Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/30

 more deeply than did any other single man. Gladstone had implicit faith in his learning and sagacity, and in such vital matters as home rule and disestablishment Acton's private influence was great if not decisive. Gladstone submitted to his criticism nearly everything he wrote. Acton was no admirer of Gladstone's biblical criticism, and endeavoured, not always with success, to widen the scope of Gladstone's reading. But from 1866 the fellowship between the two men grew steadily closer, and the older sought the guidance and advice of his junior on all kinds of matters. On 11 Dec. 1869, while Acton was in Rome, he was on Gladstone's recommendation raised to the peerage. He took the title of Baron Acton of Aldenham.

At the time a new general council was sitting at Rome to complete the work begun at Trent and to formulate the dogma of papal infallibility. Acton was in Rome to aid the small minority of prelates who were resisting the promulgation of the dogma. He worked hard to save the church from a position which in his view was not so much false as wicked. He urged the British government, of which Gladstone was the head, to interfere; but Archbishop Manning, whose interest was on the opposite side, neutralised Acton's influence with the prime minister through his friendship with Lord Odo Russell, the unofficial British agent at Rome. Acton's work at Rome was not confined to heartening the opposition or to sending home his views to Gladstone. To Döllinger at Munich, the centre of the German opposition, he wrote long accounts (with the names in cypher) of the various movements and counter-movements. These were combined with letters from two other persons in the series published in the 'Allgemeine Zeitung' from December 1869 under the name 'Quirinus.' They were republished at Munich in 1870 (4 pts.) and were translated into English as 'Letters from Rome on the Council' (London, 3 ser., 1870). Acton is only partially responsible for 'Quirinus's' deliverances. In some places the sympathies of the writer are strongly Gallican—a point of view which appealed to Döllinger but never to his pupil. Acton's difficulties at Rome were great. Many of the prelates who were opposing the infallibility dogma regarded it as true, and objected only to its being defined at that time and in existing conditions. Acton was an open assailant of the doctrine itself. Conscious of inevitable defeat, the opposition eventually withdrew from Rome, and the dogma was adopted by the council with unanimity. On 11 July 1870 Acton had already arrived at his house at Tegernsee, and there in August he completed his 'Sendschreiben an einen deutschen Bischof des vaticanischen Concils' (Nordlingen, 1870), in which he quoted from numerous anti-infallibilists, living or dead, and asked whether their words still held good. But the catholic world, to which Acton appealed, accepted the new law without demur. Döllinger refused, and was consequently excommunicated (1 April 1871), while a small body of opponents formed themselves at Munich in Sept. 1871 into the 'Old Catholic' communion, which Döllinger did not join.

Acton for the time stood aside and was unmolested. But when in 1874 Gladstone issued his pamphlet on 'The Vatican Decrees,' the publication of which Acton had not approved, he denied in letters to 'The Times' any such danger to the state as Gladstone anticipated from possible Roman Catholic sedition owing to their allegiance to a foreign bishop. Yet Acton, while defending his co-religionists in England, dealt subtle thrusts at the papacy. He made it clear that what preserved his allegiance and minimised his hostility to the Vatican Decrees was a sense that the church was holier than its officials, and the bonds of the Christian community were deeper than any dependent on the hierarchy. Acton was therefore able to speak of communion in the Roman church as 'dearer than life itself.' His present attitude, however, was suspected by the authorities. Archbishop Manning more than once invited an explanation. Acton replied adroitly that he relied on God's providential government of His church, and was no more disloyal to the Vatican council than to any of its predecessors. After more correspondence Manning said he must leave the matter to the pope. Acton made up his mind that he would be excommunicated, and wrote to Gladstone that the only question was, when the blow would fall. But it did not fall. Perhaps as a layman, perhaps as a peer, less probably as a scholar, he was left alone, and died in full communion with the Holy See.

With the letters to 'The Times' of Nov. to December 1874 Acton's polemical career closed. He admitted in a letter to Lady Blennerhassett that the explanations given by Newman in the 'Letter to the Duke of Norfolk' on Gladstone's expostulations (1875) would enable him to accept the decrees. But if he thought his fears of the decrees had been in some respects