I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men... There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
--- John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Action, 1st Baron Acton (In a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 1887.)---
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