ABSTRACT
The Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, a body of men who had been for too long excluded from political privilege became once more citizens of the State. The Napoleonic adventure, moreover, had done much to check men's fears of a Catholic revival. The political edifice of the temporal power seemed less secure than at any former time in modern history. Emancipation came as the half-unwilling and half-accomplished recognition of the error inherent in a theory of sovereignty which, because it makes political outcasts of those whose intimate beliefs it fails to control, is at war with all the deeper realities of human life. Lord Acton's life was spent in repelling at once the claims either of Church or State to a unique sovereignty over the minds of men. The episode is more theoretically than practically important. It is clear that to the majority of Englishmen the effect of the new Ultramontanism was to invade the integrity of English sovereignty.
