This fact gives the key to what seems to many an unsolved contradiction, that the man who said what he did say and fought as he had fought should yet declare in private that it had never occurred to him to doubt any single dogma of his Church, and assert in public that communion with it was "dearer than life itself" Yet all the evidence both of his writings and his most intimate associates confirms this view. His opposition to the doctrine of infallibility was ethical and political rather than theological. As he wrote to Doellinger, the evil lay deeper, and Vaticanism was but the last triumph of a policy that was centuries old. Unless he were turned out of her he would see no more reason to leave the Church of his baptism on account of the Vatican Decrees than on account of those of the Lateran Council. To the dogma of the Immaculate Conception he had no hostility. And could not understand Doellinger's condemnation of it, or reconcile it with his previous utterances. He had great sympathy with the position of Liberal High Anglicans; but there is not the slightest reason to suppose that he ever desired to join the English Church. Even with the old Catholic movement he had no sympathy, and dissuaded his friends from joining it.[1] All forms of Gallicanism were distasteful to Acton, and he looked to the future for the victory of his ideas. His position in the Roman Church symbolises in an acute form what may be called the soul's tragedy of the whole nineteenth century, but Acton had not the smallest inclination to follow either Gavazzi or Lamennais. It was, in truth, the unwavering loyalty of his churchmanship and his far-reaching historical sense that enabled him to attack with such vehemence evils which he believed to be accidental and temporary, even though they might have endured for a millennium. Long searching of the vista of history preserved Acton from the common danger of confusing the eternal with what is merely lengthy. To such a mind as his, it no more occurred to leave the Church because he disapproved some of its official procedure, than it would to an Englishman to surrender his nationality when his political opponents came into office. He distinguished, as he said Froschammer ought to have done, between the authorities and the authority of the Church. He had a strong belief in the doctrine of development, and felt that it would prove impossible in the long run to bind the Christian community to any explanation of the faith which should have a non-Christian or immoral tendency. He left it to time and the common conscience to clear the dogma from association with dangerous political tendencies, for his loyalty to the institution was too deep to be affected by his dislike of the _Camarilla_ in power. He not only did not desire to leave the Church, but took pains to make his confession and receive absolution immediately after his letters appeared in the _Times_. It must also be stated that so far from approving Mr.