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Sir John Acton

The Right Honourable
The Lord Acton
KCVO DL
Picture of John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton.jpg
Member of Parliament
for Bridgnorth
In office
25 July 1865 – 1866
Serving with John Pritchard
Preceded by Henry Whitmore
Succeeded by Henry Whitmore
Member of Parliament
for Carlow Borough
In office
19 May 1859 – 25 July 1865
Preceded by John Alexander
Succeeded by Thomas Osborne Stock
Personal details
Born John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
10 January 1834
Naples, Two Sicilies
Died 19 June 1902(1902-06-19) (aged 68)
Tegernsee, Bavaria
German Empire
Nationality British
Political party Liberal Party
Alma mater Oscott College
Occupation Historian, politician
Religion Roman Catholic

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO DL (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902)—known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet, from 1837 to 1869 and usually referred to simply as Lord Acton—was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet. He is perhaps best known for the remark, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men,..." This idea has been tested in laboratory settings.

Acton's grandfather, who in 1791 succeeded to the baronetcy and family estates in Shropshire, previously held by the English branch of the Acton family, represented a younger branch which had transferred itself first to France and then to Italy. However, by the extinction of the elder branch, the admiral became head of the family. His eldest son, Richard, married Marie Louise Pelline, the only daughter and heiress of Emmerich Joseph, 1st Duc de Dalberg, a naturalised French noble of ancient German lineage who had entered the French service under Napoleon and represented Louis XVIII at the Congress of Vienna in 1814. After Sir Richard Acton's death in 1837, she became the wife of the 2nd Earl Granville (1840). Marie Louise Pelline de Dalberg was heiress of Herrnsheim in Germany. She became the mother of John Dalberg-Acton who was born in Naples.

From an old Roman Catholic family, young Acton was educated at Oscott College under future-Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman until 1848 and then at Edinburgh where he studied privately. His attempt to be admitted to the University of Cambridge failed because he was a Catholic. So Acton went to Munich where he studied at the University and resided in the house of Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, theologian and forerunner of the Old Catholic Church, with whom he became lifelong friends. Döllinger had inspired in him a deep love of historical research and a profound conception of its functions as a critical instrument, particularly in the history of liberty. He was a master of the principal foreign languages and began at an early age to collect a magnificent historical library, with the object—which, however, he never realised—of writing a great "History of Liberty." In politics, he was always an ardent Liberal.


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