| 词条 | John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton |
| 释义 |
|honorific-prefix = The Right Honourable |name = The Lord Acton |honorific-suffix = {{postnominals|size=100%|country=UK|KCVO|DL}} |image = Picture of John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton.jpg |constituency_MP = Bridgnorth |term_start = 25 July 1865 |term_end = 1866 |predecessor = Henry Whitmore |successor = Henry Whitmore |alongside = John Pritchard |constituency_MP1 = Carlow Borough |term_start1 = 19 May 1859 |term_end1 = 25 July 1865 |predecessor1 = John Alexander |successor1 = Thomas Stock (MP)|Thomas Stock |birth_date = 10 January 1834 |birth_place = Naples, Two Sicilies |death_date = {{Death date and age|1902|6|19|1834|1|10|df=y}} |death_place = Tegernsee, Bavaria German Empire |restingplace = |birthname = John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton |nationality = British |party = Liberal Party |spouse = |children = |residence = |alma_mater = Oscott College |occupation = Historian; politician |cabinet = |committees = |portfolio = |religion = Roman Catholic |signature = }} John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, {{post-nominals|KCVO|DL}} (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902), was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet,[1] and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral and prime minister Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet.[1]{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=159}} Between 1837 and 1869 he was known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet. He is perhaps best known for the remark, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men...", which he made in a letter to an Anglican bishop.[2] Early lifeJohn Acton's grandfather succeeded to the baronetcy and family estates in Shropshire in 1791. The estates had previously been held by another English branch of the Acton family. John Acton's grandfather was a member of a younger line of the family which had transferred itself to France and, subsequently, to Italy, but, subsequent to the extinction of the elder branch, he became the patriarch of the family.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=159}}[1] His grandfather's eldest son, Richard, who was his father, married Marie Louise Pelline, the only daughter and heiress of Emmerich Joseph, 1st Duc de Dalberg, who was a naturalised French noble of ancient German lineage who had entered the French service under Napoleon and represented Louis XVIII at the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Subsequent to Sir Richard Acton's death in 1837, she became the wife of the 2nd Earl Granville (1840).{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=159}}[3] Marie Louise Pelline de Dalberg was heiress of Herrnsheim in Germany. She became the mother of John Dalberg-Acton who was born in Naples.[1]{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=159}} He was raised as a Roman Catholic, and was educated at Oscott College, under the future-Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, until 1848. He then studied privately at Edinburgh. He was denied entry to the University of Cambridge because he was a Catholic,{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=159}} and subsequently went to Munich where he studied at the University and resided in the house of Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, the theologian and forerunner of the Old Catholic Church, with whom he became lifelong friends.[7] Döllinger inspired in him a deep love of historical research and a profound conception of its functions as a critical instrument in the study of sociopolitical liberty.[4] He was a master of the principal foreign languages, and began at an early age to collect a magnificent historical library, which he intended to use to compose a "History of Liberty." In politics, he was always an ardent Liberal.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=159}} CareerThrough extensive travels, Acton spent much time in the chief intellectual centres reading the actual correspondence of historical personalities.[4] Among his friends were Montalembert, Tocqueville, Fustel de Coulanges, Bluntschli, von Sybel and Ranke. In 1855, he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Shropshire.[3] A year later, he was attached to Lord Granville's mission to Moscow as British representative at the coronation of Alexander II of Russia.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=159}} PoliticsIn 1859, Acton settled in England, at his country house, Aldenham, in Shropshire. He was returned to the House of Commons that same year as member for the Irish Borough of Carlow and became a devoted admirer and adherent of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. However, Acton was not an active MP, and his parliamentary career came to an end after the general election of 1865, when he headed the Liberal ballot for Bridgnorth near his Shropshire home. Acton defeated Conservative leader Henry Whitmore, who successfully petitioned for a scrutiny of the ballots, and thus retained his own seat and Acton lost his new seat. After the Reform Act 1867, Acton again contested Bridgnorth, this time reduced to a single seat, in 1868 but to no avail.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}} Acton took a great interest in the United States, considering its federal structure the perfect 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, by what he thought to be all historical precedent, inevitably turn tyrannical. His notes to Gladstone on the subject helped sway many in the British government to sympathise with the South. 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."[5] Acton's stance on the Confederacy was shared by most English Catholics at the time, both liberal and Ultramontane.[6] The editors of the Ultramontane Tablet denounced Abraham Lincoln as a dangerous radical, and John Henry Newman, when asked for his opinion on the matter, stated that slavery was not "intrinsically evil" and that the issue had to be assessed on a case by case basis.[6] In 1869 Queen Victoria raised Acton to the peerage as Baron Acton, of Aldenham in the County of Shropshire. His elevation came primarily through the intercession of Gladstone.[7] The two were intimate friends and frequent correspondents. Matthew Arnold said that "Gladstone influences all round him but Acton; it is Acton who influences Gladstone."{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}} Acton was appointed to the Royal Victorian Order as a Knight Commander (KCVO) in the 1897 Birthday Honours.[8][9] He was also a strong supporter of Irish Home Rule.[10] Religion and writingsMeanwhile, Acton became the editor of the Roman Catholic monthly paper, The Rambler, in 1859, upon John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman's retirement from the editorship.[11] In 1862, he merged this periodical into the Home and Foreign Review. His contributions at once gave evidence of his remarkable wealth of historical knowledge. Though a sincere Roman Catholic, his whole spirit as a historian was hostile to ultramontane pretensions, and his independence of thought and liberalism of view speedily brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. As early as August 1862, Cardinal Wiseman publicly censured the Review; and when in 1864, after Döllinger's appeal at the Munich Congress for a less hostile attitude towards historical criticism, the pope issued a declaration that the opinions of Catholic writers were subject to the authority of the Roman congregations, Acton felt that there was only one way of reconciling his literary conscience with his ecclesiastical loyalty, and he stopped the publication of his monthly periodical. He continued, however, to contribute articles to the North British Review, which, previously a Scottish Free Church organ, had been acquired by friends in sympathy with him, and which for some years (until 1872, when it ceased publication) promoted the interests of a high-class Liberalism in both temporal and ecclesiastical matters. Acton also did a good deal of lecturing on historical subjects.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}} In the March 1862 Rambler, Acton wrote: "The Celts are not among the progressive, initiative races, but among those which supply the materials rather than the impulse of history, and are either stationary or retrogressive. The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons are the only makers of history, the only authors of advancement. Other races possessing a highly developed language, a speculative religion, enjoying luxury and art, attain to a certain pitch of cultivation which they are unable to either communicate or to increase. They are a negative element in the world." And: "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."[12] {{anchor|Lord Acton's dictum|"Lord Acton's dictum"}}In 1870, along with his mentor Döllinger, Acton opposed the moves to promulgate the doctrine of papal infallibility in the First Vatican Council, travelling to Rome to lobby against it, ultimately unsuccessfully.[13] Unlike Döllinger Acton did not become an Old Catholic, and continued attending Mass regularly; he received the last rites on his deathbed.[14] The Catholic Church did not try to force his hand. It was in this context that, in a letter he wrote to scholar and ecclesiastic Mandell Creighton, dated April 1887, Acton made his most famous pronouncement:But if we might discuss this point until we found that we nearly agreed, and if we do agree thoroughly about the impropriety of Carlylese denunciations and Pharisaism in history, I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. 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. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III of England ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes; you would spare those criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.[2] Thenceforth he steered clear of theological polemics. He devoted himself to reading, study and congenial society. With all his capacity for study, he was a man of the world and a man of affairs, not a bookworm.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}} His only notable publications were a masterly essay in the Quarterly Review of January 1878 on "Democracy in Europe;" two lectures delivered at Bridgnorth in 1877 on "The History of Freedom in Antiquity" and "The History of Freedom in Christianity"—these last the only tangible portions put together by him of his long-projected "History of Liberty;" and an essay on modern German historians in the first number of the English Historical Review, which he helped to found (1886). After 1879 he divided his time between London, Cannes, and Tegernsee in Bavaria, enjoying and reciprocating the society of his friends. In 1872 he had been given the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Munich; in 1888 Cambridge gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and in 1889 Oxford the Doctor of Civil Law; and in 1890 he received the high academic accolade of being made a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}} In 1874, when Gladstone published his pamphlet on The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, Lord Acton wrote during November and December a series of remarkable letters to The Times, illustrating Gladstone's main theme by numerous historical examples of papal inconsistency, in a way which must have been bitter enough to the ultramontane party, but ultimately disagreeing with Gladstone's conclusion and insisting that the Church itself was better than its premises implied. Acton's letters led to another storm in the English Roman Catholic world, but once more it was considered prudent by the Holy See to leave him alone. In spite of his reservations, he regarded "communion with Rome as dearer than life".{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}} Personal lifeIn 1865 Acton married Countess Marie Anna Ludomilla Euphrosina von Arco auf Valley, daughter of the Bavarian Count Maximilian von Arco auf Valley, by whom he had six children:[15]
His nephew was Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley (1897–1945), a German count and political activist, and assassin of socialist Bavarian minister-president Kurt Eisner in 1919. Professor at CambridgeActon's reputation for learning gradually spread abroad, largely through Gladstone's influence. Gladstone found him a valuable political adviser, and in 1892, when the Liberal government came in, Lord Acton was made a lord-in-waiting. Finally, in 1895, on the death of Sir John Seeley, Lord Rosebery appointed him to the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge.[4] He delivered two courses of lectures on the French Revolution and on Modern History, but it was in private that the effects of his teaching were felt most. The Cambridge Modern History, though he did not live to see it, was planned under his editorship.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}} Death and legacyLord Acton became ill in 1901 and died on 19 June 1902 in Tegernsee. He was succeeded in the title by his son, Richard Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, 2nd Baron Acton. His 60,000-volume library, formed for use and not for display and composed largely of books full of his own annotations, was bought prior to his death by Andrew Carnegie in secret in order to secure the library for Acton's use during his lifetime, then upon Lord Acton's death, presented to John Morley, who forthwith gave it to the University of Cambridge.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}}{{sfn|"Autobiography of Andrew and The Gospel of Wealth"|2006|p=166}} According to Hugh Chisholm, editor of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: {{quote|Lord Acton has left too little completed original work to rank among the great historians; his very learning seems to have stood in his way; he knew too much and his literary conscience was too acute for him to write easily, and his copiousness of information overloads his literary style. But he was one of the most deeply learned men of his time, and he will certainly be remembered for his influence on others.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=160}}}} Styles of address
Ancestry{{ahnentafel|collapsed=yes |align=center | boxstyle_1 = background-color: #fcc; | boxstyle_2 = background-color: #fb9; | boxstyle_3 = background-color: #ffc; | boxstyle_4 = background-color: #bfc; | boxstyle_5 = background-color: #9fe; |1= 1. John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton |2= 2. Sir Ferdinand Richard Edward Acton |3= 3. Marie Louise Pelline von Dalberg |4= 4. Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet |5= 5. Marianna Acton |6= 6. Emmerich Joseph von Dalberg, Duke of Dalberg |7= 7. Marie Pellegrine Thérèse Brignole-Sale |8= 8. Dr. Edward Acton |9= 9. Catherine Loys |10= 10. Lt-Gen. Joseph Edward Acton |11= 11. Gräfin Marie Eleanore Berghe von Trips |12= 12. Freiherr Wolfgang Heribert Kämmerer von Worms gen. von Dalberg zu Herrnsheim |13= 13. Freiin Maria Elisabeth Augusta Ulner von Dieburg |14= 14. Antonio Giulio III Brignole-Sale, 9th Marquis of Groppoli |15= 15. Anna Maria Gaspara Vincenza Pieri-Serriciardi }} Notable quotations{{Copy to Wikiquote|section=yes|date=September 2012}}
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See also
Notes1. ^1 2 Chambers Biographical Dictionary, {{ISBN|0-550-16010-8}}, p. 6 2. ^1 Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907) 3. ^1 2 {{cite book | last = Dod | first = Robert P. | title = The Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage of Great Britain and Ireland | year = 1860 | publisher = Whitaker and Co. | location = London | page = 83 }} 4. ^1 2 3 {{cite encyclopedia |last=Gronbacher |first=Gregory |authorlink= |editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy |editor-link=Ronald Hamowy |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism |title=Acton, Lord (1834–1902) |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC |year=2008 |publisher= SAGE; Cato Institute |location= Thousand Oaks, CA |doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n3 |isbn= 978-1412965804 |oclc=750831024| lccn = 2008009151 |pages=4–5 |quote= |ref= }} 5. ^4 Nov 1866, letter to Robert E. Lee, The Acton-Lee Correspondence {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150618093809/http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig3/acton-lee.html |date=18 June 2015 }} at lewrockwell.com, accessed 21 February 2011. 6. ^1 {{cite book |last1=McGreevy |first1=John T. |title=Catholicism and American Freedom: A History |date=2003 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |page=79}} 7. ^{{Cite book |title=The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians |last=Norman |first=Edward |authorlink=Edward Norman (historian) |editor=Cannon, John |year=1988 |publisher=Basil Blackwell Ltd. |location=Oxford; New York |isbn=0-631-14708-X |page=1 }} 8. ^{{London Gazette |issue=26871 |date=9 July 1897 |page=3819}} 9. ^{{London Gazette |issue=10900 |date=13 July 1897 |page=673 |city=e}} 10. ^{{cite book |last1=Powell |first1=John |title=Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914 |date=2001 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |page=11}} 11. ^MacDougall, Hugh A. (1962). The Acton/Newman Relations: The Dilemma of Christian Liberalism. Fordham University Press. 12. ^{{Cite web|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31278|title=The History of Freedom, and Other Essays|first=John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton|last=Acton|date=15 February 2010|via=Project Gutenberg}} 13. ^{{cite journal | last1 = Tonsor | first1 = Stephen J | year = 1959 | title = Lord Acton on Dollinger's Historical Theology | url = | journal = Journal of the History of Ideas | volume = 20 | issue = 3| pages = 329–352 | doi=10.2307/2708113}} 14. ^{{cite CE1913 |last=Thurston |first=Herbert |wstitle=John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron Acton |volume=1}} 15. ^John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton of Aldenham at thepeerage.com 16. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/03/whig-history-at-eighty|title=Whig History at Eighty | Wilfred M. McClay|website=First Things}} 17. ^Lectures on Modern History (1895) Appendix I. at Project Gutenberg. 18. ^Lectures on Modern History (1895) Lecture XI, The Puritan Revolution. at Project Gutenberg. 19. ^Lectures on the French Revolution (1910) Macmillan, p. 92, at Project Gutenberg. 20. ^[https://books.google.com/books?id=5u3se3N0bZQC&pg=PA255&lpg=PA255&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+strong+man+with+the+dagger+is+followed+by+the+weak+man+with+the+sponge. quoted in Forbidden Knowledge (1996)] by Roger Shattuck, p. 236 21. ^A Lecture on the Study of History, 1895 Macmillan (1911), p. 3, at Project Gutenberg. 22. ^John Acton Quotes from brainyquote.com Accessed 21 February 2011. 23. ^[https://books.google.com/books?cd=3&id=G5cuAAAAIAAJ&dq=Liberty+is+not+the+power+of+doing+what+we+like%2C+but+the+right+of+being+able+to+do+what+we+ought&q=Rambler#search_anchor as quoted in The American Political Science Review vol. 56, 1963] from [https://archive.org/stream/therambler02newmuoft#page/146/mode/2up/search/liberty The Rambler Volume 2] (1860) p. 146. 24. ^{{Cite web|url=http://www.bu.edu/historic/riha/core.html|title=Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs|website=www.bu.edu}} 25. ^{{cite journal|author=Willert, P. F.|title=Review of Lectures on Modern History by the late Right Honourable John Edward Emerich, First Baron Acton; edited by J. N. Figgis and R. Vere Lawrence|journal=The English Historical Review|date=January 1907|volume=22|pages=164–166|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4815158;view=1up;seq=176}} References
Further reading
External links{{wikiquote}}{{wikisource author}}{{Commons category}}
| title = Member of Parliament for Carlow Borough | years = 1859–1865 | before = John Alexander | after = Thomas Stock }}{{succession box | title = Member of Parliament for Bridgnorth | with = John Pritchard | years = 1865–1866 | before = Henry Whitmore John Pritchard | after = Henry Whitmore John Pritchard }}{{s-reg|uk}}{{s-new | creation }}{{s-ttl | title=Baron Acton | years=1869–1902 }}{{s-aft | after=Richard Lyon-Dalberg-Acton }}{{s-reg|en-bt}}{{s-bef| before = Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton }}{{s-ttl| title = Baronet (of Aldenham) | years = 1837–1902 }}{{s-aft| after = Richard Lyon-Dalberg-Acton }}{{s-end}}{{Authority control}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Acton, John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron}} 22 : 1834 births|1902 deaths|Academics of the University of Cambridge|Acton family|Alumni of St Mary's College, Oscott|Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom|British classical liberals|Deputy Lieutenants of Shropshire|English historians|English male non-fiction writers|Italian emigrants to the United Kingdom|Liberal Catholicism|Members of The Club|English Roman Catholics|Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford|British politicians of Italian descent|Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order|Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies|Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for County Carlow constituencies (1801–1922)|People from Naples|UK MPs 1859–65|UK MPs 1865–68 |
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