Acton Was Accurate

March 5, 1997

[My] son John sent me the extended review of THE SECRET HISTORY OF ARMAND HAMMER, by Edward Jay Epstein. The book details the life of perhaps the #1 con man, swindler, traitor of the century. Armand Hammer bribed, lied, intimidated, bought-off any and all attempts to disclose his secret acts of treason, fraud and deceit.

I wrote John that I could not help but remember Lord Acton’s famous dictum that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What many people do not know or neglect is Lord Acton’s next sentence: “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.” These sentences are found in the “Acton-Creighton Correspondence,” one of the pieces in ESSAYS OF FREEDOM AND POWER. Lord Acton was reviewing THE HISTORY OF THE PAPACY DURING THE REFORMATION by Bishop Creighton.

Lord Acton was writing more than a century ago. His reference to Great Men being Bad Men targeted not only persons in the field of religion: Luther, Cranmer, Calvin, the Popes, others, but also Mary Stuart, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Cromwell and Louis XIV. His many observations about power and great men/bad men applies to Armand Hammer in our day. We of the 20th century are aware also how flaws are revealed posthumously as well as currently in the character and behavior of our U.S. “great men.” E.g., Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon.

An offbeat reminder occurred to me as I write this – “Conway’s Law” – “In any organization there will be always one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.” I wonder in Hammer's case, who was fired that knew what was going on?

As usual, Shakespeare anticipated later wisdom when Brutus speaking of Julius Caesar says to Lucius:

“The abuse of greatness is
when it disjoins
Remorse from power.” (Act II, Sc. 1)

Who was this Lord Acton who wrote so wisely? I have not had access to a full biography but from the Preface and Introduction to ESSAYS OF FREEDOM AND POWER there are fascinating details. The Preface to this edition was written by Herman Finer; the Introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb, both scholars.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton was born in Naples in 1834 and died in 1902. His English family roots went back to the 14th century. His maternal ancestors were the Dalbergs, whose family estates were on the Rhine. His English father was an adventurer whose career was shady.

Dalberg-Acton, obviously wealthy as well as aristocratic, lived in several family residences in his growing years:Naples, Paris, Herrnsheim on the Rhine, Aldenham and London in England. He succeeded to the title Lord Acton upon the death of his father.

He was fluent in Italian, French, German and English. Himmelfarb writes that conversations at dinner were multi-lingual. He talked in German with his Bavarian-born wife; in English with his children; French with his sister-in-law and Italian with his mother-in-law.

Acton's scholarship was prodigious. Herman Finer noted, “I compute he read 20,000 books.” Is it possible? He died at the age of 68. If he started reading books at, say age 8, he had 60 years of reading. My arithmetic divides that into about 334 books a year for 60 years!!!

He was a pious Roman Catholic, but disagreed with the Vatican when the infallibility of the Popes was declared in the last half of the 19th century. His thorough and scholarly defence of his position is found in his essay, “Conflicts with Rome.” But his disagreement on this crucial issue did not cause him either to leave the Roman Catholic Church as some others did, or lead to his excommunication as some others were. Lord Acton lived and died a believing Roman Catholic (but he did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope).

About 1890, he faced grave financial difficulty. It appeared that he would have to sell his vast library of books, documents, manuscripts, and original sources. However, Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy American, came to the rescue and purchased Acton’s library. But Carnegie permitted it to remain in Acton’s custody for his lifetime. That huge collection is now at the Cambridge University Library along with hundreds of boxes of his notes for the book he intended to write and never did: THE HISTORY OF LIBERTY.

In 1895, Lord Acton was named to the prestigious post of Regius Professor in History at Cambridge University, where he initiated and made progress on the famous CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY. What was hugely ironic in this appointment is that as a young man, Lord Acton was refused admission as a student to Cambridge because he was Roman Catholic. Truly a remarkable man of priceless integrity. What a contrast to Armand Hammer.

Well, John, you couldn't have known that you would spark all this when you sent me that book review.