# Historical Essays and Studies/Letter to Bishop Creighton

APPENDIX
By the kindness of Mrs. Creighton we are enabled to publish the following extracts from Acton's Letters to Creighton on the subject of the article on vols. iii. and iv. of the History of the Papacy contributed by Acton to the English Historical Review, reprinted here pp. 426-41. Acton's curiously naive view of the situation is disclosed in the original covering letter to Creighton as Editor in which he describes the article as "the work of an enemy." We do not quote the letters in full but only such portions as serve to bring out more clearly perhaps than anything else which he wrote, the uncompromising rigidity of Acton's canons of judgment. They mark the gulf which divided him alike from the sympathetic writer, who excuses everything by a facile reference to the moral atmosphere of the age he is representing, and on the other hand from the "scientific" historian, whose ideal is to state facts and observe causes, but never to pronounce sentence.
After arguing, first, that the high absolutist theory of the Papacy was the real cause of the breach with Luther, and, secondly, that the Popes were individually and collectively responsible for the policy of persecution in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Acton goes on as follows : —
Here again what I have said is not in any way mysterious or esoteric. It appeals to no hidden code. It aims at no secret moral. It supposes nothing, and implies nothing but what is universally current and familiar. It is the common, even the vulgar, code I appeal to.
Upon these two points we differ widely, still more widely with regard to the principle by which you undertake to judge men. You say that people in authority are not to be snubbed or sneezed at from our pinnacle of conscious rectitude.
I really don't know whether you exempt them because of their rank, or of their success and power, or of their date. The chronological plea may have some little value in a limited sphere of instances. It does not allow of our saying that such a man did not know right from wrong, unless we are able to say that he lived before Columbus, before Copernicus, and could not know right from wrong. It can scarcely apply to the centre of Christendom 1500 after the birth of our Lord. That would imply that Christianity is a mere system of metaphysics which borrowed some ethics from elsewhere. It is rather a system of ethics which borrowed its metaphysics elsewhere. Progress in ethics means a constant turning of white into black, and burning what one has adored. There is little of that between St. John and the Victorian era. 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. 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 Hainan, for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.
The standard having been lowered in consideration of date is to be still further lowered out of deference to station, whilst the heroes of history become examples of morality, the historians who praise them, Froude, Macaulay, Carlyle, become teachers of morality and honest men. Quite frankly, I think there is no greater error. The inflexible integrity of the moral code is, to me, the secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of History.
The following series of canons formed a postscript to the letter : —
ADVICE TO PERSONS ABOUT TO WRITE HISTORY — DON'T
A Historian has to fight against temptations special to his mode of life, temptations from Country, Class, Church, College, Party, Authority of talents, solicitation of friends.
The most respectable of these influences are the most dangerous.
The historian who neglects to root them out is exactly like a juror who votes according to his personal likes or dislikes.
In judging men and things Ethics go before Dogma, Politics or Nationality. The Ethics of History cannot be denominational.
Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience.
Put conscience above both system and success.
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
The moral code, in its main lines, is not new, it has long been known, it is not universally accepted in Europe even now, the difference in moral insight between past and present is not very large.
But the notion and analysis of conscience is scarcely older than 1700; and the notion and analysis of veracity is scarcely older than our time, barring sacred writings of East and West.
In Christendom time and place do not excuse — if the Apostles' Code sufficed for salvation. Strong minds think things out, complete the circle of their thinking, and must not be interpreted by types. Good men and great men are exvitermini, aloof from the action of surroundings. But goodness generally appeared in unison with authority, sustained by environment, and rarely manifested the force and sufficiency of the isolated will and conscience.
The Reign of Sin is more universal, the influence of unconscious error is less, than historians tell us.
Good and evil lie close together. Seek no artistic unity in character.
History teaches a Psychology which is not that of private experience and domestic biography.
The principles of public morality are as definite as those of the morality of private life; but they are not identical.
A good cause proves less in a man's favour than a bad cause against him. The final judgment depends on the worst action.
Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word. History is better written from letters than from histories; let a man criminate himself.
No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterances and correspondence.
Be prepared to find that the best gives way under closer scrutiny.
In public life, the domain of History, vice is less than crime.
Active, transitive sins count for more than others.
The greatest crime is Homicide. The accomplice is no better than the assassin; the theorist is worse.
Of killing from private motives or from public, from political or from religious, eadem est ratio; morally the worst is the last. The source of crime is pars melior nostri, what ought to save, destroys; the sinner is hardened and proof against Repentance.
Faith must be sincere, when defended by sin it is not sincere; theologically it is not Faith.
God's grace does not operate by sin. Transpose the nominative and the accusative, and see how things look then.
The systems of Barrow, Baxter, Bossuet higher spiritually, constructively, scientifically, than Perrin.
In our scales his high morality outweighs them. Crimes by constituted authorities worse than crimes by Madame Tussaud's private malefactors.