip. [52] His demeanour was profoundly sphinx-like, and he seemed to enjoy the sense that his hearers were anxious to learn what he was able but unwilling to impart. ”

“ He stood for a spirit of unwavering and even childlike faith united to a passion for scientific inquiry, and a scorn of consequences, which at times made him almost an iconoclast. His whole life was dedicated to one high end, the aim of preaching the need of principles based on the widest induction and the most penetrating thought, as the only refuge amid the storm and welter of sophistical philosophies and ecclesiastical intrigues. The union of faith with knowledge, and the eternal supremacy of righteousness, this was the message of Acton to mankind. ”

“ For to Acton history was the master of political wisdom, not a pursuit but a passion, not a mere instrument but a holy calling, not Clio so much as Rhadamanthus, the avenger of innocent blood. That men who were themselves scholars, and therefore presumably lovers of truth, should regard what was to him the noblest of studies with indifference or hostility, he felt almost as a personal wrong. And certainly no one in Cambridge ever did more to remove the reproach from what the ignorant think of as the easiest of studies. ”

“ Acton, whose temperament was critical, as his mind was judicial, pointed out, with the sincerity of true friendship, though with unfailing tact, the clouds above, and the rocks ahead. No man admired Mr. Gladstone more. No man flattered him less.
The following letter to Mrs. Drew expresses his opinion at the time, and also the judgment of a distinguished Italian statesman who was always friendly to England:—
"Your letter comes in the midst of the living echoes of the speech, and of the uncertainty that follows, and does not quite relieve my feeling of apprehension. ”

“ But it was with Lord Acton a fundamental principle, and it is not the size of Periclean Athens, or of Elizabethan England, which made them imperishably great. "It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority." Worse, because more desperate, with less hope of rebellion, or escape. We must look, Lord Acton warns us, to substance and essence, not to form and outward show. The martyrdom of Socrates was the act of a free Republic, and it was Caæsar who liberated Rome from the tyranny of Republican institutions. ”

“ A proud man that day was Roger Acton; not of his deserts—they were worse than none, he knew it; not of the procession—no silly child was he, to be caught with toy and tinsel; God wot, he was meek enough in self—and as for other pride, he knew from old electioneerings, what a humbling thing is triumph. ”

“ I t was, in truth, the un\vavering loyalty of his churchman ship and his far-reaching historical sense that enabled him to attack with such vehemence evils which he believed to be accidental and temporary, even though they might have endured for a millennium. Long searching of the vista of history preserved Acton from the common danger of confusing the eternal with what is merely lengthy. ”

“ Acton's chief work was a commentary on the ecclesiastical ‘constitutions’ of Otho and Ottobone, papal legates in England in the thirteenth century . These ‘constitutions’ formed for many years the English canon law, and Acton's full and learned notes were held by the lawyers of his own time to be invaluable in their interpretations. Very many manuscript copies of Acton's commentary are in the college libraries at Oxford. ”

“ Think of the disgrace, the ripping up of old scandals! Even if I were to compound with Lady Carwitchet, the sum she hinted at was too monstrous. She wants more than my money. Help me, Mr. Acton! For the sake of your own family interest, help me!"
"I beg your pardon—family interests? I don't understand."
"If my daughter is childless, her next of kin is poor Marmaduke Panton, who is dying at Cannes, not married, or likely to marry; and failing him, your nephew, Sir Thomas Acton, succeeds."
My nephew Tom! Leta, or Leta's baby, might come to be the possible inheritor of the great Valdez sapphire! ”

“ On the whole, I do not know any recent works that may be more profitable for advice and guidance in reading history than these three volumes of Lord Acton's. They contain the essence of his unceasing labours in collecting, comparing, and testing an immense quantity of historic material. They are particularly valuable for the flashes of insight into the deeper relations of events, for brief, sententious observations in which he sums up his judgments upon men and their doings. They are not to be taken lightly; they demand all your attention, for the style is compressed and packed with meaning ”

“ Acton. I think,” said the young man, with a nod at his sister, “that you will like Mr. Acton.”
“Remember that I am very fastidious,” said the Baroness. “Has he very good manners?”
“He will have them with you. He is a man of the world; he has been to China.”
Madame Münster gave a little laugh. “A man of the Chinese world! He must be very interesting.”
“I have an idea that he brought home a fortune,” said Felix.
“That is always interesting. Is he young, good-looking, clever?”
“He is less than forty; he has a baldish head; he says witty things. ”

“ It became almost a trick of style to talk of judging men by the standard of their day and to allege the spirit of the age in excuse for the Albigensian Crusade or the burning of Hus. Acton felt that this was to destroy the very bases of moral judgment and to open the way to a boundless scepticism. Anxious as he was to uphold the doctrine of growth in theology, he allowed nothing for it in the realm of morals, at any rate in the Christian era, since the thirteenth century. He demanded a code of moral judgment independent of place and time, and not merely relative to a particular civilisation. ”

“ Acton looked at her a moment. “Now you wouldn’t like me to say that!”
“You Americans have such odd ways!” the Baroness declared. “You never ask anything outright; there seem to be so many things you can’t talk about.”
“We Americans are very polite,” said Acton, whose national consciousness had been complicated by a residence in foreign lands, and who yet disliked to hear Americans abused. “We don’t like to tread upon people’s toes,” he said. “But I should like very much to hear about your marriage. ”

“ Gladstone and a Liberal Catholic like Sir John Acton there was plenty of common ground. Both men became, in every sense of the word, more Liberal as they grew older, and Acton's belief in his leader ripened into a reverential devotion which nothing could shake.
At the General Election of 1865, Sir John Acton stood in the Whig or Liberal interest for Bridgnorth, the nearest town to Aldenham, and then a Parliamentary borough. "On that occasion he assured the electors that he represented not the body but the spirit of the Church of Rome" (Edinburgh Review, No. 404, pp. 375-76) . ”

“ We note the same value for great books as the source of wisdom, combined with the same enthusiasm for immediate justice which made Acton the despair of the mere academic student, an enigma among men of the world, and a stumbling-block to the politician of the clubs Beyond this, we find that certainty and decision of judgment, that crisp concentration of phrase, that grave and deliberate irony and that mastery of subtlety, allusion, and wit, which make his interpretation an adventure and his judgment a sword. ”

“ Acton, an adventurer of English birth, who became prime minister of Naples, but was driven from the helm of affairs on account of his inveterate antipathy to the French (1737-1808) .
Acton, Lord, a descendant of the former, who became a leader of the Liberal Catholics in England, M.P. for Carlow, and made a peer in 1869; a man of wide learning, and the projector of a universal history by experts in different departments of the field; b. ”

“ As an historian Acton held very strongly to the ideal of impartiality, yet his writings illustrate the impossibility of attaining it. The 'Lectures on Modern History' are actually the development of the modern world as conceived by a convinced whig—and except in the actual investigation of bare facts no historian is less impartial and more personal in his judgments than Acton appears in the volume on the 'French Revolution.' His writing again has a note as distinctive as though very different from that of Macaulay. ”

“ Chevalier Acton is the son of an Irish physician, who first was established at Besancon in France, and afterwards at Leghorn in Italy. He is indebted for his present elevation to his own merit and to the penetration of the Queen of Sardinia, who discovered in him, when young, those qualities which have since distinguished him as a faithful counsellor and an able Minister. As loyal as wise, he was, from 1789, an enemy to the French Revolution. ”

“ That austerity of moral judgment, that sense of the greatness of human affairs, and of the vast issues that lie in action and in thought, was no product of outside influences, and went beyond what he had learnt from his master Döllinger. To treat politics as a game, to play with truth or make it subservient to any cause other than itself, to take trivial views, was to Acton as deep a crime as to waste in pleasure or futility the hours so brief given for salvation of the soul would have seemed to Baxter or Bunyan ”

“ Among the other books noticed by Acton in the Historical Review were Seeley's "Life of Napoleon," Bright's "History of England" (by the Master of University) , and Bryce's "American Commonwealth." Academic honours were now coming in rapid succession. In 1888 Lord Acton was made an Honorary Doctor of Laws at Cambridge, in 1889 a Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, and in 1890 an Honorary Fellow of All Souls, thereby becoming Mr. Gladstone's colleague. For a man who had published scarcely anything in his own name these compliments were as rare as they were just. ”

“ A conversation class in connection with his lectures on the French Revolution in the academical year 1895-96 was the first attempt of the kind, but was, however, not altogether a success, and Acton gladly welcomed the suggestion of the junior of the editors of these lectures that a College Society on the lines of other Societies then existing in Trinity for the discussion of theological, political, and literary subjects should be formed. The Trinity Historical Society was accordingly founded in the Michaelmas Term of 1896, and Acton became its first President. ”