eorge I. would have died at Tyburn.

The unbending severity of his judgment, which is sometimes carried to an
excess almost ludicrous, is further explained by another element in his
experience. In his letters to Doellinger and others he more than once
relates how in early life he had sought guidance in the difficult
historical and ethical questions which beset the history of the papacy
from many of the most eminent ultramontanes. Later on he was able to
test their answers in the light of his constant study of original
authorities and his careful investigation of archives. He found that the
answers given him had been at the best but plausible evasions. The
letters make it clear that the harshness with which Acton always
regarded ultramontanes was due to that bitter feeling which arises in
any reflecting mind on the discovery that it has been put off with
explanations that did not explain, or left in ignorance of material
facts.

Liberalism, we must remember, was a religion to Acton--_i.e._ liberalism
as he understood it, by no means always what goes by the name. His
conviction that ultramontane theories lead to immoral politics prompted
his ecclesiastical antipathies. His anger was aroused, not by any
feeling that Papal infallibility was a theological error, but by the
belief that it enshrined in the Church monarchical autocracy, which
could never maintain itself apart from crime committed or condoned. It
was not intellectual error but moral obliquity that was to him here, as
everywhere, the enemy. He could tolerate unbelief, he could not tolerate
sin. Machiavelli represented to him the worst of political principles,
because in the name of the public weal he destroyed the individual's
conscience. Yet he left a loophole in private life for religion, and a
sinning statesman might one day become converted. But when the same
principles are applied, as they have been applied by the Jesuit
organisers of ultramontane reaction (also on occasion by Protestants),
_ad majorem dei gloriam_, it is clear that the soul is corrupted at its
highest point, and the very means of serving God are made the occasion
of denying him. Because for Acton there was no comparison between
goodness and knowledge, and because life was to him more than thought,
because the passion of his life was to secure for all souls the freedom
to live as God would have them live, he hated in the Church the politics
of ultramontanism, and in the State the principles