THE HISTORY of FREEDOM and OTHER ESSAYS This Book Is Free to Give Away
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THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM AND OTHER ESSAYS This book is free to give away. This book is free to republish. For more books visit EZClever.com You may republish this book online or offline. You may give this book away for free or resell. This book is not copyrighted in the United States. If you like free books, please visit EZClever.com when you need to buy a book. People like our prices. THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM AND OTHER ESSAYS MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO ATLANTA . SAN FRANSISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA LTD. TORONTO [Illustration: Acton] THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM AND OTHER ESSAYS BY JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON FIRST BARON ACTON D.C.L., L.L.D., ETC. ETC. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN NEVILLE FIGGIS, Litt.D. SOMETIME LECTURER IN ST. CATHARINE'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE AND REGINALD VERE LAURENCE, M.A. FELLOW AND LECTURER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1909 _First Edition 1907_ _Reprinted 1909_ PREFATORY NOTE The Editors desire to thank the members of the Acton family for their help and advice during the preparation of this volume and of the volume of _Historical Essays and Studies_. They have had the advantage of access to many of Acton's letters, especially those to Doellinger and Lady Blennerhasset. They have thus been provided with valuable material for the Introduction. At the same time they wish to take the entire responsibility for the opinions expressed therein. They are again indebted to Professor Henry Jackson for valuable suggestions. This volume consists of articles reprinted from the following journals: _The Quarterly Review_, _The English Historical Review_, _The Nineteenth Century_, _The Rambler_, _The Home and Foreign Review_, _The North British Review_, _The Bridgnorth Journal_. The Editors have to thank Mr. John Murray, Messrs. Longmans, Kegan Paul, Williams and Norgate, and the proprietors of _The Bridgnorth Journal_ for their kind permission to republish these articles, and also the Delegacy of the Clarendon Press for allowing the reprint of the Introduction to Mr. Burd's edition of _Il Principe_. They desire to point out that in _Lord Acton and his Circle_ the article on "The Protestant Theory of Persecution" is attributed to Simpson: this is an error. J.N.F. R.V.L. CONTENTS PAGE PORTRAIT OF LORD ACTON _Frontispiece_ CHRONICLE viii INTRODUCTION ix I. THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN ANTIQUITY 1 II. THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN CHRISTIANITY 30 III. SIR ERSKINE MAY'S DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE 61 IV. THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 101 V. THE PROTESTANT THEORY OF PERSECUTION 150 VI. POLITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH 188 VII. INTRODUCTION TO L.A. BURD'S EDITION OF IL PRINCIPE BY MACHIAVELLI 212 VIII. MR. GOLDWIN SMITH'S IRISH HISTORY 232 IX. NATIONALITY 270 X. DOeLLINGER ON THE TEMPORAL POWER 301 XI. DOeLLINGER'S HISTORICAL WORK 375 XII. CARDINAL WISEMAN AND THE HOME AND FOREIGN REVIEW 436 XIII. CONFLICTS WITH ROME 461 XIV. THE VATICAN COUNCIL 492 XV. A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY HENRY CHARLES LEA 551 XVI. THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH. BY JAMES BRYCE 575 XVII. HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE AND FRENCH BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND. BY ROBERT FLINT 588 APPENDIX 597 INDEX 599 CHRONICLE JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON, born at Naples, 10th January 1834, son of Sir Ferdinand Richard Edward Dalberg-Acton and Marie de Dalberg, afterwards Countess Granville. French school near Paris. 1843-1848. Student at Oscott " " Edinburgh. 1848-1854. " " Munich University, living with Doellinger. 1855. Visits America in company with Lord Ellesmere. 1858-1862. Becomes editor of _The Rambler_. 1859-1865. M.P. for Carlow. 1862-1864. Founds, edits, and concludes _The Home and Foreign Review_. 1864. Pius IX. issued _Quanta Cura_, with appended _Syllabus Errorum_. 1865-1866. M.P. for Bridgnorth 1865. Marries Countess Marie Arco-Valley. 1867-1868. Writes for _The Chronicle_. 1869. Created Baron Acton. 1869-1871. Writes for _North British Review_. 1869-1870. Vatican Council. Acton at Rome. Writes "Letters of Quirinus" in _alleging Zeitung_. 1872. Honorary degree at Munich. 1874. Letters to _The Times_ on "The Vatican Decrees." 1888. Honorary degree at Cambridge. 1889. " " Oxford. 1890. Honorary Fellow of All Souls'. 1892-1895. Lord-in-Waiting. 1895-1902. Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge Honorary Fellow of Trinity College. 19th June 1902. Died at Tegernsee. INTRODUCTION The two volumes here published contain but a small selection from the numerous writings of Acton on a variety of topics, which are to be found scattered through many periodicals of the last half-century. The result here displayed is therefore not complete. A further selection of nearly equal quantity might be made, and still much that is valuable in Acton's work would remain buried. Here, for instance, we have extracted nothing from the _Chronicle_; and Acton's gifts as a leader-writer remain without illustration. Yet they were remarkable. Rarely did he show to better advantage than in the articles and reviews he wrote in that short-lived rival of the _Saturday Review_. From the two bound volumes of that single weekly, there might be made a selection which would be of high interest to all who cared to learn what was passing in the minds of the most acute and enlightened members of the Roman Communion at one of the most critical epochs in the history of the papacy. But what could never be reproduced is the general impression of Acton's many contributions to the _Rambler_, the _Home and Foreign_, and the _North British Review_. Perhaps none of his longer and more ceremonious writings can give to the reader so vivid a sense at once of the range of Acton's erudition and the strength of his critical faculty as does the perusal of these short notices. Any one who wished to understand the personality of Acton could not do better than take the published Bibliography and read a few of the articles on "contemporary literature" furnished by him to the three Reviews. In no other way could the reader so clearly realise the complexity of his mind or the vast number of subjects which he could touch with the hand of a master. In a single number there are twenty-eight such notices. His writing before he was thirty years of age shows an intimate and detailed knowledge of documents and authorities which with most students is the "hard won and hardly won" achievement of a lifetime of labour. He always writes as the student, never as the _litterateur_. 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. Here is the same austere love of truth, the same resolve to dig to the bed-rock of fact, and to exhaust all sources of possible illumination, the same breadth of view and intensity of inquiring ardour, which stimulated his studies and limited his productive power. Above all, there is the same unwavering faith in principles, as affording the only criterion of judgment amid the ever-fluctuating welter of human passions, political manoeuvring, and ecclesiastical intrigue. But this is not all. 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. A few instances may be given. In criticising a professor of history famous in every way rather than as a student, Acton says, "his Lectures are indeed not entirely unhistorical, for he has borrowed quite discriminatingly from Tocqueville." Of another writer he says that "ideas, if they occur to him, he rejects like temptations to sin." Of Ranke, thinking perhaps also of himself, he declares that "his intimate knowledge of all the contemporary history of Europe is a merit not suited to his insular readers." Of a partisan French writer under Louis Napoleon he says that "he will have a fair grievance if he fails to obtain from a discriminating government some acknowledgment of the services which mere historical science will find it hard to appreciate." Of Laurent he says, that "sometimes it even happens that his information is not second-hand, and there are some original authorities with which he is evidently familiar. The ardour of his opinions, so different from those which have usually distorted history, gives an interest even to his grossest errors. Mr. Buckle, if he had been able to distinguish a good book from a bad one, would have been a tolerable imitation of M. Laurent." Perhaps, however, the most characteristic of these forgotten judgments is the description of Lord Liverpool and the class which supported him. Not even Disraeli painting the leader of that party which he was destined so strangely to "educate" could equal the austere and accurate irony with which Acton, writing as a student, not as a novelist, sums up the characteristics of the class of his birth.