s sanction
for their work. If we were unable to reconcile these two
necessities,--if we were compelled to choose between a forbearance
dishonourable to ourselves, and a refutation injurious to the Cardinal,
we should be placed in a painful and almost inextricable difficulty. For
a Catholic who defends himself at the expense of an ecclesiastical
superior sacrifices that which is generally of more public value than
his own fair fame; and an English Catholic who casts back on Cardinal
Wiseman the blame unjustly thrown on himself, hurts a reputation which
belongs to the whole body, and disgraces the entire community of
Catholics. By such a course, a Review which exists only for public
objects would stultify its own position and injure its own cause, and
_The Home and Foreign Review_ has no object to attain, and no views to
advance, except objects and views in which the Catholic Church is
interested. The ends for which it labours, according to its light and
ability, are ends by which the Church cannot but gain; the doctrine it
receives, and the authority it obeys, are none other than those which
command the acceptance and submission of the Cardinal himself. It
desires to enjoy his support; it has no end to gain by opposing him. But
we are not in this painful dilemma. We can show that the accusations of
the Cardinal are unjust; and, at the same time, we can explain how
naturally the suppositions on which they are founded have arisen, by
giving a distinct and ample statement of our own principles and
position.

The complaint which the Cardinal makes against us contains,
substantially, five charges: (1) that we made a misstatement, affirming
something historically false to be historically true; (2) that the
falsehood consists in the statement that only two addresses were
proposed in the Commission--one violent, the other very moderate,--and
that the address finally adopted was a compromise between these two; (3)
that we insinuated that the Cardinal himself was the author of the
violent address; (4) that we cast, by implication, a severe censure on
that address and its author; and (5) that our narrative was derived from
the same sources, and inspired by the same motives, as that given in
_The Patrie_,--for the Cardinal distinctly connects the two accounts,
and quotes passages indifferently from both, in such a way that words
which we never used might by a superficial reader be supposed to be
ours.

To these charges our reply