THE inflexible integrity of the moral code is to me the secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of history. If we may debase the currency for the sake of genius or success or reputation, we may debase it for the sake of a man's influence, of his religion, of his party, of the good cause which prospers by his credit and suffers by his disgrace. Then History ceases to be a science, an arbiter of controversy, a guide of the wanderer; it serves where it ought to reign, and it serves the worst cause better than the purest.
Of course I know that you do sometimes censure great men severely; but the doctrine I am contesting appears in your preface. I am sure you will take this long and contentious letter* more as a testimony of hearty confidence and respect than of hostility, although as far as I grasp your method I do not agree with it. Mine seems to me plainer and safer.
abridged by Louise Creighton
* The strength of Acton’s feeling had certainly taken Creighton aback. “Now he sends me a review” Creighton complained to his publisher, with gentle remonstrance, “which reads to me like the utterances of a man who is in a furious passion, but is incapable of clear expression”. Perhaps that is because Acton was not really attacking Creighton: his target was an imaginary historian who might take Creighton’s method too far, the historian who for religion, for party or for a ‘good cause’ is willing to hire himself out to the Powerful by suppressing uncomfortable facts. It was Creighton’s misfortune that his mildness awoke a slumbering grievance.