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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
111 quotes
“I do think that, of the three greatest Liberals, Burke is equally good in speaking and writing; Macaulay better in writing, and Mr. Gladstone better in speaking.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mary Gladstone (27 December 1880), quoted in Herbert Paul (ed.), Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (1904), p. 57
“Nationality is the great carrier of custom, of unreflecting habit and transmitted ideas that quench individuality. Conscience gives men force to resist and discard all this. Nationality has to be dealt with discriminatingly. It is not always liberal or constructive. It may be as dangerous when its boundary is outside that of the State as salutary when inside.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (18 February 1888), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 182
“Don't suspect me of denying the principle of nationality altogether. Only, if I were to say as much as you say, I should be afraid of being driven to admit the priority of National Independence before individual liberty,—of the figurative conscience before the real. We do not find that Nationalists are always Liberals, especially in Austria.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (26 February 1888), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 185
“There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Almost all that has been done for the good of the people has been done since the right lost the monopoly of power, since the rights of property were discovered to be not unlimited.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The immediate purpose with which the Italians and Germans effected the great change in European constitution was unity, not liberty. They constructed, not securities, but forces. Machiavelli's hour had come.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introductory note to L. Arthur Burd's Il Principe by Niccolo Machiavelli, p. xxxlv (1891)
“If it can be shown that the majority of women will probably be Liberal, or that they will divide equally, I should say that the balance is, very slightly, in favour of giving them votes.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (26 April 1891), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 235
“[I]t will not do to act as if the moral question was not the supreme question in public life, and, in a sense, the vera causa of party conflict.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (21 November 1891), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 257
“By Universal History I understand that which is distinct from the combined history of all countries, which is not a rope of sand, but a continuous development, and is not a burden on the memory, but an illumination of the soul. It moves in a succession to which the nations are subsidiary. Their story will be told, not for their own sake, but in reference and subordination to a higher series, according to the time and the degree in which they contribute to the common fortunes of Mankind.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the contributors to The Cambridge Modern History (12 March 1898), quoted in Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History: Volume I (1935), p. 47
“Praise is the shipwreck of historians.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is they [men of science] who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which, as the earthly wants and the passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark of history.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Essays on Freedom and Power, Introduction, p. xlvii (1949)
“Liberalism is really opposed to liberty. ... Modern liberalism in England as well as abroad, in America as well as in Europe, has done more to destroy liberty than monarchy has done.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“What one hears in Ranke. The whisper of statecraft. Not the tramp of democracy's earthquake feet. Not the dull roar of surging opinion.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“Sagacity in judging the value of testimony is his [Ranke's] only supreme quality.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“The Massacre of St. Bartholomew saved England. Coligny would have conquered Belgium.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“There is no example of liberty established by Protestants resisting Catholics. The French tried it and failed. The Dutch in like manner. The victory came out of the conflict of Protestants with Protestants.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“Reformation. Scotland is the only kingdom in which the change was accomplished in spite of the crown. Ireland the only country where it was prevented in spite of the crown.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), pp…
“Religious liberty came not from the Reformation or from the sects as a whole but from particular sects...especially those which the Reformation sought to exterminate.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“The only resistance ever made to Louis XIV was from religion.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“The early history of the world is the history of a few great men. Their Wirkungskreis is immense—vaster than that of God himself.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“The lesson of modern history—that Religions enjoy (are endowed with) the prerogative of perpetual youth while philosophies seldom outlast a generation.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“Liberty becomes a question of morals more that politics.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985-88), 3:490
“Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985-88), 3:519
“Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Faith in Freedom : Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices (2004) by Thomas Stephen Szasz, p. 10. Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985-88),…
“Property, not Conscience, is the basis of liberty. For the defence of Conscience need not arise. Property is always exposed to State interference. It is the constant object of policy.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 19, n. 7
“The strongest of all the obstacles to progress, the reign of the dead.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 60, n. 1
“Socialism. Sanctioned by Religion, by philosophy, by the experience of great nations—Revelation. Catholic and Protestant authorities supported it. ... Idea not repugnant to Canon Law, of administering the wealth of the rich for the good of the poor. ... Socialism common wherever there is intense religious zeal.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), pp. 120–21
“S. B. is the greatest crime of modern times. It was committed on principles professed by Rome. It was approved, sanctioned, praised by the papacy. The Holy See went out of its way to signify to the world, by permanent and solemn acts, how entirely it admired a king who slaughtered his subjects treacherously, because they were Protestants. To proclaim forever that because a man is a Protestant it is a pious deed to cut his throat in the night.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 67
“Democracy is government of the strongest, just as military despotism is. This is a bond of connection between the two. They are the brutal forms of government and as strength and authority go together, necessarily arbitrarily.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 72
“A government which cannot be reformed does not merit to be preserved.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 74
“Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences injurious to society and morality. Therefore, in last resort, the poor have a claim on the wealth of the rich, so far that they may be relieved from the immoral, demoralizing effects of poverty.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 178
“There is a wide divergence, an irreconcilable disagreement, between the political notions of the modern world and that which is essentially the system of the Catholic Church. It manifests itself particularly in their contradictory views of liberty, and of the functions of the civil power. The Catholic notion, defining liberty not as the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought, denies that general interests can supersede individual rights. It condemns, therefore, the theory of the ancient as well as of the modern state. It is founded on the divine origin and nature of authority. According to the prevailing doctrine, which derives power from the people, and deposits it ultimately in their hands, the state is omnipotent over the individual, whose only remnant of freedom is then the participation in the exercise of supreme power; while the general will is binding on him.† Christian liberty is lost where this system prevails: whether in the form of the utmost diffusion of power, as in America, or of the utmost concentration of power, as in France; whether, that is to say, it is exercised by the majority, or by the delegate of the majority,—it is always a delusive freedom, founded on a servitude more or less disguised. In one form and under one pretext or another, the state has been absolute on the Continent of Europe for the last 300 years. In the sixteenth century absolutism was founded on religious zeal, and was expressed in the formula cujus regio, illius religio. In the seventeenth century it assumed the garb of legitimacy and divine right, and the king was believed when he said, "L'état c'est moi." In the eighteenth century arbitrary government found a new and stronger basis in the theory of the public good, of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and justified every act of tyranny by the maxim, the king is the first servant of the state. All these principles of despotism are incompatible with the Catholic ideas, and with the system by which the Pope, on pain of being in contradiction with himself, and with the spirit and practice of the Church, is compelled to govern. They are condemned by the traditions, and by the moral obligations, of the Court of Rome, whose system is one of charity and of liberty, and which knows no public consideration which is superior to the salvation of souls.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Roman Question. The Rambler (Jan, 1860) Vol. II, New Series, Part V, pp. 146-147. † Footnote: Nearly the earliest and clearest exponent of this doctrine is Spinoza, who says... "It is utterly inconceivable that each…
“Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter (4 November 1866) to Robert E. Lee
“The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many years the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic restoration had not begun to write. The press continued to serve the new opinions better than the old; and in literature Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, and established by violence in the North, it had overcome the resistance of princes in Central Europe, and had won toleration without ceasing to be intolerant. In[Pg 103] France and Poland, in the dominions of the Emperor and under the German prelates, the attempt to arrest its advance by physical force had been abandoned. In Germany it covered twice the area that remained to it in the next generation, and, except in Bavaria, Catholicism was fast dying out. The Polish Government had not strength to persecute, and Poland became the refuge of the sects. When the bishops found that they could not prevent toleration, they resolved that they would not restrict it.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Judged by its immediate result, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a measure weakly planned and irresolutely executed, which deprived Protestantism of its political leaders, and left it for a time to the control of zealots. There is no evidence to make it probable that more than seven thousand victims perished. Judged by later events, it was the beginning of a vast change in the conflict of the churches. At first it was believed that a hundred thousand Huguenots had fallen. It was said that the survivors were abjuring by thousands, that the children of the slain were made Catholics, that those whom the priest had admitted to absolution and communion were nevertheless put to death. Men who were far beyond the reach of the French Government lost their faith in a religion which Providence had visited with so tremendous a judgment; and foreign princes took heart to employ severities which could excite no horror after the scenes in France.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A time came when the Catholics, having long relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had been defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously explained away. The same motive which had justified the murder now prompted the lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and restorers of their Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and that so much infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to say that the most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at Rome, lest they should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A swarm of facts were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were insignificant in number; they were slain for no reason connected with religion; the Pope believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a reality; the medal is fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted with the Protestants themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard that it was over. These things were repeated so often that they have been sometimes believed; and men have fallen into this way of speaking whose sincerity was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in their religion by the errors or the vices of Popes. Möhler was pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures on the history of the Church, which were published only last year, he said that the Catholics, as such, took no part in the massacre; that no cardinal, bishop, or priest shared in the councils that prepared it; that Charles informed the Pope that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that Gregory made his thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved. Such things will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The government of the Israelites was a , held together by no political authority, but by the unity of... faith and founded not on physical force but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community that it was resisted by Samuel... The throne was erected on a compact; and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people that recognised no lawgiver but God, whose highest aim in politics was to... make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws, which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed... to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted consciences of the masses. Thus the... Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development... and the principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man. The operation of these principles... occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[L]liberty is ancient, and it is despotism that is new. ...The heroic age of Greece confirms it, and it is still more conspicuously true of Teutonic Europe. ...They exhibit some sense of common interest in common concerns, little reverence for external authority, and an imperfect sense of the function and supremacy of the State. Where the division of property and labour is incomplete there is little division of classes and of power. Until societies are tried by the complex problems of civilisation they may escape despotism, as societies that are undisturbed by religious diversity avoid persecution.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From this universal degradation the world was rescued by the most gifted of the nations. Athens, which like other cities was distracted and oppressed by a privileged class, avoided violence and appointed Solon to revise its laws. ...Solon gave a share of power proportioned to the demands made on their resources. The poorest classes were exempt from direct taxes, but were excluded from office. Solon gave them a voice in electing magistrates from the classes above them, and the right of calling them to account. This concession... was the beginning of a mighty change. It introduced the idea that a man ought to have a voice in selecting those to whose rectitude and wisdom he is compelled to trust his fortune, his family, and his life. And this idea completely inverted the notion of human authority, for it inaugurated the reign of moral influence... Government by consent superseded government by compulsion, and the pyramid which had stood on a point was made to stand upon its base. By making every citizen the guardian of his own interest Solon admitted the element of Democracy into the State.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Their [Athenians] history furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. For the Athenians were not only brave and patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most religious of the Greeks. They venerated the constitution which had given them prosperity and equality and the pride of freedom...They tolerated considerable variety of opinion, and great license of speech...Thus they became the only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions. But the possession of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding of monarchs exercised its demoralizing influence on the illustrious Democracy of Athens.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But it may be urged, on the other side, that Liberty is not the sum or substitute for of all things men ought to live for... to be real it must be circumscribed... advancing civilisation invests the state with increased rights and duties, and imposes increased burdens and constraints on the subject... a highly instructed and intelligent community may perceive the benefit of compulsory obligations which, at a lower stage, would be thought unbearable... liberal progress is not vague or indefinite, but aims at a point where the public is subject to no restrictions but those of which it feels the advantage... a free country may be less capable of doing much for the advancement of religion, the prevention of vice, or the relief of suffering, than one that does not shrink from confronting great emergencies by some sacrifice of individual rights, and some concentration of power... the supreme political object ought to be sometimes postponed to still higher moral objects. My argument involves no collision with these qualifying reflections. We are dealing, not with the effects of freedom, but with its causes. ...influences which brought arbitrary government under control, either by the diffusion of power, or to an appeal to an authority which transcends all government, and among these influences the greatest philosophers of Greece have no claim to be reckoned.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Constantine declared his own will equivalent to a canon of the Church. According to Justinian, the Roman people had formally transferred to the emperors the entire plenitude of its authority, and, therefore, the emperor’s pleasure, expressed by edict or by letter, had force of law. Even in the fervent age of its conversion the empire employed its refined civilization, the accumulated wisdom of ancient sages, the reasonableness and subtlety of Roman law, and the entire inheritance of the Jewish, the pagan, and the Christian world, to make the Church serve as a gilded crutch of absolutism. Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience — a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth. This vital element, which many centuries of warfare, of anarchy, of oppression, had extinguished in the countries that were still draped in the pomp of ancient civilization, was deposited on the soil of Christendom by the fertilising stream of migration that overthrew the empire of the West.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the height of their power the Romans became aware of a race of men that had not abdicated freedom in the hands of a monarch; and the ablest writer of the empire pointed to them with a vague and bitter feeling that, to the institutions of these barbarians, not yet crushed by despotism, the future of the world belonged. Their kings, when they had kings, did not preside [at] their councils; they were sometimes elective; they were sometimes deposed; and they were bound by oath to act in obedience to the general wish. They enjoyed real authority only in war. This primitive Republicanism, which admits monarchy as an occasional incident, but holds fast to the collective supremacy of all free men, of the constituent authority over all constituted authorities, is the remote germ of parliamentary government.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea that the ends of government justify the means employed, was worked into system by Machiavelli. He was an acute politician, sincerely anxious that the obstacles to the intelligent government of Italy should be swept away. It appeared to him that the most vexatious obstacle to intellect is conscience, and that the vigorous use of statecraft necessary for the success of difficult schemes would never be made if governments allowed themselves to be hampered by the precepts of the copy-book. His audacious doctrine was avowed in the succeeding age, by men whose personal character otherwise stood high. They saw that in critical times good men have seldom strength for their goodness, and yield to those who have grasped the meaning of the maxim that you cannot make an omelette if you are afraid to break the eggs. They saw that public morality differs from private, because no government can turn the other cheek, or can admit that mercy is better than justice. And they could not define the difference, or draw the limits of exception; or tell what other standard for a nation’s acts there is than the judgment which heaven pronounces in this world by success.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That men should understand that governments do not exist by divine right, and that arbitrary government is the violation of divine right, was no doubt the medicine suited to the malady under which Europe languished. But although the knowledge of this truth might become an element of salutary destruction, it could give little aid to progress and reform. Resistance to tyranny implied no faculty of constructing a legal government in its place. Tyburn tree may be a useful thing; but it is better still that the offender should live for repentance and reformation. The principles which discriminate in politics between good and evil, and make states worthy to last, were not yet found.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The French philosopher Charron was one of the men least demoralised by party spirit, and least blinded by zeal for a cause. In a passage almost literally taken from St. Thomas, he describes our subordination under the law of nature, to which all legislation must conform; and he ascertains it not by the light of revealed religion, but by the voice of universal reason, through which God enlightens the consciences of men. Upon this foundation Grotius drew the lines of real political science. In gathering the materials of International law, he had to go beyond national treaties and denominational interests, for a principle embracing all mankind. The principles of law must stand, he said, even if we suppose that there is no God. By these inaccurate terms he meant that they must be found independently of Revelation. From that time it became possible to make politics a matter of principle and of conscience, so that men and nations differing in all other things could live in peace together, under the sanctions of a common law.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was manifest that all persons who had learned that political science is an affair of conscience rather than of might or expediency, must regard their adversaries as men without principle, that the controversy between them would perpetually involve morality, and could not be governed by the plea of good intentions which softens down the asperities of religious strife. Nearly all the greatest men of the seventeenth century repudiated the innovation. In the eighteenth, the two ideas of Grotius, that there are certain political truths by which every state and every interest must stand or fall, and that society is knit together by a series of real and hypothetical contracts, became, in other hands, the lever that displaced the world. When, by what seemed the operation of an irresistible and constant law, royalty had prevailed over all enemies and all competitors, it became a religion. Its ancient rivals, the baron and the prelate, figured as supporters by its side.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source