the bad taste to seek to conceal or disguise it. I could never
have written my book without the knowledge I have, as a Catholic,
of Catholic theology, and my acquaintance, slight as it is, with
the great fathers and doctors of the church, the great masters of
all that is solid or permanent in modern thought, either with
Catholics or non-Catholics.

Moreover, though I write for all Americans, without distinction
of sect or party, I have had more especially in view the people
of my own religious communion. It is no discredit to a man in
the United States at the present day to be a firm, sincere, and
devout Catholic. The old sectarian prejudice may remain with a
few, "whose eyes," as Emerson says, "are in their hind-head, not
in their fore-head;" but the American people are not at heart
sectarian, and the nothingarianism so prevalent among them only
marks their state of transition from sectarian opinions to
positive Catholic faith. At any rate, it can no longer be
denied that Catholics are an integral, living, and growing
element in the American population, quite too numerous, too
wealthy, and too influential to be ignored. They have played too
conspicuous a part in the late troubles of the country, and
poured out too freely and too much of their richest and noblest
blood in defence of the unity of the nation and the integrity of
its domain, for that. Catholics henceforth must be treated as
standing, in all respects, on a footing of equality with any
other class of American citizens, and their views of political
science, or of any other science, be counted of equal importance,
and listened to with equal attention.

I have no fears that my book will be neglected because avowedly