imposed upon an independent historian by the necessity of submission to the opinions of Roman Congregations, such as that of the Index. It was in the year 1863, when his periodical was some four years old, that Pius IX. issued a Brief to the Archbishop of Munich in which he affirmed that
"it is not enough for learned Catholics to receive and venerate the dogmas of the Church, but there is also need that they should submit themselves to the doctrinal decisions of the pontifical congregations."
This Papal Brief made no reference to Lord Acton or to the Home and Foreign Review, but it vitally affected the principles upon which that periodical had been throughout its short existence of four years conducted. For its principles were these:—
"To reconcile freedom of enquiry with implicit faith, and to discountenance what is untenable and unreal, without forgetting the tenderness due to the weak, or the reverence rightly claimed for what is sacred. Submitting without reserve to infallible authority, it will encourage a habit of manly investigation on subjects of scientific interest."
This means a claim for freedom in the province of opinion, and a right to the fearless assertion of historic truth. But how was it possible to reconcile that freedom with the literary decisions of such a Congregation as that of the Index? Consequently Lord Acton wrote a signed article in the Review, bearing the significant title, "Conflicts with Rome." It is written with admirable self-command and dignity, with the frankest confession of loyalty to truth from whatever sources derived, and under a solemn sense of the impossibility of reconciling the encroachment of Roman Authority with the independence essential to historic science. In
