...the historian's function is to sit in judgement. He was concerned that historians should be at pains ‘never to debase the moral currency or to lower...standard of rectitude but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which...

...Modern History at Cambridge in 1895, Acton counseled the young historians-tobe sitting in his audience "to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong" (Acton 1972:24). But then, again, we also find in Acton's writings passages such as the following:...

...said in 1895 during his Inaugural Address as Regius Professor of History at Oxford, “I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the same maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty...

...lower the standard of rectitude, but try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflect on wrong . . . The progress of civilization depends on preserving, at infinite cost, which...