BOOKS.
LORD ACTON'S CORRESPONDENCE.*
Lorn ACTON once told Mr. Gle.datono that ho had included in his library many volumes of letters " because they give the moons of knowing character, as a men is not bettor than his word, and generally betrays low-water mark in his undraped private corre- spondence." This new volume of Acton's own correspondence is welcome in no tar as it throws light on his elusive personality, but it must be added that the letters are not often as interesting as wo had hoped. The editors havo adopted the plan of grouping the letters in subjects. it is convenient to have the ecclesiastical letters, the letters to and from Mr. Gladstone, and the letters to Lady Blennerhassett in separate groups, but tho attempt to go further and arrange the Gladstone letters according to their subjects is not very successful. Thum on p. 224 wo have the reply to a letter from Mr. Gladstone which comes later in the book on p. 228, merely because this reply deals in part with Bishop Butler, and is therefore placed in a Butler sub-section. For our part, wo should have preferred a strictly chronological order for the Acton-Gladatone correspondence, which, would then have illustrated clearly the long and intimate friendship existing between those two eminent mon. As it is, we are carried backward and forward, from ono topic to another, and have at times to seek in Lord Morloy's biography some fixed date as a rallying point in the confusion. It must be noted also that Lord Morley used these letters freely, knowing that they would ammo city be published in full, and the editors have not always mentioned the fact. Indeed, so many of Lord Acton's letters have boon printed in one form or another that the sequence of his thought can only bo traced with difficulty by a comparison of aoveral volumes. His editors have diligent& annotated the text, and their biographical references are valuable. But the book is, like Acton's other writings, not at all easy to road. The topic most fully treated in this volume is that of Lord Aolon's attitude towards his Church. Ho was a Liberal 1,3; conviction and a Roman Catholic by conviction, and the problem of his life was to reconcile those two beliefs. He puti it most clearly in a hotter of 1879 to Lady Blennerhaesett :— " Let me try as briefly as possible and without argument to toll you what is in fact a very aimple, obvious, and not interesting story. It is the story of a man who started in life believing himself a sincere Catholic and a sincere Liberal ; who therefore renounced everything in Catholicism which was not compatible with Liberty, and everything in Politics which was nut compatible with Catho- licity. As an English Liberal, I judged that of the two parties— of the two doctrines—which have governed England for 200 years, that one was most fitted to the divine purpose which upheld civil and religious liberty. Therefore I was among those who think lees of what is than of what ought to be, who sacrifice the real to the ideal, interest to duty, authority to morality. To speak quite plainly, as this its a confession, not an apology, I carried farther than others the Doctrinaire belief in mere Liberalism, identifying it altogether with morality, and holding the ethical standard and purpose to be supreme and sovereign. I carried this principle into the study of history when I had the means of getting beyond the common limit of printed books. There I presently found that there had bean a grievous evil in the Church consisting of a practice sanctioned by the theory that much, wrong [may bo done for rho sake of saving souls. Mon became what wo should otherwise call demons, in on good a COURT. And this tendency overspread Christen- dom from the twelfth, century, and was aasociated with the papacy, which sanctioned, encouraged, and employed it. Associated, not exactly identified, for I do not find that the Gallicans wore hotter than the Ultramentanes. But they had not quite the saline retro- spective interest or moral solidarity. The Ultrarnontano, desiring to defend the papacy, had to condone and justify its acts and laws. He was worse than the accomplices of the Old Man of tho Mountain, for they picked off individual victims. But the papacy contrived murder and massacre on the largest and also on the most cruel and inhuman scale. They were not only wholesale ansassins, but they made the minciple of assassination a law of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation. Was it better to renounce the papacy out of horror for its acts, or to 'condone the acts out of • .qelettion. from Iterarrespondence of Mt pint lard deton. FAIGNI,with an Intro- duction. by J. N. Finals and It. V. Laurence. Vol. I. London: Longmansand (13a. oat.) reverence for the papacy ? The Papal party preferred the latter alternative. It appeared to me that such men are infamous in the last degree. I did not accuse them of error, as I might impute it to ()reties or Charming, but of crime. I thought a person who imitated them for political or other motives worthy of death. But those whose motive was religious seemed to me worse than the others, because that which is in others the last resource of conversion is with them the source of guilt. The spring of repent- 0.1100 is broken, the conscience is not only weakened but warped. Their prayers and sacrifices appeared to me the most awful sacrilege. . . . It is well that an enthusiast for monarchy be forced to boar in mind the story of Nero and Ivan, of Louis XIV. and Napoleon ; that an enthusiast for democracy be reminded of St. Just and Mazzini. It is more essential that an enthusiast of the papacy be made to contemplate its tritons, because its influence is nearer the Conscience ; and the spiritual danger of perverted morale is greater than the evil of perverted politics. It is an agency constantly active, pervading life, penetrating the soul by many channels, in almost every sermon and in almost every prayer book. It is the fiend skulking behind the Crucifix. The corruption which comes from revolutionary or absolutist sympathies is far less subtle and expansive. It leashes the lower regions of the mind and does not poison that which is noblest."
But he was never able to give effect to his protests. Ho was in Rome when the Vatican Council met in 1870 and did his utmost to persuade Mr. Gladstone to promote a European diplomatic preterit against the Papal Decree of Infallibility. His animated letters suggest that he was convinced that the Decree was a fatal error. He said so publicly in letters to the Times in 1874. Yet when Cardinal Manning thereupon asked him plainly (1) whether he intended to repudiate the Vatican Decrees, and (2) whether he adhered to the doctrines defined in the Vatican Council, Lord Acton made a prompt but embarrassed surrender
I can only' say that I have no private gloss or favourite interpre- tation for the Vatican Decrees. The acts of the Council alone consti- tute the law which I recognise. I have not felt it my duty as a layman to pursue the comments of divines, still lees to attempt to supersede them by private judgments of my own. I am content to rest in absolute reliance on God's providence In His government of the Church."
We make no comment, except that his " evasive answer," as the adhere call it, fatally weakens, in the eyes of laymen at least, the position of the Liberal Roman Catholics which he strove with so much learning to build up.
The Gladstone correspondence shows that Lord Acton worshipped his leader " on this side idolatry," and took infinite pains to assist him in historical and theological matters. Many pages, indeed, are tilled with illuminating notes on Mr. Gladstone's articles and lectures. In home politics Lord Acton was not as a rule a very safe adviser. He was too sanguine and knew too little of English public opinion. But he could take a large view of international problems, and must he credited with having done his best to make his old leader take a reasonable view of National Defence. In a doleful letter of February, 1885, Mr. Gladstone had admitted his distrust of the new political tondencies in both parties, but had expressed the hope that " the sense of justice which abides tenaciously in the masses will never knowingly join hands with the Fiend of Jingoism." Unhappily his his hatred of that " Fiend " he woo all too ready to go to the oppo- site extreme, and the winter of 1893-94 found him resolute to reject a very necessary proposal to strengthen the Navy. Lord Acton tried very hard to bring him to a more reasonable frame of mind. But, as he told Mrs. Drew in a letter of January 22nd, 1894, after ho had left Mr. Gladstone at Biarritz,
" I was out of touch when I found that two points were rejected which I imagined to be open to no discussion, one was, that when- ever, after three or four years, we get into a quarrel with France, we shall be tempted to seek a refuge with the Triple Alliance, and that temptation will be strong if we ace weak, and weak if we are strong, at sea. The other point is still practically important, that is, the difficulty of giving to the Queen an explanation cliffereet from that which the whole country will know to be the true one. For myself I can conceive none that will mist strain, to the utmost, fidelity to the Party."
The whole Cabinet, it seems, was agreed upon the necessity of the new Naval Estimates, but the old Primo Minister would not accept them, despite Lord Acton'e long and skilful pleading.
Tho diligent reader of these letters is rewarded here and there with a telling phrase or a striking, if gloomy, reflection, for Lord Aston was an arch-pessimist. Installed as Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, he ;wrote :- " Some day, I ;shall say to a pupil : Read Burke, night end day He Us our best political writer, and the deepest of all Whigs—and he will answer Dear me I I thought he broke up the party, carried it over to the Tories, admired the despotism of the Bourbons, and trained no end of men towards Conservatism ? I shall have to renewer So he did. Both sayings are true. Or I may say Read Newman ; he is by far the heat writer the Church of Rome has had in England since the Reformation. And the pupil will come back end say But do you think his arguments sound, or his religion Catholic ? I shall have to say : No ; if you work it out, it is a school of Infidelity."
Discussing Mr. Gladstone's article on Robed Elaseere, and the arse- meet from Chriatian character, he wrote
" We know only modern characters thoroughly. Men must
have been dead some time for the whole truth to be told, and not long enough to fade into distance—say, about 500'years, from Dante or Petraroa to Carlyle. How many of these that belong to history will bear scrutiny ? The better we get to know them, from letters. diaries, table talk, ito., the worse, as a rule, they appear. It is very difficult for the most keen-sighted Diogenes to detect a really good man—for instance, in the Reformation, or Revolution, Wo have to conclude backwards, from experience in the known to the less known age ; and so are not dazzled by the halo of Fabrichte and Decius."
We may contrast with this Bishop Creighton's exquisitely urbane defence of his own historical method :—
" I see that from your point of view, I am not made of stern enough stuff to write history. I have too much natural pietas'- ' marten mortalia tangent.' I have no love for heroes, and I rarely find them in my particular path but I admit that I hesitate to find men so villainous as in your scales of moral judgment they would be. I like to stand aside as muoh as possible, and content myself with the humble part of a chorus in a Greek play. I try to put myself in the place of my personages. I judge them more severely for their own personal contribution to the world's rats- doings than for their acquiftwence in existing systems. I think worse of Status IV. for his share in the Peezi matter than for his authorising the Spanish Inquisition. I suppose my readers can draw morals for themselves. I think that in history, as in private life, I hope I try to find out men's good qualities before their bad ones, their good intentions before their evil moans."
Dr. Creighton, who once remarked with delicate irony that Lord Acton had not " fallen into the vulgar error of writing a book," took the wiser view of poor humanity. Yet Lord Anton was capable of unexpected enthusiasms. There is nothing more remarkable In this book than his eulogy of George Eliot as the " perfect atheist " who was also " a preacher of lofty virtue," " not at all perfect indeed or absolutely consistent but far more impressive, more true, more elevated, than any but the very best of Christian writers, and capable of reaching those whom no Christian could possibly touch." To Lord Acton this seemed " one of the most wonderful facts, of the most wonderful feats, in the history of the human mind."
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