John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

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Lore & Background

In politics, Acton was always an ardent Liberal. He took a great interest in the United States, considering its federal structure an ideal guarantor of individual liberties. During the American Civil War, his sympathies lay entirely with the Confederacy, for their defence of States' Rights against a centralised government that he believed would inevitably turn tyrannical. After the South's surrender, he wrote to Robert E. Lee that 'I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo,' adding that he 'deemed that you were fighting battles for our liberty, our progress, and our civilization.' Acton's stance on the Confederacy was shared by most English Catholics at the time, both liberal and Ultramontane. The editors of the Ultramontane Tablet denounced Abraham Lincoln as a dangerous radical, and John Henry Newman stated that slavery was not 'intrinsically evil' and that the issue had to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Reader's Guide

Acton's most famous pronouncement came in an April 1887 letter to scholar and ecclesiastic Mandell Creighton: 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.' This principle has become a foundational concept in political philosophy and historical analysis, underscoring the necessity of checks on authority. His work as a historian and editor, particularly through The Rambler (which he edited from 1859) and Home and Foreign Review (which he merged into in 1862), reflected a commitment to critical historical inquiry that often brought him into conflict with ultramontane church hierarchy. In the March 1862 Rambler, Acton wrote: 'The Celts are not among the progressive, initiative races... The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons are the only makers of history.' He also wrote: 'Subjection to a people of a higher capacity for government is of itself no misfortune; and it is to most countries the condition of their political advancement.' Acton's legacy is that of a thinker who consistently prioritized individual liberty and the limitation of concentrated power, influencing later debates on governance, rights, and the moral responsibilities of those in authority.

Did You Know?

• Acton was denied entry to the University of Cambridge because he was a Catholic, and instead studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) in Munich.
• He was raised to the peerage as Baron Acton in 1869, primarily through the intercession of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
• In 1870, Acton traveled to Rome to oppose the promulgation of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council, ultimately unsuccessfully.
• Acton was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in the 1897 Birthday Honours.
• He wrote to Robert E. Lee after the Confederacy's surrender that he mourned 'for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.'

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