Noblemen, and Gentlemen, when the Catholic looks back on the _past_, he will learn to hope well of the _future_. He will observe, that the irritating objections of former times, are now almost shamed out of Parliament, and can hardly support their credit, even among the most suspicious, and least informed Protestants. He will see, that our opponents have uniformly been compelled, to shift their ground from position to position, and after pertinaciously defending each, have ended by abandoning _it_, and retreating to _another_. At first, the Catholics were accused of favouring the claims of the Stuarts, but the extinction of that family, has put an end to that charge. We were then told, that the Catholics, could not be bound _by oath_, though _oaths_, had been wisely devised as the _best safeguards_, against their supposed perfidy. Next, the fathers of the great Council of Latern, were marshalled against us; as if men were to be punished at the _present_ day, because Protestants will not understand the regulations of feudal Princes, and feudal Prelates _six centuries ago_. Afterwards, we were reproached with the deposing powers, and temporal pretensions of the Pope; these were set at rest at _that time_ (and we had hoped _for ever_,) by the answers of the foreign Universities. Lastly, came the Coronation Oath, men, however, could not be persuaded that the Sovereign, by promising to maintain the liberties of the Protestant Church, was bound to deprive of their civil rights all those, who might dissent from the spiritual creed of that Church. Each of these arguments in its day, was deemed _unanswerable_, but _each_ has _yielded to discussion_. _Past_ advantages, therefore, Noblemen and Gentlemen, are an earnest to the Catholic of _future_ success; and after the hour of the late excitement, about the Pope's temporal and spiritual power, has passed away, I am sure, all sensible, and unbiassed Englishmen will see, that the late hubbub, has been an _ignus fatuus_ of imaginations distorted with fear, and alarm, which had well nigh, misled the whole nation, into a quagmire of inconsistency, illiberality and revolution. _Catholic Chapel House, Ugthorp, near Whitby, January 21st, 1851._ TO THE READER.