Letters of Lord Acton to Mary, Daughter of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone

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Hotel Klinger Marienbad Sept. 1, 1883

… Here, at last, I am resting from hard times at Marienbad, where the waters get into one's head, as my letter will probably show. You insist on my recording everything on which you will disagree, so I must say that I should have voted more in royal than episcopal company.[²⁰⁴] In our Church and in the countries I have lived in much, one is so accustomed to those marriages that one does not think of a law to prevent them. Then as to Egypt, I was not orthodox as to the policy of the argument in favour of Lesseps, but vehemently comforted by the line taken, to make no sordid profit out of our military position, and to resist every entanglement that would indefinitely prolong the occupation. When I consider that our presence there should be the pivot for the settlement of the Eastern question, and the means of civilising Africa, I can see so much to dazzle ambitious politicians that I fear no Minister but one will ever be strong enough – in ascendency as well as in moral power – to evacuate, and I complacently take note of that additional steam to my propeller, whenever the question of retirement stirs again; and my third heresy is about the Pope. His declaration was concerted, I suppose, to hit some of the clergy between wind and water, and so had a political, not a moral aim. We may get embarrassed if we prompt and promote the political influence of the Pope, whose principles are necessarily, whose interests are generally, opposed to our own. It is as dangerous for us that his political authority should be obeyed in Irish confessionals as that, in this instance, it should be defied. Having morally supported the movement which upset his sovereignty, being prepared to oppose any movement to restore it, we come with a bad grace to ask him to prop and protect our authority in our dominions. Long ago I remember writing to headquarters that it would become impossible – impossible for Liberals – to govern Ireland after the Council; and although I am avowedly the worst of prophets, this prophecy has had a good deal of confirmation. It was an interesting question whether the Pope would definitely and unconditionally condemn murder, whether from religious or political motives. It would have borne untold consequences, as a direct revocation of the Vatican system, which stands or falls with the doctrine that one may murder a Protestant. But I don't believe that so audacious a change of front would have moved a single priest in Ireland.

Of George,[²⁰⁵] in the sixpenny edition, I had a glimpse at Cannes. The better part of him, with more moderation and philosophy, and a wider induction, may be found in the writings of the academic Socialists, who, in the last ten years, have occupied almost all the Chairs of Germany, and who have been the warmest admirers of the Irish policy.

One can hardly congratulate you … about St. Peter's.[²⁰⁶] At Montreux I met a newly-married young clergyman whose ugliness almost made me take him for – , and who assured me that it was offered to Holland. The dean of St. Paul's[²⁰⁷] was at Munich the other day, and delighted Döllinger, who believes, in consequence, that a more mischievous fellow than Chamberlain does not eat bread. He also sent him, and enabled me to read, Mozley's washy "Recollections." Liddon, I see, is busy with Rosmini, in the intervals of Pusey.[²⁰⁸] Rosmini will interest you if the book ripens. He had much of Newman, and nearly reformed the papacy. But I am troubled with a doubt. His book was answered, by Passaglia, Thenier, Curci, and others, and it was condemned by the Index. Rosmini wrote a long and curious defence of it, which he printed, but did not publish, so as not to defy his censors. Liddon ought to have this defence before him, to strengthen his text withal. Perhaps Lockhart, and the other English Rosminians, may scruple to give it to him, lest they break the measured silence of their chief. It may be worth while to ask the eloquent and impulsive Canon, whenever you see him, whether he knows of it. Do let me thank you warmly for speaking of me to Mrs. Craven. She was almost my earliest friend, and I am shocked to think that I seemed unfaithful to memories forty years old. She was intimate with my mother before I was born. What does it matter that she also bores me a good deal by her restlessness, her curiosity and indiscretion, her want of serenity, &c.? I always liked her in spite of it, and she was always a great, but uncomfortable, admirer of Mr. Gladstone. Not so Waddington. You must have seen at once that he is a very estimable, solid, deeply religious man. There is hardly so great a scholar in France, and I think he is the only Frenchman before whom Mommsen has retracted a statement. That indeed is his proper line. Like George Lewis, he is really happiest among his coins and inscriptions, and was never made for the active life in which his high character, his knowledge, and now his willingness to serve a party not his own, have carried him so far. He has more caution than go, and has neither eloquence, nor influence over men. Above all things, he is cautious to do nothing that would enable adversaries to accuse his patriotism. His language about Egypt, and the future of France in the East, would seem exaggerated, but I dare say you have read "Memories of Old Friends," a book meant for invalids at Bohemian wells, and curiously displaying English minds as they were about 1840. In the second edition Mill's letters are appended, in one of which he describes Tocqueville's opinion that one must not lower national pride, "almost the only elevated sentiment that remains in considerable strength." Waddington might adopt those words with even greater justice now. He once befriended me, so that I am bound to speak up for him. We had met but once, at the Embassy, when he asked me to dinner, and arranged that I should meet, besides Lyons, Wimpfen and Hohenlohe, whom he knew to be old friends of mine, Louis Arco, and the three most learned men in Paris, and then he gave me his box at the Français. But whilst I testify what a good fellow he is, it is necessary, highly necessary, to add that he is not a friend of Mr. Gladstone. That class of scholars to which he belongs, men busy with inscriptions, ruins, medals, vases, contriving thereby to amend a text or fix a date, inevitably resent the spirit in which Mr. Gladstone studies antiquity, carrying with him emotions and ideals derived from elsewhere, and considerably disturbing accepted habits and conclusions. Then it is very hard for an extra patriotic Frenchman to see with patience a powerful government that does not always use its strength, that accepts rebuke and repulse, and is ready to draw in the outposts of the empire. Whatever the true cause, I am pretty sure of the fact that he will come to Hawarden, like Ruskin, curious to probe the great Gladstonian mystery, not favourably prepossessed. I hope you will have him soon, and deal justly with him.

When you sit down to Macaulay, remember that the Essays are really flashy and superficial. He was not above par in literary criticism; his Indian articles will not hold water; and his two most famous reviews, on Bacon and Ranke, show his incompetence. The essays are only pleasant reading, and a key to half the prejudices of our age. It is the History (with one or two speeches) that is wonderful. He knew nothing respectably before the seventeenth century, he knew nothing of foreign history, of religion, philosophy, science, or art. His account of debates has been thrown into the shade by Ranke, his account of diplomatic affairs, by Klopp. He is, I am persuaded, grossly, basely unfair. Read him therefore to find out how it comes that the most unsympathetic of critics can think him very nearly the greatest of English writers.

My good friend Bright[²⁰⁹] got me into controversy by sending me Beard's "Hibbert Lectures," on the Reformation. There was a great deal to say, with the usual result; but you would think them interesting as a stimulant. Have I ever told you that I have read the Diaries, letters, &c., of G. Eliot? Cross wants me to review them in the Nineteenth Century, or at least wanted; but I know not where he is, or whether he still wishes it.

I always see Miss Helen Gladstone in the papers, and suppose she is with you. I don't know whether Miss Renouf is in her house.[²¹⁰] She is a sort of god-child of mine, and her father is, without exception, the most learned Englishman I know. The daughter of such a man should be something unusual; the mother, too, is of a clever family, a Brentano.

Lady Blennerhassett gave me some accounts of you at Holmbury. Minghetti, whom I saw lately, tells me that our friend Bonghi has a Roman History in the press, which the Italians hope to set up against Mommsen. I forgot, to complete my confession, that I have never been happy about our policy with Cetewayo. But the general result of the session cannot be lamented, only it is not heroic success, such as Mr. Gladstone's supremacy and the flatness of the Opposition would demand. The great thing is his health. I did not come over, not being once summoned, so that we shall only meet at Cannes. Do talk about plans. Can there be anything before Cannes? It can never be too soon to meet.

La Madeleine Feb. 9, 1884

You make writing as difficult as living afar, by your unspeakable goodness, but also by the infusion of the contrary quality. If I promise not to attack the Government, and to believe in Lord Derby, will you agree not to hit me so hard? I cannot well help doing what I do, taking all things into consideration; and as to my tiresome book,[²¹¹] please to remember that I can only say things which people do not agree with, that I have neither disciple nor sympathiser, that this is no encouragement to production and confidence, that grizzled men, except – , grow appalled at the gaps in their knowledge, and that I have no other gift but that which you pleasantly describe, of sticking eternal bits of paper into innumerable books, and putting larger papers into black boxes. There is no help for it. But your reproaches are much more distressing to read than you suppose, and make me think them better to read than to hear. Otherwise, I too would have a dream, to describe, and wish that yours came true from January 1 to December 31.

George[²¹²] did not catch me at Marienbad, and came from Munich in a big box, only the other day. I had partly read him, but I was in a difficulty about thanking you for it with full honesty as long as I only knew it casually, by unhallowed copies. But I do thank you, if I may do so even now, most gratefully for the kindness of it altogether, and particularly for your belief that I should understand it, and care for it apart from the sender. Although in this you have flattered me; for there are points in which I dare say I do not like him as much as you do.

Do not think ill of the people they call academic Socialists. It is only a nickname for the school that is prevailing now in the German universities, with a branch in France and another in Italy, a school whose most illustrious representative in England, whose most eminent practical teacher in the world, is Mr. Gladstone. In their writings, inspired by the disinterested study of all classic economists, one finds most of the ideas and illustrations of Mr. George, though not, indeed, his argument against Malthus. This makes him less new to one; but nobody writes with that plain, vigorous directness, and I do believe that he has, in a large measure, the ideas of the age that is to come.

I am glad, too, that you like Seeley's book. It is excellent food for thought. But so is the first article in the January Quarterly.[²¹³] I wrote eight pages of criticism and should have liked to send them to you instead of Maine, but perhaps you have not read him.

Liddon's objection to saying what may damage a very meritorious body of surviving friends of Rosmini is practically reasonable; but it is rather a reason for not writing at all on the subject. Rosmini made a vigorous attempt to reform the Church of Rome. He was vehemently attacked, repelled, censured; and he defended himself in a work more important, argumentatively, than the first. If this dramatic incident is left untold, if his stronger statements are omitted from his case, we shall get an imperfect notion of a memorable transaction, and of an interesting, if not a great, divine.

I am so very glad that Mr. Gladstone is in his best health, and that the troubled times have put out of sight the notion of retirement. For that reason I could almost console myself in looking at the Soudan. That affair has been in the hands of a colleague without much original resource, attentive to the wind, and glad to follow the advice of local agents. It chances that I have been reading – 's confidential letters written to a friend sure not to show them to Ministers; and I have thought him deficient in imagination – in the discovering faculty – and also in independence. There is no denying that there has been a lack of initiative genius in the last few weeks, and that Mr. Gladstone would have done more if Bonaparte had been his departmental colleague.

Of all critics of my list,[²¹⁴] Lubbock is best informed in a vast region where I am a stranger. I by no means disregard his criticisms. I have not got the list myself, and should like nothing in the world so much as to sit with you and talk over the objections you have collected. But will that, or will anything like it, ever be? If it may, do send one line on Tuesday to wait arrival at 18 Carlton House Terrace.

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18 Carlton House Terrace S.W. Feb. 13, 1884

Here is a ceremonious invitation to dine to-morrow, which I most gladly accept.

I gather, from something I have just heard, that Froude will not wish for the Professorship. As to Freeman, I am not quite sure. There can be no real competitor but Gardiner.

Dinner without any prospect beyond will be mere dust and ashes; but what awful fun Oxford[²¹⁵] would be!

Feb. 15, 1884

… It was such a delight to meet the greatest of all our historians[²¹⁶] at this particular moment. There never was so much kindness in this world. I can think of nothing but our journey, and the wretchedness of having only one day there. Of course I am going to live at the Clarendon. If any doubt arises, do not let it exist for a moment. Then I must visit the Bodley for an hour, and Stubbs, Liddon, M. Müller, Jowett, Brodrick, Bright of University.

But these are my private wanderings. Do remember that, and let them not spoil the cachet of their own grouping. As all passes through you, do take an opportunity to say how thankfully and joyously I accept his invitation.

La Madeleine March 17, 1884

May I employ the fleeting and disrespectful pencil to express sentiments of the most opposite kind? I am still so stupidly weak, unaccountably pulled by an illness which is an anachronism here, that I am afraid to wait till I am quite ripe for ink, to speak of the happy time I owed to your companionship in the two capitals of greater Britain. There has never been anything like it, and I wonder when there will again. Cambridge is in reserve; but nothing can ever equal the sensation of festive home among people I had never seen, that you procured for me at Keble. The worst recollection is the parting at Paddington. I chose my hour next day so badly that, coming at 6, I found your mother invisible, yourself out, and your sister gone. I have said nothing yet to M – ; but I do look forward two months to another meeting. I am very glad that my last conversation with Mr. Gladstone left no worse impression, for in the obscurity of St. James I preached heavily on my favourite text: "après moi le déluge;" and on my favourite preacher.

Meanwhile the troublesome question of retirement is in a new phase. The half Reform bill is floated by a half pledge as to redistribution which is personal to himself. He cannot leave it to be redeemed by others, who, he expressly stated, are not parties to it. He is virtually pledged to complete the work himself; that is, to meet the next Parliament. For they will inevitably force him to dissolve in the autumn, if they do not succeed in crowding out the Reform question. If not carried by an immense majority, it will be carried by Irish votes. The Lords will be able to say that England ought to be consulted definitely, that it ought not to be overruled by Ireland, in an old Parliament, and that such a change in the Constitution is not to be carried by enemies of the Constitution until the country has pronounced.

I don't imagine that it is a bad point to dissolve upon – at any rate, there is no swopping in such a crossing.

But I suppose he has abandoned the hope of himself retiring from Egypt, and if he does not, nobody else will; and so one must begin to face what is inevitable, and to acknowledge that the Soudan has altered our position in Egypt. A further complication cannot be far off. The best time to re-open the Turkish question will be whilst we are a little damaged as to disinterestedness by Cyprus and Egypt, whilst our increased security makes us less anxious and less nervous about Constantinople, and whilst the censor of the Turk resides at No. 10. The position in the East is so much altered since Berlin[²¹⁷] that Russia will not long be bound by that Treaty, having a price by which Austria can be won. Every step of that sort will help to fix us in Egypt.

And as long as we are at Alexandria or even at Souakim, the future of Central Africa will depend on us, or at least on our people. I do not believe that Mr. Gladstone would revive John Company and send him to the Equatorial lakes; and yet I fancy there is an opening there for inventive statesmanship.

My eagerness about Liddon's elevation does not mean that my head was turned by the ambush of that deferential Sacristan at Oxford Station,[²¹⁸] or that the Warden[²¹⁹] talked me over – though he talked wisely. For I am not in harmony with Liddon, and scarcely in sympathy. He has weak places that nobody sees and resents so sharply as I do; and he has got over, or swallowed, such obstacles on the road to Rome that none remain which, as it seems to me, he ought logically or legitimately to strain at. I will even confess to you alone – that that affair of Rosmini leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. But one might pick holes in any man, even in the new Bishop of Chester.[²²⁰] Nothing steadies a ship like a mitre – and as to his soundness, his determination to work in and through the Church, and not on eccentric courses, I satisfied myself with the supreme authority of Dean Church, on my last night in town. One cannot help seeing that Liddon is a mighty force, not yet on its level. He knows how to kindle and how to propel. Newman and Wilberforce may have had the same power, but one was almost illiterate; the other knows what he might have learnt in the time of Waterland or Butler; whereas Liddon is in contact with all that is doing in the world of thought…

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La Madeleine March 30, 1884

… You ask a question on which I can express unexpected agreement. As long as property is the basis of representation, I think it hard to exclude female owners. There is an obvious principle in it, of course. But though obvious it is not stringent; because female influence is not excluded. We not only have no Salic Law, but we allow women to vote on matters not political, and we have attached political influence to property so closely, that rich old women, like the Duchess-Countess,[²²¹] or Lady Londonderry, are dreadful powers in the land. The argument from consistency does not, therefore, make for exclusion.

At the same time, I think it an evil in many ways. Girls and widows are Tories, and channels of clerical influence, and it is not for them so much as for married women that your argument tells. If we ever have manhood suffrage – dissociating power from property altogether, it will be difficult to keep out wives. The objections to voting wives are overwhelming.

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You open a delightful vista of Colleges and Chapels at Cambridge. It is not so easy to answer quite definitely. If the Reform Bill, read a second time before Easter, is sent up by Whitsuntide, the division in the Lords will be early in June. My difficulty would then be that, having to come in June, I could hardly come to England in May. Supposing my Reform vote to be wanted only after Midsummer, then my probable plan would be to come to London by the middle of May; and I should be at your orders for Cambridge any time between 20th and 30th May…

Subject to these conditions, I shall be only too happy to escort you down to the Sidgwicks', to whom, please present my best thanks. If Maine is there, I dare say we can count on a luncheon there… I am talking of myself and own plans; but all the time I am thinking of your cares and troubles, of which you say so little. If you can send me a line of good news to Rome, I shall be so glad.

La Madeleine June 19, 1884

You will be careful, another time, I hope, as to the enclosures you forward, seeing how long a reply they involve, and how great a delay. The difficulty which prolongs and has delayed my letter will be very apparent to you before you reach the end.

First, as to the personal question: —

It was not my purpose to depreciate Canon Liddon. I came over with the highest opinion of him – an opinion higher perhaps than Dr. Döllinger's, or even than Mr. Gladstone's, whose ostensible preference for divines of less mark has sometimes set me thinking. Impressed by his greatness, not as a scholar to be pitted against Germans, but as a spiritual force, and also by a certain gracious nobleness of tone which ought to be congenial, I tried, at Oxford and in London, to ascertain whether there is some element of weakness that had escaped me.

Evidently, Liddon is in no peril from the movement of modern Science. He has faced those problems and accounted for them. If he is out of the perpendicular, it is because he leans the other way.

The question would rather be whether a man of his sentiments, rather inclined to rely on others, would be proof against the influence of Newman, or of foreign theologians like Newman.

On the road Bishops and Parliament were taking a few years since, there would be rocks ahead, and one might imagine a crisis in which it would be doubtful who would be for maintaining the National Church and who would not. I have chanced to be familiar with converts and with the raw material of which they are made, and cannot help knowing the distinct and dissimilar paths followed by men like Newman himself, Hope, Palmer, R. J. Wilberforce, Ward, Renouf, many of whom resembled Liddon in talent and fervour, and occupied a position outwardly not far from his own.

He once called the late Bishop of Brechin[²²²] the first divine in the Church. I knew the Bishop well, and am persuaded that the bond that held him in the Anglican Communion might easily have snapped, under contingencies to which he was not exposed.

Putting these questions not quite so crudely as they are stated here, I thought that I obtained an answer. At any rate, I was assured that Liddon is made of sterner stuff than I fancied, that he knows exactly where he stands, where others have stood before him, and where and why he parts with them; that the course of Newman and the rest has no secrets and no surprises for him; that he looks a long way before him, and has no disposition to cling to the authority of others. In short, it appeared very decidedly that he is – what Bishop Forbes was not – fixed in his Anglican position.

Under this impression, I could not help wondering why Wilkinson, Stubbs, and Ridding are judged superior to Liddon. I could have felt and have expressed no such wonder if I had not taken pains to discover that he has tried and has rejected the cause of Rome, and that neither home difficulties nor external influence are at all likely to shake him.

Far, therefore, from meaning disparagement, I rate him higher than any member of the English clergy I know; and touching the question of stability, I have the sufficient testimony of his friends, of men naturally vigilant on that point, of which I am not competent to judge or to speak.

So little competent, indeed, that I should be at a loss to define his system, or to corroborate, of my own knowledge, the confidence which others have expressed. It seemed to me necessary to indicate that, for myself, I could not speak without some qualification or reserve, such as perhaps would only occur to a close student of Roman pathology. To do more, will be giving undue and unfair prominence to a parenthesis. It lays stress where there ought to be none, makes the deduction, the exception, greater than the positive statement, and gives me the air of a man whose praise is designed to convey a slur of suspicion.

That is why your letter with its formidable enclosure has afflicted me with dumbness. The doubt which I indicated in writing to you has been suggested chiefly by what passed in reference to Rosmini.

You will remember that you sent Liddon word that Rosmini wrote a very long defence of the little book which he was translating. He preferred not to make use of the information and not to see the book; and he avoided the subject when we met at Oxford. The reason is, that the Rosminians wish the Defence to be ignored, as it qualifies the submission of the author when the book defended was condemned.

The suppression injures nobody; it only puts the readers of the translation slightly off the scent, and gives an imperfect article instead of none. There is some trace of complicity with those who are interested in a suppressio veri. But it may have been due, as he was under obligations to them, and this is only preliminary matter.

My real difficulty is, that he speaks of his author with great respect, and evidently thinks his doctrine sound and profitable.

Now Rosmini, allowing for some superficial proposals of reform, was a thorough believer in the Holy See. His book itself, by the nature of the reforms proposed, implies that no other defects of equal magnitude remain to be remedied. Apart from the Five points he accepts the papacy as it stands; and he has no great objection to it, Five points included.

He was what we vulgarly call an ultramontane – a reluctant ultramontane, like Lacordaire. An Anglican who views with satisfaction, with admiration, the moral character and spiritual condition of an Ultramontane priest, appears to me to have got over the principal obstacle on the way to Rome – the moral obstacle. The moral obstacle, to put it compendiously, is the Inquisition.

The Inquisition is peculiarly the weapon and peculiarly the work of the Popes. It stands out from all those things in which they co-operated, followed, or assented as the distinctive feature of papal Rome. It was set up, renewed, and perfected by a long series of acts emanating from the supreme authority in the Church. No other institution, no doctrine, no ceremony is so distinctly the individual creation of the papacy, except the Dispensing power. It is the principal thing with which the papacy is identified, and by which it must be judged.

The principle of the Inquisition is the Pope's sovereign power over life and death. Whosoever disobeys him should be tried and tortured and burnt. If that cannot be done, formalities may be dispensed with, and the culprit may be killed like an outlaw.

That is to say, the principle of the Inquisition is murderous, and a man's opinion of the papacy is regulated and determined by his opinion about religious assassination.

If he honestly looks on it as an abomination, he can only accept the Primacy with a drawback, with precaution, suspicion, and aversion for its acts.

If he accepts the Primacy with confidence, admiration, unconditional obedience, he must have made terms with murder.

Therefore, the most awful imputation in the catalogue of crimes rests, according to the measure of their knowledge and their zeal, upon those whom we call Ultramontanes. The controversy, primarily, is not about problems of theology: it is about the spiritual state of a man's soul, who is the defender, the promoter, the accomplice of murder. Every limitation of papal credit and authority which effectually dissociates it from that reproach, which breaks off its solidarity with assassins and washes away the guilt of blood, will solve most other problems. At least, it is enough for my present purpose to say, that blot is so large and foul that it precedes and eclipses the rest, and claims the first attention.

I will show you what Ultramontanism makes of good men by an example very near home. Saint Charles Borromeo, when he was the Pope's nephew and minister, wrote a letter requiring Protestants to be murdered, and complaining that no heretical heads were forwarded to Rome, in spite of the reward that was offered for them. His editor, with perfect consistency, publishes the letter with a note of approval. Cardinal Manning not only holds up to the general veneration of mankind the authority that canonised this murderer, but makes him in a special manner his own patron, joins the Congregation of Oblates of St. Charles, and devotes himself to the study of his acts and the propagation of his renown.

Yet I dare say I could find Anglican divines who would speak of the Cardinal as a good man, unhappily divided from the Church of which he was an ornament, and living in error, but yet not leading a life of sin – I should gather from such language that the speaker was not altogether averse from the distinctive characteristic of Ultramontanism, and had swallowed far the largest obstacle on the road to Rome.

The case of Rosmini is not so glaring, but it is substantially the same. Language implying that an able and initiated Italian priest accepting the papacy, with its inventory of systematic crime, incurs no guilt, that he is an innocent, virtuous, edifying Christian, seems to me open to grave suspicion. If it was used by one of whom I knew nothing else, I should think ill of him. If I knew him to be an able and in many ways an admirable man, I should feel much perplexity, and if I heard on the best authority that he deserved entire confidence, I should persuade myself that it is true, and should try to quiet my uneasiness.