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

You will be prepared to hear that I no more recognise the Jesuit than the Cardinal. Something indeed may be urged in behalf of the sonorous wickedness of those instructions in which he betrays his spirit, in the strongest passage of the book. It matters not what cause we take up, provided we defend it well – that is Probabilism. It matters not what wrong we do in a good cause – that again is the maxim that the end justifies the means, which, like Probabilism, was just then in the ascendant. It matters not whether the cause for which we sin is religion or policy – even that is paralleled by the way in which the French Jesuits, all but one, supported Richelieu in his alliance with the Protestants, in the Thirty Years' War. But it is the character of an exceptional Jesuit, not a type. It is not indicated that he goes wrong from the worthiest motive; that the disinterested spirit of religion, which to other men is a safeguard, is as fatal to him as vulgar passions to other men. The true Jesuit falls better than that. His decay begins at the top. He does not find his way to Malebolge[177] until a guide misleads him whom he takes for an angel of light. The sordid, lying, selfish, ambitious specimen does not appear unless grafted on a fanatical stock. The essence that vitiates so much discipline and virtue is so subtle that we seldom feel the resemblance when Jesuits are portrayed from outside.

The author seems hardly to detect his own rogue. When Hall coolly announces that a lie must be told which will cause a man's death, and is therefore equivalent to murder, it is not clear whether this is infamous or not. For Charles betrays Glamorgan as his son afterwards betrayed Montrose, and we are still expected to revere him as something better than the enemies who, to save their necks, resorted to Pride and Bradshaw. So again, speaking of Laud and Strafford, he implies that if they were unsuccessful tyrants, they were no tyrants at all. That is, to be a tyrant, you must succeed, just as, to be a rebel, you must fail. The model of tyrants is Cæsar Borgia. When he was down, Machiavelli, who had thought him worth attentive study, said to him that he wondered so good a player should have lost the game. He answered that he had foreseen every combination except that of himself being prostrate with illness when the crash came. That miscalculation would become his excuse.

If this propensity to absolve royal and loyal culprits comes from sympathy with them, it seems to me no better than the crooked canon of Macaulay, Carlyle, and Froude. The standard, in another place, is a low one: The priest who invites Inglesant not to die with a lie in his mouth reminds him that they subordinated their religion to their political intrigues. But what if they subordinated politics to their religious interest? To waver about ship money until one knows whether Charles or Hampden is on the side of one's Church is dishonesty. To have no moral test of duty apart from religion is to be a fanatic. What Inglesant imputes to the Catholics is very near the definition of an honest man. For reasons less obvious I am not satisfied with the character of Inglesant. We learn in the first volume, p. 34, that he never formally joined the Church of Rome; and in the second, p. 318, that he must have been formally received into it. There is a more serious contradiction still. His life is singularly blameless and heroic, but one does not perceive the safeguard. Three channels by which God speaks to the soul are excluded. Inglesant will do anything but read the Bible. He has never studied to distinguish the voice of the Church, the constancy of her teaching, the line of least resistance, the law that regulates her movements. Conscience is a word that does not occur during the first 200 pages of religious training. Then she asks him, what if they ask him to do something that his conscience cannot approve? He very truly answers that it is too late to think of that. Then the word returns two or three times, but the idea is gone. We repeatedly find that he knows not right from wrong, and is not scared by sin. When reminded of the horrors of the Inquisition he calmly observes: Not one of these practices but has some shadow of truth in it. A priest, defending imaginary relics, says: These things are true to each of us according as we see them. Inglesant is content, and does not ask who invents or promotes the fable. Having, with some pains, forced his master to confess the iniquity of his scheme, he adopts it with alacrity. There is not a momentary struggle between self-devotion and the shock of indignation. The spring is broken. The sense is dulled. The voice within is hushed. What then kept this man's life so pure in court and camp? The book is not written to suggest that honour and chivalry are a genuine form or a substitute for grace.

One might suspect that it is the idea which Plato transmitted from Socrates, which Cameron, in 1624, had revived – that the knowledge of good and evil is virtue. But Inglesant possesses the virtue without the knowledge. He is as destitute of conviction as he is free from vice. His one security is Direction. He passes from hand to hand, and successive teachers impress him for a time, but impart no principle. When they fail him, he stands where they found him, a safe and contented Churchman, not because he has examined all things and chosen the best, but because the master he preferred happened to be in prison.

A fine opportunity had been wasted. A clever, refined, high-spirited youth, who has won, in a religious philosophy, a standing ground apart from Churches, who yet learns to sympathise with them, and who sheds his prejudices and illusions as he grows in spiritual experience; that would be a noble study in the days of Grotius, Descartes, Lord Herbert, Hammond, Baxter, Roger Williams, Elondel, Raynaud, and Pascal. None of these appear on the platform with Hobbes and Cressy and Molinos – as though, two centuries later, a man should seek rest for conscience without going near Channing, Arnold, Newman, Vinet, Neander, Rothe, Schelling, or Grundtvig. Last, the terms Romish, papist, popery, in so good an artist, make me ask myself whether a papist who respects himself would talk of heretics, schismatics, apostates, and infidels? But I have become confused from my prolixity.

I shall be very glad if there is anything in what I said that Arthur Lyttelton can turn to account, after careful verification. If he will take the trouble to examine for himself, there can be no reason to allude to anybody else.

He will abstain, I know, from raising those points respecting persecution which would give just offence, appearing in this indirect way. To mark the enormity of supposing that the Cardinal did not know that people used to be burned in Rome; it would be enough to say that he cannot have forgotten the reign of Paul V. Down to that reign, from 1542 to 1608, the thing was common and notorious. After Paul V. there is little that anybody would remember who has not made a study of such things. This also must be borne in mind, that in Rome, unlike Spain, the victims were usually strangled, and were not committed to the flames until they were dead.

The book alluded to, I. 327, is Molina, on grace. The defence about the appearance of the name of Quakers would be that it appeared in that very year 1650. But they are here talked about as early as January, as if quite well known. The answer to my objection about Sancta Clara would be that the similarity of opinions suggested the use of the name. But the man is too well known to be treated in that unceremonious way.

To say, I. 137, that among Puritans self-restraint and concealment were sins, is so serious an imputation, especially the first word, that it should be defined which sect was meant. Nobody says that Baxter was rude, not even Howe, in private life. There is a slovenliness in this use of a big brush. Cardinal Howard does not deserve the praise he gets, II. 333. He was a very pale figure.

Observe II. 273. There are no spires in Rome. I hear that the author has never been in Italy. That accounts for many topographical mistakes, and leaves a margin to his credit.

The date of the steps of the Trinità might perhaps be discovered in the life of Cardinal Polignac, or in the article on him in Michaud or Didot. It matters not; but the correctness of local and chronological colour turns on such points as these. I think Cressy could hardly have justified what he says of the Fathers.

On looking over my lengthy prose I find something that I must add: – Valdes never renounced Catholicism, but his writings, only lately made accessible, are the writings of a Protestant. The numbers mentioned in the Irish massacre are, of course, monstrously exaggerated, as were the numbers given by Clarendon, Milton, and Baxter. I quote them to show the greatness of the alarm. The French Jesuits stood by Richelieu and allowed one of their number to be exiled for his opposition to the German war when, after the peace of Prague, it had ceased to be a war in defence of the Protestants, and was purely aggressive. This was because, in 1627, he had made them understand that they must leave France if they resisted his will. It was easier to associate resistance to Puritanism with the Catholic cause than aggression on the Catholic Powers in Germany. I do not say that the care taken to prevent conversion is absolutely impossible. Some Franciscans at that time might have done it; and something like it is told of a Jesuit a few years later.

There is a very curious passage, II. 385, on persecution: It was these selfsame ideas of the future and its relation to this life that actuated their tormentors. This is an attempt to look beneath the surface, and a soothing tribute to the feelings of those who admire Galerius and Calvin and Gregory the Thirteenth. The Natural History of Intolerance has not yet been written; but the analysis is not so simple as these words imply. Half of the persecution in the Roman Empire, all the persecution of Huguenots by the Valois, and of Roman Catholics under Elizabeth, was due to other ideas than those of the future. And where religious ideas induced men to side with the tormentors against Toleration, there is much that is not more sincere or more excusable than the ideas that have led to political massacres. The opinion expressed covers some of the ground, but only a very small part of it.

But I must stop somewhere.

Cannes March 29, 1882

If there are judges and juries in Britain, Macmillan would expose himself to fine and imprisonment by printing what I write to you. You will see in a moment, I am sure, why it could never be.

It would be an offence to the author, because there is no allowance of the large measure of praise and even of admiration due to him – nothing but the Catalogue of objections suggested to me by the belief that I was writing to a too fervent admirer of the book. Without my signature it would be a stab in the dark; and with my name it would be insufferably pretentious, uncalled-for, and unfair. And I, who make a profession of knowing about Conclaves and the like, should be bound to visit more amply, if not more severely, the strangely inadequate and pointless narrative of the election of Chigi. Few things are more curious and dramatic than the Conclaves, and this one is particularly well known.

Besides, Fraser is sure to be very hostile, both in detail and in respect of the scope and spirit of the work. He is sure to quarrel with Jesuit and Cardinal, and to say much of what I have said in strict confidence. Please, dismiss the thought; and if you compliment anything, let it be the paper and handwriting.

That is a very kind question about Gardiner; and as I have at hand, here, the means of learning more without risk of indiscretion, I had better postpone my answer. If, as a rule, those pensions are granted to people almost destitute of means, the case could not well be admitted. He ought to be at the Record Office instead of the present Hardy. It is in Jessel's gift, and he asked my advice, specially excluding clergymen, and thereby losing the two best men, Brewer and Stubbs. I suggested Freeman, Gardiner, and Bond. Freeman sent me word that he would not take it. Jessel told me he would appoint Bond – who is now the very good and estimable, but gloomy successor of Panizzi – but that he had been told that Bond was a Catholic. He said that a Jew was not strong enough to appoint a Catholic Keeper of the Archives. Bond is a Broad Churchman, and the report arose only from my recommendation. Gardiner therefore remained; but it was resolved, under I know not what pressure, to keep the thing in the Hardy family. Meantime, I think Gardiner succeeded Brewer in his professorship at King's College – not, I imagine, remunerative, but still an obstacle.

Yes, I agree about Forbes, and rather think he is one of the men Simon speaks of, and defies the Sorbonne to meet – unless I am mixing up the two divines of that name.

Spinola wrote no book. He was a Franciscan bishop, Imperial Confessor at Vienna, and produced several schemes of union, on the part of Rome, which differ from other such by being definite and sincere. Leibniz, and the Calixtine school of Lutherans, were very near adopting his plan; but as he was an agent of pope and emperor when Louis XIV. was the enemy of both, Bossuet contrived to baffle him. What was known of these transactions down to our day is in Pichler's work on Leibniz. Much more has since come out in the "Correspondence of the Electress Sophia," and there is more to come, whenever the Madonna of the Future[178] is unveiled.

Of John Inglesant, let me say that it would be a very fair text to work on – how far the pagan, human virtues, coupled with qualities which are not, in a spiritual sense, virtues, such as courage, delicacy, good nature, veracity, pride, can accomplish the outward, visible work of grace. But that is clearly not the author's design.

If Gardiner's paper is very hostile, and you then think it worth while to send my remarks to Mr. Shorthouse,[179] through his publisher or otherwise, that is a case governed by the saying of the younger Pompey.[180]

I liked what I saw of the Fox Memorials during a very short inspection; and yesterday, lunching at the parsonage at Mentone, I found the Life of Lowder. The accounts of Prince Leopold were distressing. Fancy my finding myself with two excellent clergymen, both ardent Gladstonians, and both wishing for the admission of Bradlaugh. Otherwise my journey was not altogether successful, as I got half a sunstroke, which you have already seen traces of in my letter.

*****

Cannes April 27, 1882

The description you quote of Coleridge is not more inaccurate than epigram requires. I have just drawn up a list of recommended authors for my son, as being the company I should like him to keep, after me; and after some hesitation I included S. T. C. in the number. But he has to be balanced by sounder stuff.

Lecky only arrived two days ago, and is scarcely begun. But the beginning, and the account of Junius struck me as very far indeed ahead of all his former writings. There is a good deal of slovenly writing, and it is puerile to write modern history from printed books; but this is a wonderfully solid performance. You will not think it as amusing as Froude's "Carlyle," when you come to it, but much more nutritious.

You depressed my spirits the other day by showing that the majority of 39 did not amount to quite so much as I, from a distance, had imagined. And the Budget, though open to very little remark, does not do much to raise them. If I was not conscious of being the worst accountant yet discovered, I should say that there is a slip in one of the calculations of Savings Bank deposits.

Gardiner for some reason did not publish his article… If Arthur Lyttelton, out of pure cussedness, wishes to put in the note you speak of, I would like to see what it is he says, starting from the materials buried in my letter.

**********

Cannes May 3, 1882

Lecky's merits stand undiminished by further acquaintance, but the deficiencies become more glaring. The character of Burke, though in my opinion very defective, seems to me the best I have read in the language.

*****

The May Fraser contains his article,[181] and I greatly fear that his judgment will be as critical as my own.

I wonder whether you have the Temps or Débats in Downing Street, and have read the speeches of Pasteur and Renan. I do not remember so interesting a reception, and what is serious is that the most powerful intellectual force in France has declared, virtually, for materialism.

Cannes May 5, 1882

We have nothing later than Tuesday's speech, so that the lines are not traceable into the future, and I am still in a very anxious and doubting stage.

It is not apparent why Spencer occupies a position between earth and heaven. He looks like a warming pan. Not for a prince, for that is out of the question. For Dufferin?[182] But Dufferin, who is easy, dexterous, and popular, has not the sterling and transparent quality of Spencer himself. It may well be the basis of a vast change in the machinery for the government of Ireland; but that would require legislation for which there is no time. Perplexity No. 1.

Then one must conclude that the change comes from assurances given by the moderate Irish members, that it would enable them to moderate the raging ones. But to ensure that, they must have a finger in the pie, and Russell or Shaw would have to have the offer of the Irish Office. It seems clear, from the delay, that that is not to be; and one hears of Lefevre and Chamberlain… Perplexity 2.

There is a look of uncertainty and want of clearness about the whole thing. Cowper resigns; after an interval, half a successor is appointed; then the suspects are released; then Forster resigns; and then, after another interval showing want of preparation, there is a new Secretary. This way of doing whatever is to be done suggests that the Ministry had not the foresight to anticipate opinion, or strength to lead it. Dropping one colleague after another in their Irish course makes that course appear wanting in deliberation and design, and strengthens the notion that, under heavy pressure, they may be driven nobody knows where, like men who yield, not like men who lead. I presume that there is some evidence of ensured improvement, consequent upon concession. But one doubts that again, when Forster resigns; and it seems that the change is in the ideas more than in the facts. As to any gain on Irish opinion from the grace of concession, I should not expect it, as so many suspects remain in custody. If so, then the advantage would be derived from the new position of the Irish leaders – a very doubtful policy. Then again, I don't like the moment; immediately after Cairns's stroke, and the untimely publication of his draft report.[183] I don't like anything which looks like overtrumping, because it is not fit for such a Prime Minister to follow initiative, whether that of opponents, or of English or Irish opinion.

These misgivings occur to me although you know, if nobody else does, that I was not convinced by the argument in favour of coercion, and saw no evidence of greater demoralisation than was the direct effect of actual suffering. Since then there has been so much atrocity in Ireland, so much foreign influence, and so manifest a change for the worse in the conduct of the clergy, that I have grown reconciled to the strong hand. Even if full of sympathy with the spirit of the present policy, I cannot satisfy myself with the mode of its inception, and I shall not feel comfortable for some days, until the design grows clear. To you, they will be intensely interesting, and I shall be very glad indeed to hear that confidence reigns in Downing Street.

POST OFFICE AND SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHS.

CANNES, 5.14, 8/5, 11.54, on the 8/5, 1882.

Do not let him lose confidence in himself.[184]

ACTON.

Cannes May 9, 1882

We have only vague reports in French newspapers, but I cannot wait for full accounts of the tragedy that touches us all so nearly, to give you my warm tribute of sympathy and sorrow. It is shocking to think of her, so worthy of happiness and so afflicted. You, I know, have, of all people, the most soothing hand for the most cruel wounds.

It must have been a dreadful blow in your own home, and at a distance one grows anxious about many things. I apprehend a violent burst of passion in the country, with despair of healing such disease with lenient arts; and, if the tide turns, the change will be felt in Parliament, and will be used by men quite capable of seeing that Mr. Gladstone's statesmanship is confirmed by the very crime which will condemn it in common minds. Assuming that some of the Cabinet assent reluctantly to the heroic policy, and that the last few weeks have not added to his personal ascendency, I fear that they will either forsake him or urge him to forsake his own ideal lines. Thinking of this, of his strong affections, of the shadow on the hearth, I could not restrain my wish to send you my small vote of confidence.

For we heard at first that Spencer had instantly resigned.[185] I was ashamed to show myself, and whispered to my family how Nicholas, the bad emperor, faced a rebellious army. There is very different news to-day. I gather that Spencer remains, that Forster redeems many faults by offering to go back, that Parnell has made his choice between murder and conciliation, that the Opposition holds its hand, expecting Mr. Gladstone to turn against himself.

It seems to me that much ground must inevitably be lost, and that the true moral of this catastrophe can never be made visible to the average Englishman. Still I see great opportunities of recovery, and I know in what spirit I hope that he has had the strength to receive the blow aimed through Freddy Cavendish at himself.

I long so much to hear from you. If you can think, in sad days like these, of anything but the sorrow that is near you, do give an affectionate message from me to Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, and send me, when you have a quiet moment, a line to Munich. I start almost immediately.

*****

St. Martin Ried Haute Autriche July 20, 1882

Alexandria, Bright, and a vote of censure have been a great distraction from our Irish troubles. If Bright, the Minister, agreed to the orders, and if Bright, the Quaker, woke up at the execution of the orders, then his conduct is unstatesmanlike and weak. I conclude, – not having Monday's debate yet, – that he resigns not because of the bombardment, but because, having troops on the way, remembering the example of Paris, warned by the terrified correspondents, we nevertheless bombarded without taking precautions against consequences that were not improbable. If he takes that ground, he will, I suppose, be angry and mischievous, and his position will encourage the disaffected Whigs; and it will be awkward even if part of the blame rests on the Powers; because, when we took things into our own hands, we were bound to do all that was necessary.

I very much wish for a completer defence than I have seen yet; and at the same time I think that a good defence, with some measure of political success in Egypt, will be a source of new strength, and if there is some blame, I anxiously ask myself whether it lies at the Foreign Office, at the War Office, or at the Admiralty.

It is provoking not to know most of the names of the people going out on this difficult errand. That is one side of the question. The other, nearer home, for me, is that you are still going through terrible worry, and that the wear and tear must be telling on Mr. Gladstone. I ask myself one question, which most people would think an unlikely one, whether he thoroughly controls his colleagues, and whether the work of the House absorbs him too much… I hope you sat next to Bright…

*****

St. Martin July 29, 1882

We are living here in my brother-in-law's house; and I will tell him that he must prepare for better guests, as soon as you tell me that it is not the baseless fabric of a vision. He is not married; so that there is no one to be on ceremony with; and his house is as big as many Tegernsees. Alfred[186] will be as welcome here as he is wherever his bright face is shown.

*****

It is impossible not to feel that the Ministry grows weaker by the associates it has lost as well as by the associates that decline to join. There are now the ingredients of an alternative Liberal Cabinet, consisting of men fairly equal to those now in office – with the necessary exception – and hostile to them. The ground is getting narrow under our feet, and the full force of the party does not support Ministers. The want of a successor to Bright indicates too clearly that Mr. Gladstone, though still master of his majority, is not what he has been, master of his party. I hope for new arrangements at the end of the session, and for a real gain of strength from ultimate success in Egypt. But, like Ireland, it is a harvest that will ripen slowly. I wonder whether things have seemed to you as gloomy as this, or whether the light before you dispels the darkness.