as
what many condemned. It was because he was not like Lord Palmerston,
because Bismarck disliked him, because he gave back the Transvaal to the
Boers, and tried to restore Ireland to its people, because his love of
liberty never weaned him from loyalty to the Crown, and his politics
were part of his religion, that Acton used of Gladstone language rarely
used, and still more rarely applicable, to any statesman. For this very
reason--his belief that political differences do, while religious
differences do not, imply a different morality--he censured so severely
the generous eulogy of Disraeli, just as in Doellinger's case he blamed
the praise of Dupanloup. For Acton was intolerant of all leniency
towards methods and individuals whom he thought immoral. He could give
quarter to the infidel more easily than to the Jesuit.

We may, of course, deny that Acton was right. But few intelligent
observers can dispute the accuracy of his diagnosis, or deny that more
than anything else the disease of Western civilisation is a general lack
of directing ideals other than those which are included in the gospel of
commercialism. It may surely be further admitted that even intellectual
activity has too much of triviality about it to-day; that if people
despise the schoolmen, it is rather owing to their virtues than their
defects, because impressionism has taken the place of thought, and
brilliancy that of labour. On the other hand, Acton's dream of ethical
agreement, apart from religion, seems further off from realisation than
ever.

Acton, however, wrote for a world which breathed in the atmosphere
created by Kant. His position was something as follows: After the
discovery of facts, a matter of honesty and industry independent of any
opinions, history needs a criterion of judgment by which it may appraise
men's actions. This criterion cannot be afforded by religion, for
religion is one part of the historic process of which we are tracing the
flow. The principles on which all can combine are the inviolable
sanctity of human life, and the unalterable principle of even justice
and toleration. Wherever these are violated our course is clear. Neither
custom nor convenience, neither distance of time nor difference of
culture may excuse or even limit our condemnation. Murder is always
murder, whether it be committed by populace or patricians, by councils
or kings or popes. Had they had their dues, Paolo Sarpi would have been
in Newgate and G