Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/142

 122 imposed upon an independent historian by the necessity of submission to the opinions of Roman Congregations, such as that of the Index. It was in the year 1863, when his periodical was some four years old, that Pius IX. issued a Brief to the Archbishop of Munich in which he affirmed that

This Papal Brief made no reference to Lord Acton or to the Home and Foreign Review, but it vitally affected the principles upon which that periodical had been throughout its short existence of four years conducted. For its principles were these:—

This means a claim for freedom in the province of opinion, and a right to the fearless assertion of historic truth. But how was it possible to reconcile that freedom with the literary decisions of such a Congregation as that of the Index? Consequently Lord Acton wrote a signed article in the Review, bearing the significant title, "Conflicts with Rome." It is written with admirable self-command and dignity, with the frankest confession of loyalty to truth from whatever sources derived, and under a solemn sense of the impossibility of reconciling the encroachment of Roman Authority with the independence essential to historic science. In