In his inaugural lecture at Cambridge as Regius Professor of Modern History in 1895, Lord John Acton urged that the historian deliver moral judgments on the figures of his research. Acton declaimed: “I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.” (Acton 1906, 234) / In 1902, the year after Acton died, the president of the American Historical Association, Henry Lea, in dubious celebration of his British colleague, responded to the exordium with a contrary claim about the historian's obligation, namely, objectively to render the facts of history without subjective moralizing. Referring to Acton's lecture, Lea declared: “I must confess that to me all this seems to be based on false premises and to lead to unfortunate conclusions as to the objects and purposes of history, however much it may serve to give point and piquancy to a narrative, to stimulate the interests of the causal reader by heightening lights and deepening shadows, and to subserve the purpose of propagating the opinions of the writer.” (Lea 1904, 234)