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ONE acton’s Life and Mission all governments in which one principle dominates, degenerate by its exaggeration. The weight of opinion is against me when i exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong. i never had any contemporaries, but spent years in looking for men wise enough to solve the problems that puzzled me, not in religion or politics so much as along the wavy line between the two.1 F o r a N o r D i N a rY r e a D e r unacquainted with Lord acton, he may appear to be the epitome of an english and victorian aristocrat: aloof and condescending, untroubled by the problems of ordinary men and women, shielded from poverty or prejudice, privileged in every way, and disposed to take advantage of every opportunity open to his class. in fact, acton might have been aloof and a little condescending, but he was certainly not a typical British lord, particularly if we are imagining the current stereotype in popular culture. Born in Naples, of a German-French mother, raised by an italian grandmother and educated partly abroad, he did not belong to the traditional english nobility and was somewhat alienated from the english social and political elite. Until the end he looked like a “continental gentleman,” with manners that remained “rather foreign,” as C h a P t e r Acton’s Life and Mission 15 Queen victoria noticed in 1893. he was not even legally British when he was born and had to confirm his British nationality, fixing his last name on this occasion as Dalberg acton.2 although not a commoner, he gained only the entry level of the peerage at the age of 35, when he became the First Baron acton. Because of his Catholicism he was not admitted to British universities and thus spent his formative years in Munich. Though not poor, he was not particularly wealthy either. John emerich edward Dalberg acton, First Baron acton, was born on January 10, 1834. his family on his father’s side belonged to the gentry. since the fourteenth century they had lived in aldenham, near Bridgnorth, located in shropshire (england’s West Midlands county bordering Wales). in the seventeenth century, one of his ancestors was made a baronet by king Charles i. in the second half of the eighteenth century, the actons converted to Catholicism. acton’s grandfather John Francis edward acton made a staggering career in the kingdom of the two sicilies, eventually becoming its long-term prime minister (1780–1804). in spite of belonging to a junior branch of the actons, the grandfather inherited the family title and the 6,000-acre estate in aldenham when the senior branch died out (1791). acton’s father, sir richard Ferdinand Dalberg-acton, the seventh baronet of aldenham, managed to squander much of his father’s fortune on gambling and died when his son was only three years old (1837). The family of acton’s mother, the Dalbergs, traced their origins to the high Middle ages (although the family tree goes as far back as abraham), and for centuries were in service of the Bishops of Worms, electors in the holy roman empire. since the fifteenth century, they had enjoyed the privilege of being knighted first during the imperial coronation ceremony, which illustrates their high rank among the nobility of the empire. acton’s maternal grandfather, emmerich Joseph Duke Dalberg, made a diplomatic career in the service of Napoleon i and later Louis Xviii, but he lost much of his great fortune on failed investments and a bank crash. acton’s mother, Marie Louisa, inherited the duke’s estate in herrnsheim in the rhineland, which later became acton’s property and his second place of residence.3 according to hill, acton had a lonely childhood. his mother, widowed at the age of 23, remarried rather quickly (1840) to George Leveson-Gower, a British liberal politician and the future second earl Granville. This turned out to be a very happy marriage, but Marie Louisa devoted herself mostly to her younger husband. Left at aldenham under the care of his paternal grandmother, Nonna, little Johnny only occasionally visited his mother and stepfather at their London home. When he was...

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