lawyers to criminal proceedings. What are now known as ``penal
actions,'' i.e. proceedings in which an individual who has
not suffered personally by a breach of the law sues as a common
informer for the statutory penalty either on his own benefit
or on behalf also of the Crown (qui tam pro rege quam pro se
ipso), bear some analogy to the actio popularis of Roman
law, from which they are derived (see the statute 4 Hen.
VII. 1488); but they are now treated for most purposes as
civil and not as criminal proceedings. The law of Scotland
follows the lines of the civil law, and the expression
``criminal action'' is in use to distinguish proceedings
to punish offences against the public as distinguished
from civil action, brought to enforce a private right.
In the United States, and the British colonies in which English
law runs by settlement, charter, proclamation or statute,
the nature of an action is substantially the same as in
England. The differences between one state of the Union and
another, and one colony and another, depend mainly on the
extent to which the old procedure of the common law has been
abolished, simplified or reformed by local legislation.
AUTHORITIES.--Roman Law: Sohm, Institutes of Roman Law,
W. G. Ledlie (2nd ed., 1901). English Law: Pollock and
Maitland, English Law; Holmes, The Common Law; Bullen
and Leake, Prec. Pleadings (3rd ed.: 6th ed. 1905).
ACTIUM (mod. Punta), the ancient name of a promontory
in the north of Acarnania (Greece) at the mouth of the
Sinus Ambracius (Gulf of Arta) opposite Nicopolis, built
by Augustus on the north side of the strait. On the
promontory was an ancient temple of Apollo Actius, which
was enlarged by Augustus, who also, in memory of the battle,
instituted or renewed the quinquennial games called Actia
or Ludi Actiaci. Actiaca Aera was a computation of time
from the battle of Actium. There was on the promontory
a small town, or rather village, also called Actium.
History.-Actium belonged originally to the Corinthian
colonists of Anactorium, who probably founded the worship of
Apollo Actius and the Actia games; in the 3rd century it
fell to the Acarnanians, who subsequently held their synods
there. Actium is chiefly famous as the site of Octavian's
decisive victory over Mark Antony (2nd of September 31 B.C.).
This battle ended a long series of ineffectual operations.
The final conflict was provoked by Antony, who is said to have
been persuaded by Cleopatra to retire to Egypt and give battle
to mask his retreat; but lack of provisions and the growing
demoralization of his army would sufficiently account for his
decision. The fleets met outside the gulf, each over 200
strong (the totals given by ancient authorities are very
conflicting). Antony's heavy battleships endeavoured to
close and crush the enemy with their artillery; Octavian's
light and mobile craft made skilful use of skirmishing
tactics. During the engagement Cleopatra suddenly withdrew
her squadron and Antony slipped away behind her. His
flight escaped notice, and the conflict remained undecided,
until Antony's fleet was set on fire and thus annihilated.
AUTHORITIES-- Dio Cassi us, 50.12-51.3; Plutarch, Antonius,
62-68; Velleius Paterculus, ii. 84-85. C. Merivale, History
of the Romans under the Empire, iii. pp. 313-325 (London,
1851); V. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit, i. pp.
369-386, ii. pp. 189-201 (Leipzig, 1891 ): G. Ferrero
in the Revue de Paris, Mar. 15, 1906, pp. 225-243; b.
Kromayer, in Hermes, xxxiv. (1899), pp. 1-54. (M. O. B. C.)
ACT OF PARLIAMENT. An act of parliament may be regarded
as a declaration of the legislature, enforcing certain
rules of conduct, or defining rights and conferring them
upon or withholding them from certain persons or classes of
persons. The collective body of such declarations constitutes
the statutes of the realm or written law of the British
nation, in the widest sense, from Anglo-Saxon times to the
present day. It is not, however, till the earlier half
of the 13th century that, in a more limited constitutional
sense, the statute-book is generally held to open, and the
parliamentary records only begin to assume distinct outlines
late in the reign of Edward I. It gradually became a fixed
constitutional principle that an act of parliament, to be
valid, must express concurrently the will of the entire
legislature. It was not, however, till the reign of Henry
VI. that it became customary, as now, to introduce bills into
parliament in the form of finished acts; and the enacting
clause, regarded by constitutionalists as the first perfect
assertion, in words, of popular right, came into general
use as late as the reign of Charles II. It is thus expressed
in the case of all acts other than those granting money to
the crown:---``Be it enacted by the King's most excellent
Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords
Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this present Parliament
assembled, and by the authority of the same.'' Where the
act is a money grant the enacting clause is prefaced by the
words, ``Most gracious Sovereign, we, Your Majesty's most
dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, towards
making good the supply1 which we have cheerfully granted
to Your Majesty in this session of Parliament, have resolved
to grant unto Your Majesty the sums hereinafter mentioned;
and do therefore most humbly beseech Your Majesty that it
may be enacted, &c.'' The use of the preamble with which
acts are usually prefaced is thus quaintly set forth by Lord
Coke: ``The rehearsal or preamble of the statute is a good
meane to find out the meaning of the statute, and, as it
were, a key to open the understanding thereof'' (Co. Litt.
79a). Originally the collective acts of each session formed
but one statute, to which a general title was attached,
and for this reason an act of parliament was up to 1892
generally cited as the chapter of a particular statute, e.g.
24 and 25 Vict. c. 101. Titles were, however, prefixed to
individual acts as early as 1488. Now, by the Short Titles
Act 1892, it is optional to cite most important acts up
to that date by their short titles, either individually or
collectively. Most modern acts have borne short titles
independently of the act of 1892. (See PARLIAMENT; STATUTE.)
1 Where the grant is not of supply, the preamble varies a
little, e.g. in the Prince of Wales's Children Act 1889.
ACTON (JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG ACTON), IST BARON
(1834-1902), English historian, only son of Sir Richard Acton,
7th baronet, and grandson of the Neapolitan admiral, Sir J.
F. E. Acton, 6th baronet (q.v.), was born at Naples on the
10th of January 1834. His grandfather, who had succeeded
in 1791 to the baronetcy and family estates in Shropshire,
previously held by the English branch of the Acton family,
represented a younger branch which had transferred itself
first to France and then to Italy, but by the extinction of the
elder branch the admiral became head of the family; his eldest
son, Richard, had married Marie Louise Pelline, the daughter
and heiress of Emerich Joseph, duc de Dalberg (q.v.), a
naturalized French noble of ancient German lineage who had
entered thc French service under Napoleon and represented
Louis XVIII. at the congress of Vienna in 1814, and after
Sir Richard Acton's death in 1837 she became (1840) the
wife of the 2nd Earl Granville. Coming of a Roman Catholic
family, young Acton was educated at Oscott till 1848 under
Dr (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, and then at Edinburgh,
and at Munich under Dollinger, whose lifelong friend he
became. He had wished to go to Cambridge, but for a Roman
Catholic this was then impossible. By Dollinger he was
inspired with a deep love of historical research and a profound
conception of its functions as a critical instrument. He was
a master of the chief foreign languages, and began at an early
age to collect a magnificent historical library, with the
object, never in fact realized, of writing a great History of
Liberty. In politics he was always an ardent Liberal. Without
being a notable traveller, he spent much time in the chief
intellectual centres of Europe, and in the United States,
and numbered among his friends such men as Montalembert, De
Tocqueville. Fustel de Coulanges, Bluntschli, von Sybel and
Ranke. He was attached to Lord Granville's mission to Moscow,
as British representative at the coronation of Alexander II. in
1856. In 1859 Sir John Acton settled in England, at his country
house, Aldenham, in Shropshire. He was returned to the House
of Commons in that year for the Irish borough of Carlow, and
became a devoted admirer and adherent of Mr Gladstone; but he
was practically a silent member, and his parliamentary career
came to an end after the general election of 1865, when,
having headed the poll for Bridgnorth, he was unseated on a
scrutiny; he contested Bridgnorth again in 1868, but without
success. Meanwhile he had become editor of the Roman Catholic
monthly paper, the Rambler, in 1859, on J. H. Newman's
retirement from the editorship; and in 1862 he merged this
periodical in the Home and Foreign Review. His contributions
at once gave evidence of his remarkable wealth of historical
knowledge. But though a sincere Roman Catholic, his whole
spirit as a historian was hostile to ultramontane pretensions,
and his independence of thought and liberalism of view
speedily brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic
hierarchy. As early as August 1862, Cardinal Wiseman publicly
censured the Review; and when in 1864, after Dollinger's
appeal at the Munich Congress for a less hostile attitude
towards historical criticism, the pope issued a declaration
that the opinions of Catholic writers were subject to the
authority of the Roman congregations, Acton felt that there
was only one way of reconciling his literary conscience with
his ecclesiastical loyalty, and he stopped the publication of
his monthly periodical. He continued, however, to contribute
articles to the North British Review, which, previously
a Scottish Free Church organ, had been acquired by friends
in sympathy with him, and which for some years (until 1872,
when it ceased to appear) actively promoted the interests of
a high-class Liberalism in both temporal and ecclesiastical
matters; he also did a good deal of lecturing on historical
subjects. In 1865 he married the Countess Marie, daughter
of the Bavarian Count Arco-Valley, by whom he had one son
and three daughters. In 1869 he was raised to the peerage
by Gladstone as Baron Acton; he was an intimate friend and
constant correspondent of the Liberal leader, and the two
men had the very highest regard for one another. Matthew
Arnold used to say that ``Gladstone influences all round
him but Acton; it is Acton who influences Gladstone.''
In 1870 came the great crisis in the Roman Catholic world
over the promulgation by Pius IX. of the dogma of papal
infallibility. Lord Acton, who was in complete sympathy on
this subject with Dollinger (q.v.), went to Rome in order
to throw all his influence against it, but the step he so much
dreaded was not to be averted. The Old Catholic separation
followed, but Acton did not personally join the seceders,
and the authorities prudently refrained from forcing the
hands of so competent and influential an English layman. In
1874, when Gladstone published his pamphlet on The Vatican
Decrees, Lord Acton wrote during November and December a
series of remarkable letters to The Times, illustrating
