About Acton

b. 1834 CE - d. 1902 CE

Lord Action was an English historian and a master of the chief foreign languages. He began at an early age to collect a magnificent historical library, with the object, never in fact realized, of writing a great History of Liberty. Acton’s political ideas have been compared with those of Burke and Tocqueville. All three were concerned with the practical conditions favoring liberty, and were suspicious of the rationalist frame of mind which desired to impose liberty, as a ready-made set of doctrines, upon a supposedly compliant and reasonable society. They feared men’s power more than they trusted men’s ideals. They anticipated no miracle of happiness on earth, no “heavenly city” such as the eighteenth century philosophers dreamt of: Instead they distrusted these dreams. The true democratic principle, that none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic principle, that the people shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall never be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic principle, that every man’s free will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free will of the collective people.