Page:History of Freedom.djvu/32

 xxviii

ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

conSCIence to clear the dogma from association with dangerous political tendencies, for his loyalty to the institution was too deep to be aff cted by his dislike of the Ca1narz1la in power. He not only did not desire to leave the Church, but took pains to make his confession and receive absolution immediately after his letters appeared in the Til1zes. It must also be stated that so far from approving Mr. Gladstone's attack on Vatican ism, he did his utmost to prevent its publication, which he regarded as neither fair nor wise. It is true that Acton's whole tendency was individualistic, and his inner respect for mere authority apart from know- ledge and judgment was doubtless small. But here we must remember what he said once of the political sphere -that neither liberty nor authority is conceivable ex- cept in an ordered society, and that they are both relative to conditions remote alike from anarchy and tyranny. Doubtless he leaned a\vay from those in power, and probably felt of Manning as strongly as the latter wrote of him. Yet his individualism was ahvays active within the religious society, and never contemplated itself as outside. He showed no sympathy for any form of Protestantism, except the purely political side of the Independents and other sects which have promoted liberty of conscience. Acton's position as a churchman is made clearer by a view of his politics. At once an admirer and an adviser of Mr. Gladstone, he probably helped more than any other single friend to make his leader a Home Ruler. Yet he was anything but a modern Radical: for liberty was his goddess, not equality, and he dreaded any single power in a State, whether it was the King, or Parliament, or People. N either popes nor princes, not even Pro- testant persecutors, did Acton condemn more deeply than the crimes of majorities and the fury of uncontrolled democracy. I t was not the rule of one or many that was