And here I may perhaps be allowed to express my opinion that Mr. Arthur's words deserve to be very widely read and quoted. It would be hard to find a book that would shed more light on many of the most urgent questions of to-day. As an _annus mirabilis_ of history, 1870 may yet take its place with 1453 or 1789. It was the year in which the Jesuits signalized the triumphant consummation of a struggle, waged during more than three centuries, for the capture of the Papacy. It was the year in which the new Vaticanism was formally constituted, and in which it gave the world notice, plainly and ostentatiously, of the policy to which it held itself committed. It was also the year of the Franco-Prussian war, a mighty convulsion which was after all but an incident in the great drama of Vaticanism, as Mr. Arthur, amongst others, has clearly shown. I have said elsewhere that "the Jesuits, who brought France to the verge of ruin in 1870, seemed on the very point of completing their work of destruction a year or two since; and [that] he would be a very bold man who would dare to say that the peril had passed even yet."[2] The writer who makes such a statement assumes a grave responsibility; but if any one wishes to know how abundantly the statement can be justified he has only to turn to Mr. Arthur's pages. Mr. Arthur demands from us no confiding trustfulness. Even at some expense to the flow of his narrative, he wisely made his work a repertory of contemporary documents, either transcribed entire or quoted with great fulness. Without resort to _ex parte_ representations of adversaries, we may thus learn from the Vatican's own organs that clerical education, which has so signally proved itself the bane of modern France, is the very groundwork of Vaticanism. And from the impressive picture of the remorse that embittered Montalembert's last hours as he looked back on the share he had taken long before in shaping the educational policy of his country, we may perhaps learn the great lesson of distinguishing between a false liberalism and the true. Never more than in this instance is the history of the past the key to the present; and no man, unless his acquaintance with Vaticanism is of quite exceptional extent, can rise from the perusal of this book without feeling that he has obtained a momentous and far-reaching addition to his stock of religious and, perhaps even more, of political knowledge. W. BLAIR NEATBY. _November, 1903._ PREFACE The sources of the information contained in this work are, 1. Official documents; 2. Histories having the sanction of the Pope or of bishops; 3. Scholastic works of the present pontificate, and of recognized authority; 4. Periodicals and journals, avowed organs of the Vatican or of its policy, with books and pamphlets by bishops and other Ultramontane writers; 5. The writings of Liberal Catholics.