As for the Mensageiro, its articles are open to all who choose to read them, and the doctrines there expressed as to the responsibility of the electorate in regard of legislation and its execution, as to the solidarity of the members of our party, its traditions, programme and political life, are after all only those which are common amongst every people with whom the principles of civic culture and the social obligations of Catholics have not been so lamentably forgotten as with us. Only those who realize how utterly all is ignored which has been ventilated in these subjects outside Portugal, by episcopal pastorals, ecclesiastical instructions, and the zealous propaganda of the press, can explain the astonishment of many Portuguese, to whom conclusions concerning morals and conduct which elsewhere were familiar to all seemed altogether novel. But however we may differ in regard of such matters, what kind of liberty would a country enjoy in which a theologian or moralist was not permitted to express the doctrines in which he believed or to write in periodicals on subjects of his special study? As to the journal Portugal, a letter from its editor-in-chief published a few days ago may take the place of a reply. In it he declares that during the latest phase of the paper, precisely that in which it was most fiercely attacked for its polemical attitude, the society had no share whatever. In saying this I have no desire to shirk responsibility, or to express disapproval of the energy displayed by the Catholic press. Far from it. Truth must be vigorously championed, and the more so in proportion as the enemies of religion claim for themselves unrestrained license of language and calumny. They cannot indeed be fought with their own weapons, which honor and Christian charity forbid us to use, but at least they must be encountered with unflinching courage and resolute independence. A revolutionary journal lately published a letter of mine in which I asked a correspondent to interest himself in obtaining support for those responsible for the "Portugal." I say nothing of the surreptitious publication of a private letter, nor of the insidious comments by which it was accompanied. I would only observe that the interest which I exhibited in this undertaking shows no more than that its general drift was in accord with my own views. Is there any offense in this?--even were it a fact that the articles written during the last stage of this newspaper were in reality ours.