Essays on Freedom and Power

07/22/1949 Lord Acton

Tags: Big Government

Freedom and Power collects Lord Acton’s most important writings on a theme that would define his reputation for more than a century: the corruptions of power. In addition, the reader learns from his love of liberty as the great creative force in culture and society. This is the great collection of this giant of the late 19th century, published first in 1948 and republished by the Mises Institute .

Lord Acton might have been the last in a long line of a particular type of liberal before the time of Mises himself. He still has much to teach us, and no liberal education can be truly complete without a thorough knowledge of his understanding of the history and meaning of liberty..

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Meet the Author

Lord Acton

Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 1834–1902) was a leading 19th-century historian in the classical-liberal tradition. He watched the growth of the United States with great interest, and lamented the decline of states’ rights and federalism. While he was a prolific writer and speaker, his great work, a history of freedom, was never completed.

The History of Freedom in Christianity

06/02/2025 Articles of Interest Lord Acton

When Constantine the Great carried the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople he set up in the market-place of the new capital a porphyry pillar which had come from Egypt, and of which a strange...

The History of Freedom in Antiquity

04/23/2025 Articles of Interest Lord Acton

Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened...

American Federalism and the Civil War

03/29/2010 Mises Daily Lord Acton

It is remarkable that the Constitution was little trusted or admired by the wisest and most illustrious of its founders, and that its severest and most desponding critics were those whom Americans revere as the fathers of their country.

View Lord Acton bio and works

References

The Beacon Press, Boston, Mass., 1949.

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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