LORD ACTON ON GERMAN BARBARISM. (To THE EDITOR or THE
SPECTATOR29 fin,—Anti-German theories of history written since the war may be suspect, but tide extract from the late Lord Acton'. Lectures on the French Revolution is above suspicion. The lectures were delivered at Cambridge between 1895 and 1899 and published in 1910. Writing of Abbb Sieybs (p. 1011), he says:—
" His philosophy of history consisted in one idea. Barbarians had come clown from Germany on the people of civilised and imperial Gaul, and had subjugated and robbed them, and the descendants of the invading race were now the feudal nobles, who still held power and profit, and continued to oppress the natives. This identification of privileged noble with conquering Frank was of older date; and in this century it has been made the master-key to modern history. When Thierry discovered the secret of our national development in the remarks of Wombs the Witless to (birth, under the Sherwood oaks, he applied to us a formula familiar to his countrymen; and Guizot always defined French history as a perpetual struggle between hostile nations until the eighteenth century made good the wrong that was done in the fifth. Right or wrong, the theory of Sieybe was adopted by his must learned successors and must not be imputed to ignorance." Saeh a statement from so high an authority as Lord Acton is
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