"The principles of law must stand, he [Hugo Grotius] said, even if we suppose that there is no God. By these inaccurate terms he meant that they must be found independently of Revelation. From that time it became possible to make politics a matter of principle and of conscience, so that men and nations differing in all other things could live in peace together, under the sanctions of a common law." John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, First Lord Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power [Glencoe, IL: Free Press] 1948, 45.

Much material for reflection on the occasion of Acton's 173rd birthday (a nice round number) may be found in my contribution to LewRockwell.com last April. For links to essays by Acton, Himmelfarb, Rothbard, and Smith, as well as a response to an anti-Actonian historian by the Flogger, see my Acton page.