Sir John Acton
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The Right Honourable The Lord Acton KCVO DL |
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| Member of Parliament for Bridgnorth |
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In office 25 July 1865 – 1866 Serving with John Pritchard |
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| Preceded by | Henry Whitmore |
| Succeeded by | Henry Whitmore |
| Member of Parliament for Carlow Borough |
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In office 19 May 1859 – 25 July 1865 |
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| 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 (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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