Acton, John Emerich Edward Dahlberg Acton, 1st Baron

Acton (of Aldenham), John Emerich Edward Dahlberg Acton, 1st Baron

(born Jan.10, 1834, Naples, Kingdom of Naples—died June 19, 1902, Tegernsee, Bavaria, German Empire) English historian. He served in the House of Commons (1859–65). Editor of the Roman Catholic monthly The Rambler (1859–64), he resigned because of papal criticism of his scientific approach to history. An adviser to William E. Gladstone from 1865, he was raised to the peerage in 1869. In 1895 he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. He later coordinated the massive publication project of The Cambridge Modern History. A critic of nationalism, he coined the familiar aphorism “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”