4 PREFACE. 



book to accomplish in some moasure what was intended 

 by it. No one, I am sure, can have been more sensible 

 of its defects than myself. 



This revised edition has the benefit of criticisms made 

 on earlier editions. It surely is not strange that among 

 some thousands of statements of fact a number of errors 

 should have been found, due in most instances to having 

 accepted statements or estimates from men eminent 

 enough, but not authorities on the point quoted ; e.g., 

 Mr. Gladstone's estimate (p. 98.) that "manufacturing 

 power, by the aid of machinery, doubles for the world 

 once in seven years," which, it appears, is altogether ex- 

 travagant. I may add that none of the errors referred 

 to was essential to the argument, and therefore did not 

 invalidate its conclusions. 



Our Roman Catholic friends have objected, and quite 

 justly, that the Pope's utterances were not quoted liter- 

 ally. That no injustice might be done, it was my inten- 

 tion in the first edition to take all statements of Roman 

 Catholic teaching or policy from Roman Catholics 

 themselves, but as I then had no access to original 

 sources of information, I was obliged to take quota- 

 tions second-hand from Protestant writers. Six years 

 ago there w^as very little agitation of the Roman Catholic 

 question and reliable information was then much more 

 difficult to obtain. The utterances of the Pope quoted 

 were taken from " Fate of Republics," in which the prop- 

 ositions of the " Syllabus of Errors," issued by Pius IX., 

 December 8, 1864, w^ere put in positive instead of negative 

 form, which does to some extent change their force and 

 perhaps their meaning. Although I had then no reason 

 to doubt the literalness of the quotations, I made re- 

 peated but unsuccessful efforts to obtain the Latin orig- 

 inal by which to verifj^ them. 



No Roman Catholic, however, will have occasion to 

 criticise the revision on any such ground. 



It having been decided that the book would bear some 

 enlargement, explanatory notes have been added more 

 freely than was practicable in the narrower limits of the 



