Chapter 9

to that date by their short titles, either individually or collectively. Most modern acts have borne short titles independently of the act of 1892. (See PARLIAMENT; STATUTE.)

1 Where the grant is not of supply, the preamble varies a little, e.g. in the Prince of Wales's Children Act 1889.

ACTON (JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG ACTON), IST BARON (1834-1902), English historian, only son of Sir Richard Acton, 7th baronet, and grandson of the Neapolitan admiral, Sir J. F. E. Acton, 6th baronet (q.v.), was born at Naples on the 10th of January 1834. His grandfather, who had succeeded in 1791 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, but by the extinction of the elder branch the admiral became head of the family; his eldest son, Richard, had married Marie Louise Pelline, the daughter and heiress of Emerich Joseph, duc de Dalberg (q.v.), a naturalized French noble of ancient German lineage who had entered thc French service under Napoleon and represented Louis XVIII. at the congress of Vienna in 1814, and after Sir Richard Acton's death in 1837 she became (1840) the wife of the 2nd Earl Granville. Coming of a Roman Catholic family, young Acton was educated at Oscott till 1848 under Dr (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, and then at Edinburgh, and at Munich under Dollinger, whose lifelong friend he became. He had wished to go to Cambridge, but for a Roman Catholic this was then impossible. By Dollinger he was inspired with a deep love of historical research and a profound conception of its functions as a critical instrument. He was a master of the chief foreign languages, and began at an early age to collect a magnificent historical library, with the object, never in fact realized, of writing a great History of Liberty. In politics he was always an ardent Liberal. Without being a notable traveller, he spent much time in the chief intellectual centres of Europe, and in the United States, and numbered among his friends such men as Montalembert, De Tocqueville. Fustel de Coulanges, Bluntschli, von Sybel and Ranke. He was attached to Lord Granville's mission to Moscow, as British representative at the coronation of Alexander II. in 1856. In 1859 Sir John Acton settled in England, at his country house, Aldenham, in Shropshire. He was returned to the House of Commons in that year for the Irish borough of Carlow, and became a devoted admirer and adherent of Mr Gladstone; but he was practically a silent member, and his parliamentary career came to an end after the general election of 1865, when, having headed the poll for Bridgnorth, he was unseated on a scrutiny; he contested Bridgnorth again in 1868, but without success. Meanwhile he had become editor of the Roman Catholic monthly paper, the Rambler, in 1859, on J. H. Newman's retirement from the editorship; and in 1862 he merged this periodical in the Home and Foreign Review. His contributions at once gave evidence of his remarkable wealth of historical knowledge. But though a sincere Roman Catholic, his whole spirit as a historian was hostile to ultramontane pretensions, and his independence of thought and liberalism of view speedily brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. As early as August 1862, Cardinal Wiseman publicly censured the Review; and when in 1864, after Dollinger's appeal at the Munich Congress for a less hostile attitude towards historical criticism, the pope issued a declaration that the opinions of Catholic writers were subject to the authority of the Roman congregations, Acton felt that there was only one way of reconciling his literary conscience with his ecclesiastical loyalty, and he stopped the publication of his monthly periodical. He continued, however, to contribute articles to the North British Review, which, previously a Scottish Free Church organ, had been acquired by friends in sympathy with him, and which for some years (until 1872, when it ceased to appear) actively promoted the interests of a high-class Liberalism in both temporal and ecclesiastical matters; he also did a good deal of lecturing on historical subjects. In 1865 he married the Countess Marie, daughter of the Bavarian Count Arco-Valley, by whom he had one son and three daughters. In 1869 he was raised to the peerage by Gladstone as Baron Acton; he was an intimate friend and constant correspondent of the Liberal leader, and the two men had the very highest regard for one another. Matthew Arnold used to say that ``Gladstone influences all round him but Acton; it is Acton who influences Gladstone.''

In 1870 came the great crisis in the Roman Catholic world over the promulgation by Pius IX. of the dogma of papal infallibility. Lord Acton, who was in complete sympathy on this subject with Dollinger (q.v.), went to Rome in order to throw all his influence against it, but the step he so much dreaded was not to be averted. The Old Catholic separation followed, but Acton did not personally join the seceders, and the authorities prudently refrained from forcing the hands of so competent and influential an English layman. In 1874, when Gladstone published his pamphlet on The Vatican Decrees, Lord Acton wrote during November and December a series of remarkable letters to The Times, illustrating Gladstone's main theme by numerous historical examples of papal inconsistency, in a way which must have been bitter enough to the ultramontane party, but demurring nevertheless to Gladstone's conclusion and insisting that the Church itself was better than its premisses implied. Acton's letters led to another storm in the English Roman Catholic world, but once more it was considered prudent by the Vatican to leave him alone. In spite of his reservations, he regarded ``communion with Rome as dearer than life.'' Thenceforth he steered clear of theological polemics. He devoted himself to persistent reading and study, combined with congenial society. With all his capacity for study he was a man of the world, and a man of affairs, not a bookworm. Little indeed came from his pen, his only notable publications being a masterly essay in the Quarterly Review of January 1878 on ``Democracy in Europe''; two lectures delivered at Bridgnorth in 1877 on ``The History of Freedom in Antiquity'' and ``The History of Freedom in Christianity''--these last the only tangible portions put together by him of his long-projected ``History of Liberty''; and an essay on modern German historians in the first number of the English Historical Review, which he helped to found (1886). After 1879 he divided his time between London, Cannes and Tegernsee in Bavaria, enjoying and reciprocating the society of his friends. In 1872 he had been given the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy by Munich University; in 1888 Cambridge gave him the honorary degree of LL.D., and in 1889 Oxford the D.C.L.; and in 1890 he was made a fellow of All Souls. His reputation for learning had gradually been spread abroad, largely through Gladstone's influence. The latter found him a valuable political adviser, and in 1892, when the Liberal government came in, Lord Acton was made a lord-in-waiting. Finally, in 1895, on the death of Sir John Seeley, Lord Rosebery appointed him to the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge. The choice was an excellent one. His inaugural lecture on ``The Study of History,'' afterwards published with notes displaying a vast erudition, made a great impression in the university, and the new professor's influence on historical study was felt in many important directions. He delivered two valuable courses of lectures, on the French Revolution and on Modern History, but it was in private that the effects of his teaching were most marked. The great Cambridge Modern History, though he did not live to see it, was planned under his editorship, and all who came in contact with him testified to his stimulating powers and his extraordinary range of knowledge. He was taken ill, however, in 1901, and died on the 19th of June 1902, being succeeded in the title by his son. Richard Maximllian Dalberg Acton, 2nd Baron Acton (b.1870). Lord Acton has left too little completed original work to rank among the great historians; his very learning seems to have stood in his way; he knew too much and his literary conscience was too acute for him to write easily, and his copiousness of information overloads his literary style. But he was one of the most deeply learned men of his time, and he will certainly be remembered for his influence on others. His extensive library, formed for use and not for display, and composed largely of books full of his own annotations, was bought immediately after his death by Mr Andrew Carnegie, and presented to Mr John Morley, by whom it was forthwith given to the university of Cambridge.

See Mr Herbert Paul's excellent Introductory Memoir to the interesting volume of Lord Acton's Letters to Mrs Drew (1904), and the authorities cited there; also Dom Gasquet's Lord Acton and his Circle (1906). A Bibliography of the works of Lord Acton, by W. A. Shaw, was published by the Royal Historical Society in 1903. The Edinburgh Review of April 1903 contains a luminous essay; and Mr Bryce has a chapter on Acton in his Studies of Contemporary Biography (1903). Lord Acton's Lectures on Modern History, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence, appeared in 1906; and his History of Freedom and other Essays and Historical Essay's and Studies (by the same editors) in 1907. (H. CH.)

ACTON, SIR JOHN FRANCIS EDWARD, BART. (1736--1811). prime minister of Naples under Ferdinand IV., was the son of Edward Acton, a physician at Besancon, and was born there in 1736, succeeding to the title and estates in 1791, on the death of his cousin in the third degree, Sir Richard Acton of Aldenham Hall, Shropshire. He served in the navy of Tuscany, and in 1775 commanded a frigate in the joint expedition of Spain and Tuscany against Algiers, in which he displayed such courage and resource that he was promoted to high command. In 1779 Queen Maria Carolina of Naples persuaded her brother the Grand-Duke Leopold of Tuscany to allow Acton, who had been recommended to her by Prince Caramenico, to undertake the reorganization of the Neapolitan navy. The ability displayed by him in this led to his rapid advancement. He became commander-in-chief of both services, minister of finance, and finally prime minister. His policy was devised in concert with the English ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, and aimed at substituting the influence of Austria and Great Britain for that or Spain, at Naples, and consequently involved open opposition to France and the French party in Italy. The financial and administrative measures which were the outcome of a policy which necessitated a great increase of armament made him intensely unpopular, and in December 1798 he shared the flight of the king and queen. For the reign of terror which followed the downfall of the Parthenopean Republic, five months later, Acton has been held responsible. In 1804 he was for a short time deprived of the reins of government at the demand of France; but he was speedily restored to his former position, which he held till, in February 1806, on the entry of the French into Naples, he had to flee with the royal family into Sicily. He died at Palermo on the 12th of August 1811.

He had married, by papal dispensation, the eldest daughter of his brother, General Joseph Edward Acton (b. 1737), who was in the Neapolitan service, and left three children, the elder son, Sir Richard, being the father of the first Lord Acton. The second son, Charles Januarius Edward (1803-1847), after being educated in England and taking his degree at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1823, entered the Academia Ecclesiastica at Rome. He left this with the rank of prolate, in 1828 was secretary to the nuncio at Paris and was made vice-legate of Bologna shortly afterwards. He became secretary of the congregation of the Disciplina Regolare, and auditor of the Apostolic Chamber under Gregory XVI., by whom he was made a cardinal in 1842. Cardinal Acton was protector of the English College at Rome, and had been mainly instrumental in the increase, in 1840, of the English vicariates-general to eight, which paved the way for the restoration of the hierarchy by Pius IX. in 1850. He died on the 23rd of June 1847.

ACTON, an urban district in the Ealing parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, suburban to London, 9 m. W. of St. Paul's Cathedral. Pop. (1861) 3151; (1901) 37,744. Its appearance is now wholly that of a modern residential suburb. The derivation offered for its name is from Oak-town, in reference to the extensive forest which formerly covered the locality. The land belonged from early times to the see of London, a grant being recorded in 1220. Henry III. had a residence here. At the time of the Commonwealth Acton was a centre of Puritanism. Philip Nye (d. 1672) was rector; Richard Baxter, Sir Matthew Hale (Lord Chief-Justice), Henry Fielding the novelist and John Lindley the botanist (d. 1865) are famous names among residents here. Acton Wells, of saline waters, had considerable reputation in the 18th century.

ACT ON PETITION, the term for a part of the procedure in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, now of infrequent occurrence. It was more freely used in the old Admiralty and Divorce courts before the Judicature Acts. (See PLEADING.)

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. This book of the Bible, which now stands fifth in the New Testament, was read at first as the companion and sequel of the Gospel of Luke. Its separation was due to growing consciousness of the Gospels as a unit of sacred records, to which Acts stood as a sort of appendix. Historically it is of unique interest and value: it has no fellow within the New Testament or without it. The so-called Apocryphal Acts of certain apostles, while witnessing to the impression produced by our Acts as a type of edifying literature, only emphasize this fact. It is the one really primitive Church history, primitive in spirit as in substance; apart from it a connected picture of the Apostolic Age would be impossible. With it, the Pauline Epistles are of priceless historical value; without it, they would remain bafflingly fragmentary and incomplete, often even misleading.

1. Plan and Aim.---All agree that the Acts of the Apostles is the work of an author of no mean skill, and that he has exercised careful selection in the use of his materials, in keeping with a definite purpose and plan. It is of moment, then, to discover from his emphasis, whether by iteration or by fulness of scale, what objects he had in mind in writing. Here it is not needful to go farther back than F. C. Baur and the Tubingen school, with its theory of sharp antitheses between Judaic and Gentile Christianity, of which they took the original apostles and Paul respectively as typical. Gradually their statement of this position underwent serious modifications, as it became realized that neither Jewish nor Gentile Christianity was a uniform genus, but included several species, and that the apostolic leaders from the first stood for mutual understanding and unity. Hence the Tubingen school did its chief work in putting the needful question, not in returning the correct answer. Their answer could not be correct, because, as Ritschl showed (in his Altkath. Kirche, 2nd ed., 1857 ), their premisses were inadequate. Still the attitude created by the Tubingen theory largely persists as a biassing element in much that is written about Acts. On the whole, however, there is a disposition to look at the book more objectively and to follow up the hints as to its aim given by the author in his opening verses. Thus (1) his second narrative is the natural sequel to his first. As the earlier one set forth in orderly sequence (kathexes) the providential stages by which Jesus was led, ``in the power of the Spirit,'' to begin the establishment of the consummated Kingdom of God, so the later work aims at setting forth on similar principles its extension by means of His chosen representatives or apostles. This involves emphasis on the identity of the power, Divine and not merely human, expressed in the great series of facts from first to last. Thus (2) the Holy Spirit appears as directing and energizing throughout the whole struggle with the powers of evil to be overcome in either ministry, of Master or disciples. But (3) the continuity is more than similarity of activity resting on the same Divine energy. The working of the energy in the disciples is conditioned by the continued life and volition of their Master at His Father's right hand in heaven. The Holy Spirit, ``the Spirit of Jesus,'' is the living link between Master and disciples. Hence the pains taken to exhibit (i. 2, 4 f. 8, ii. I ff., cf. Luke xxiv. 49) the fact of such spiritual solidarity, whereby their activity means His continued action in the world. And (4) the scope of this action is nothing less than humanity (ii. 5 ff.), especially within the Roman empire. It was foreordained that Messiah's witnesses should be borne by Divine power through all obstacles and to ever-widening circles, until they reached and occupied Rome itself for the God of Israel--now manifest (as foretold by Israel's own prophets) as the one God of the one race of mankind. (5) Finally, as we gather from the parallel account in Luke xxiv.46-48, the divinely appointed method of victory is through suffering (Acts xiv. 22). This explains the large space devoted to the tribulations of the witnesses, and their constancy amid them, after the type of their Lord Himself. It forms one side of the virtual apologia for the absence of that earthly prosperity in which the pagan mind was apt to see the token of Divine approval. Another side is the recurring exhibition of the fact that these witnesses were persecuted only by those whose action should create no bias against the persecuted. Their foes were chiefly Jews, whose opposition was due partly to a stiff-necked disinclination to bow to the wider reading of their own religion --to which the Holy Spirit had from of old been pointing (cf. the prominence given to this idea in Stephen's long speech)--and partly to jealousy of those who, by preaching the wider Messianic Evangel, were winning over the Gentiles, and particularly proselytes, in such great numbers.

Such, then, seem to be the author's main motifs. They make up an account fairly adequate to the manifoldness of the book; yet they may be summed up in three ideas, together constituting the moral which this history of the expansion of Christianity aims at bringing home to its readers. These are the universality of the Gospel, the jealousy of national Judaism, and the Divine initiative manifest in the gradual stages by which men of Jewish birth were led to recognize the Divine will in the setting aside of national restrictions, alien to the universal destiny of the Church. The practical moral is the Divine character of the Christian religion, as evinced by the manner of its extension in the empire, no less than by its original embodiment in the Founder's life and death. Thus both parts of the author's work alike tend to produce assured conviction of Christianity as of Divine origin (Luke i. 1, 4; Acts i. 1 f.).

This view has the merit of giving the book a practical religious aim--a sine qua non to any theory of an early Christian writing. though meant for men of pagan birth in the first instance, it is to them as inquirers or even converts, such as ``Theophilus,'' that the argument is addressed. In spite of all difficulties, this religion is worthy of personal belief, even though it mean opposition and suffering. Among the features of the occasion which suggested the need of such an appeal was doubtless the existence of persecution by the Roman authorites, perhaps largely at the instigation of local Judaism. To meet this special perplexity, the author holds up the picture of early days, when the great protagonist of the Gospel constantly enjoyed protection at the hands of Roman justice. It is implied that the present distress is but a passing phase, resting on some misunderstanding; meantime, the example of apostolic constancy should yield strong reassurance. The Acts of the Apostles is in fact an Apology for the Church as distinct from Judaism, the breach with which is accordingly traced with great fulness and care.

From this standpoint Acts no longer seems to end abruptly. Whether as exhibiting the Divine leading and aid, or as recording the impartial and even kindly attitude of the Roman State towards the Christians, the writer has reached a climax. ``He wished,'' as Harnack well remarks, ``to point out the might of the Holy Spirit in the apostles, Christ's witnesses; and to show how this might carried the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome and gained for it entrance into the pagan world, whilst the Jews in growing degree incurred rejection. In keeping with this, verses 26-28 of chapter xxviii. are the solemn closing verses of the work. But verses 30, 31 are an appended observation.''

Yet the writer is, in fact, ending up most fitly on one of his keynotes, in that he leaves Paul preaching in Rome itself, ``unmolested.'' ``Paulus Romae, apex Evangelii.''

The full force of this is missed by those who, while rejecting the idea that the author had in reserve enough Pauline history to furnish another work, yet hold that Paul was freed from the imprisonment amid which Acts leaves him (see PAUL). But for those, on the other hand, who see in the writer's own words in