Lord Acton on writing history
Prejudice is dishonesty
Lord Acton, elevated to the House of Lords at the urging of his friend Prime Minister William Gladstone, though a Catholic, influenced both English politics and English religion. He was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University in 1895. In his first letter to his fellow historian Mandell Creighton, whose history of the medieval papacy he had criticized — which included the famous “power tends to corrupt” line — he promised a second letter with lessons in writing history. in the form of 35 maxims or apothegms.
In the Moral Sciences Prejudice is Dishonesty.
A Historian has to fight against temptations special to his mode of life, temptations from Country, Class, Church, College, Party, authority of talents, solicitation of friends.
The most respectable of these influences are the most dangerous.
The historian who neglects to root them out is exactly like a juror who votes according to his personal likes or dislikes.
In judging men and things, Ethics go before Dogma, Politics or Nationality.
The Ethics of History cannot be denominational.
The Reign of Sin is more universal, the influence of unconscious error is less, than historians tell us. Good and evil lie close together. Seek no artistic unity in character.
The principles of public morality are as definite as those of the morality of private life; but they are not identical.
Crimes by constituted authorities worse than crimes by Madame Tussand’s private malefactors. Murder may be done by legal means, by plausible and profitable war, by calumny, as well as by dose or dagger.
History deals with Life; Religion with Death. Much of its work and spirit escapes our ken.
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