Lectures on Modern History

Lord Acton

It was announced in February 1895 that John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton, had been appointed to the Chair of Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in succession to the late Sir John Seeley, who had held the office for upwards of a quarter of a century. Of the achievements of Acton’s six years’ tenure of the post, the present volume, together with that forthcoming on the French Revolution, will form the chief, though not the only monument. To those who found in the teaching of the late Professor inspiration as well as knowledge, the Lectures now published will serve at once to heighten and to relieve the sense, still so fresh, of personal loss. “To the many friends and scholars who had known him in other spheres or for a longer space, they will be a fitting memorial of Acton’s greatness in the realm of his unchallenged pre-eminence. Of all the previous occupants of the chair none is to be named with Acton for a career unique in interest, variety, and pathos.

Lectures on Modern History by Lord Acton

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Meet the Author
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Lord Acton

Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 1834–1902) was a leading 19th-century historian in the classical-liberal tradition. He watched the growth of the United States with great interest, and lamented the decline of states’ rights and federalism. While he was a prolific writer and speaker, his great work, a history of freedom, was never completed.

Lord Acton
It is remarkable that the Constitution was little trusted or admired by the wisest and most illustrious of its founders, and that its severest and most desponding critics were those whom Americans revere as the fathers of their country, writes Lord
Mises Daily Lord Acton
It is remarkable that the Constitution was little trusted or admired by the wisest and most illustrious of its founders, and that its severest and most desponding critics were those whom Americans revere as the fathers of their country.
Mises Daily Lord Acton
The motive was empire on one side and self-government on the other. It was a question between liberty and authority, between government by consent and government by force.
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References

1921 Macmillan and co, St. Martin’s Street, London. 1921