May He who has given to our nation the blessings of free prayer, free preaching, free writing, free speech, and free assembly, with their wholesome fruit of equal laws, tempered power, and moderated liberty, grant that this humble labour may in some measure contribute to make those inestimable boons dearer than ever to the hearts of our people, and that it may contribute also to place them in a position more readily to foil every endeavour to snatch those boons or to steal them away from us and from mankind!
[Footnote 1: Considerably more than a fifth of the original matter has been omitted. Whenever a quotation has been abridged, the usual marks have been employed to indicate the hiatus.]
[Footnote 2: _The Programme of the Jesuits_, Preface, p. v.]
[Footnote 3: See _Civiltá_, Serie VI. vol vi. pp. 5-15.]
ON CARDINAL MANNING'S "TRUE STORY OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL"
Had not the time occupied in bringing out this work far exceeded my expectations, it would have appeared as early as the first portion of Cardinal Manning's "True Story of the Vatican Council," in the pages of the _Nineteenth Century_. As it is, I have been able to read the fourth paper, in which the Cardinal concludes his narrative of the Council itself, though he intimates an intention of hereafter adding comments on extraneous matters. I cannot but feel that, in more respects than one, the appearance of the _True Story_ immediately before that of this book is an advantage. The general reader is thus supplied with means of checking many of my statements, and of estimating the value of my authorities. Although this advantage is limited to such ground as is common to the _True Story_ and to my history, that ground is a portion of sufficient importance to afford some criterion for judging of the whole. One of my fears, arising from the way in which, both in recent controversies and in former ones, authorities have been dealt with before the English public, was that we might find it soberly intimated that Cecconi was not a writer of high credit, that the _Civiltá Cattolica_ was a private magazine, that the _Acta Genuina_ of Theiner was a publication brought out in an obscure place, and so on through the list. Now, however, the reliance placed by Cardinal Manning on authorities which supply essential features of my narrative, and the importance unwillingly assigned by him to others frequently cited by me, will act as a restraint on those who might have made light of them.