cal opponents came into office. He
distinguished, as he said Froschammer ought to have done, between the
authorities and the authority of the Church. He had a strong belief in
the doctrine of development, and felt that it would prove impossible in
the long run to bind the Christian community to any explanation of the
faith which should have a non-Christian or immoral tendency. He left it
to time and the common conscience to clear the dogma from association
with dangerous political tendencies, for his loyalty to the institution
was too deep to be affected by his dislike of the _Camarilla_ in power.
He not only did not desire to leave the Church, but took pains to make
his confession and receive absolution immediately after his letters
appeared in the _Times_. It must also be stated that so far from
approving Mr. Gladstone's attack on Vaticanism, he did his utmost to
prevent its publication, which he regarded as neither fair nor wise.

It is true that Acton's whole tendency was individualistic, and his
inner respect for mere authority apart from knowledge and judgment was
doubtless small. But here we must remember what he said once of the
political sphere--that neither liberty nor authority is conceivable
except in an ordered society, and that they are both relative to
conditions remote alike from anarchy and tyranny. Doubtless he leaned
away from those in power, and probably felt of Manning as strongly as
the latter wrote of him. Yet his individualism was always active within
the religious society, and never contemplated itself as outside. He
showed no sympathy for any form of Protestantism, except the purely
political side of the Independents and other sects which have promoted
liberty of conscience.

Acton's position as a churchman is made clearer by a view of his
politics. At once an admirer and an adviser of Mr. Gladstone, he
probably helped more than any other single friend to make his leader a
Home Ruler. Yet he was anything but a modern Radical: for liberty was
his goddess, not equality, and he dreaded any single power in a State,
whether it was the King, or Parliament, or People. Neither popes nor
princes, not even Protestant persecutors, did Acton condemn more deeply
than the crimes of majorities and the fury of uncontrolled democracy. It
was not the rule of one or many that was his ideal, but a balance of
powers that might preserve freedom and keep every kind of authority
subject to law. For, as he said, "libe