Produced by Bryan Ness, David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD. APRIL, 1865. MEMOIRS OF MY MINISTRY. BY CARDINAL CONSALVI. In the lonely hours of his exile at Rheims, whither he had been banished by Napoleon for having refused to assist at the imperial marriage with Maria Louisa, Cardinal Consalvi found employment in tracing from memory an outline of the great affairs which had occupied him during his ministry as Secretary of State. It was no self-love nor mean desire of praise that induced the man of action thus to become the historian of his own deeds. To the same zeal which had nerved him in his conflicts for the cause of the Church, do we owe the truthful record he has left us of the fortunes of these conflicts in which the Holy See was so audaciously attacked and so successfully defended. The thought that, perhaps, one day his words might be of advantage to the interests of religion, or might supply weapons for its defence, was a motive strong enough to influence him to undertake the task under circumstances the most unfavourable that can well be imagined. "I have drawn up these memoirs", he writes, "at most critical moments; how critical, may well be imagined when I mention, that as soon as I have finished a page I must hide it at once in a safe place, so as to secure it from the unforeseen perquisitions to which at all times we are exposed.... I am without notes either to guide or to confirm my reminiscences. I have not the leisure, nor the tranquillity, nor the security, nor the liberty which I require, if I would enrich my narrative with comments and becoming ornaments.... If God grant me life and better days, I hope to give to my work all that perfection of form and style which is at present beyond my power".