PREFACE.

THE REV. T. A. LACEY AND MR. WALSH.

The Rev. T. A. Lacey writes to us as follows:

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SIR,-The reason why I "waited sixteen months" before dealing with Mr. Walsh is that I was indignant, not so much at his original statement, which I attributed to honest stupidity, but rather at his sticking to it when corrected, which I can only put down to malice.

Mr. Walsh's original statement was that I printed privately in Rome a document which I never dreamt would see the light of day in England, but "somehow or other the Tablet got hold of a copy and published it " on November 7th, 1896.

A reviewer pointed out (1) that I had myself called attention to this document in the press and at the Church Congress a month before this publication in the Tablet; (2) that it had been " widely circulated both in England and abroad"; and (3) that copies were placed in the readingroom of the Church Congress.

In his next edition Mr. Walsh retained his insinuation unchanged, ignoring the first and second parts of this correction, and saying on the third that he "never saw a single copy" of the document in the reading

room.

It was this treatment that I indignantly complained of in The Church Times.

Mr. Walsh now returns to the charge in the old style of odious insinuation. He appears to claim the power to read hearts. Note the italics below. He says:-"When the Roman priests in this country and abroad had called attention to Mr. Lacey's document then, but not till then, he was unwillingly compelled to give it a circulation in England." Again, "When it could no longer be kept back from the public, a virtue was made of necessity, and 'some few copies' were sent round to the libraries."

The facts are these, and Mr. Walsh knows them, for they are set out in the authorities which he quotes. The attack made on me by "Roman priests in this country and abroad" was strictly private until I myself called attention to it in the Guardian. It was entirely my own doing, and no one else's, that any public notice was ever drawn to the pamphlet. Moreover, long before this public notice, many copies had been freely circulated in England, and of this also Mr. Walsh has been informed. I have one thing more to add. Mr. Walsh said that he "never saw a single copy " of this pamphlet in the reading-room of the Church Congress. In The Church Times of February 10th I categorically stated that I had myself called Mr. Walsh's attention to it in the reading-room. I observe that he passes by this without answer.

Mr. Walsh's reply was as follows:

If I have done any one an injury in the above extract it is, not Mr. Lacey, but the Tablet, when I say that "somehow or other " it got hold of a copy. I did not intend that to imply that the Tablet got its copy in any unfair way, but if it is open to that inference, or to the inference that Mr. Lacey was unwilling to let that paper have a copy I now withdraw it, not as untrue in itself, but as liable to misunderstanding. What I meant to convey to my readers was that I did not know how it got a copy, nor, as a matter of fact, do I know now. That Mr. Lacey, when he first issued his pamphlet, never dreamt that such a document would ever see the light of day in

England," I still believe to be true, and I am quite certain that its being made public in England was an afterthought, the result of the Romish attacks upon it. I have already quoted Mr. Lacey's own statement in the Guardian of October 7th, 1896, that "it was printed for private circulation, and it consisted of matter so familiar to every instructed Englishman, that there would be no point in circulating it in England." What is that but an acknowledgment, by Mr Lacey himself, that when he first "privately' issued it, he had no intention of "circulating it in England," which is exactly, though in other words, what I have said in my book? I have, therefore, told only the truth, and do not deserve to be insulted with charges of "honest stupidity" and "malice."

What, then, induced Mr. Lacey to afterwards circulate his pamphlet in England? He told the Shrewsbury Church Congress that "now that it has been challenged [that is, by Don Gaspard and Canon Moyes'] I am not afraid of the public seeing it, and I have consented to its publication." It is, therefore, evident, that up to the time when the Roman priests replied, Mr. Lacey was not willing, that is, had not willed to circulate it in England. In my remarks in the English Churchman, of March 16th, I drew from these facts the inference that Mr. Lacey was unwillingly compelled to give it a circulation in England." I think that was a very natural inference to draw, nor can I see that there is any "abominable insinuation in it.

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Mr. Lacey now assures us that he, and he alone, first called attention to his pamphlet in this country. Of that I was not aware when on March 16th I wrote in the English Churchman:-" When it could no longer be kept back from the public a virtue was made of necessity, and some 'few copies' were sent round to the libraries." That assertion I now willingly withdraw, on learning the facts of the case, for the first time, from Mr. Lacey himself. But nothing Mr. Lacey has written would, I think, justify me in explaining any part of the statement in my Secret History which has raised his anger, excepting the words "somehow or other,' which, though strictly true of the Tablet, are liable to be misunderstood. As to Mr. Lacey's assertion that at the Shrewsbury Church Congress he called my attention to copies of his pamphlet in the reading-room, I can only say that I have not the slightest recollection of his having done so, nor can I conceive how I could have forgotten an event in which I must necessarily have taken the deepest interest.

392 CLAPHAM ROAD, LONDON, S.W., April 5th.

WALTER WALSH.

The Church Review is good enough to begin its lengthy criticism of my book by saying that at a certain meeting of the E. C. U., at which I was present, I "behaved like a gentleman "; and it assures its readers that "whenever we say or suggest that any statement of Mr. Walsh is not true we shall not impute deliberate untruth." Well, this, at any rate, is a vast improvement on the Billingsgate style adopted by The Church Times, and makes me all the more willing to give special attention to what it has to say.

In the first place, the Church Review calls attention to my assertion that there are private burial grounds in Ritualistic

Convents. It does not deny their existence, but invites its Ritualistic readers to send on information about these places, and expresses a special anxiety for "a description of this private burial ground in Ascot Priory" to which I had alluded by name. That invitation appeared in the Church Review of February 23rd, 1899, but down to the time I write no answer has appeared in its columns. There can, I venture again to suggest, be no valid reason for the existence of these private burial grounds within convent walls, and the sooner they are closed by the authority of Government the better it will be for the country.

The Church Review is much disturbed because I have quoted testimonies from prominent Roman Catholics acknowledging the important services rendered to the Church of Rome by the Ritualists. This is a kind of testimony which is very unpalatable to the Romanizers. Yet even the Church Review admits (p. 119) that "it cannot be too often repeated that what is called Ritualism, where it stops at fussy ceremonialism, may disgust devout souls and suggest secession"; but it earnestly pleads that "where the Catholic faith and religion is lived, as well as taught, then secession to Rome is most powerfully hindered." I have never denied that, in a few instances, Ritualistic priests do succeed in preventing some of their followers going over to Rome; but I believe that in most of these cases it is by means of the unworthy tactics suggested by Dr. Littledale, who maintained that the only way to prevent would-be seceders from going over to Rome "is to give them here [in the Church of England] what they are going to look for" in Rome. (Defence of Church Principles. Secessions to Rome. By the Rev. Dr. Littledale. Page 4. Mowbray.) Loyal Churchmen, however, object more strongly against Popery within the Church of England than against the same thing in its legitimate place-the Church of Rome. In proof of the services rendered to the Papacy by the Oxford Movement, I have quoted the testimonies of Pope Gregory XVI., the Roman Catholic Rambler, Cardinal Manning, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (as against Dr. Pusey) (pp. 251, 252), the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, the organ of the Irish priesthood, the Roman Catholic Ransomer, the Rev. Father Whelan, and the Month, the organ of the English Jesuits, all acknowledging that the Ritualistic Movement is a great benefit to the Church of Rome. And to this I may now add that every list of prominent seceders to Rome which

has been published confirms the opinions I have quoted. All that the Church Review has to say on the other side is that a Father Selley, of Cork, has announced that as to the many perverts he had received into the Roman Communion "they have been nearly all from the ranks of the Low Church part of the Establishment." But I may well ask, what else could be expected in Cork? In that town there are no Ritualists to pervert. Then we are told that a Mr. E. Peacock, F.S.A., believed that "the Ritualists are the main hindrance to conversion at the present time.' But we have yet to learn the value of Mr. Peacock's testimony. Was he, a layman, more likely to know the facts of the case than Pope Gregory XVI., Cardinal Manning, and the English Jesuits whom I have quoted? And all this testimony is strengthened and confirmed by the testimony of Pope Leo XIII., which has been published in the Morning Leader, to the effect that he expects the Ritualists as a body will soon come over to him, and become "Catholics " in reality.

But it seems that "Bishop Bilsborough, of Salford, told the late Duke of Devonshire some years ago" that "for one convert from the Vicar's Church he received ten from the Nonconformists." No reference is given in proof of this conversation having ever been held, and until it is forthcoming I may pass it over as valueless, merely adding that if it were a true statement, the case of this one parish would be but "the exception which proves the rule." Next the Church Review quotes the testimony of Monsignor Capel, made many years after he had left England for America, when he was far away from the original sources of information. Any one who has read Purcell's Life of Cardinal Manning will marvel much at the Church Review for relying on Capel as an authority for anything.

It is no use for the Church Review to thus vainly endeavour to make out that the Ritualists are the bitterest enemies of Rome, especially since we are all aware that they are labouring with all zeal for corporate reunion with her. Do we wish to be united to those we hate? The Ritualists seek a wedding of affection between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, but the common sense of all loyal Churchmen forbids the banns. And as to individual secession, I may repeat the opinion of Cardinal Manning, who spoke with a unique knowledge of the facts of the case. He wrote of the Ritualistic clergy:

Every parish priest happily knows how empty and foolish is the boast they make of keeping souls from conversion [to Rome]. The public facts of every day refute it. They may keep back the handful who surround them, and hide the truths from their own hearts, but the steady current of return to the Catholic and Roman Church throughout the whole of England is no more to be affected by them than the rising of the tide by the palms of their hands." (Essays on Religion and Literature." Edited by Archbishop Manning. Second Series, p. 14).

The Church Review, after dealing with the general question, proceeds to discuss the case of Dr. Pusey. At page 251 of The Secret History I gave evidence in support of the assertion that Dr. Pusey's labours were beneficial to the Church of Rome. I quoted Bishop Samuel Wilberforce as saying that the influence of Pusey's ministry did "more than the labours of an open enemy to wean from the pure faith and simple Ritual of our Church the affections of many of those amongst her children;" that in Wilberforce's opinion Pusey "tried to retain these souls to the Church of England;" but that his efforts were "in vain," and that, instead of preventing them seceding to Rome they had "practically been set by him [Pusey] on a Romish course.' I thus acknowledged that, in Wilberforce's opinion, Pusey did make efforts to prevent secession. But the sorest point of all is my quotation from Keble, who was Pusey's Father Confessor, who acknowledged that " a larger number, possibly, has seceded to Rome under his [Dr. Pusey's] special teaching than from that of any other individual now amongst us." The Church Review does not deny that this was so. It only complains that I omitted to quote Keble's reasons for the existence of such a deplorable state of things, and especially that I did not quote his assertion that "if more have passed from his teaching to Rome than from the teaching of any other, more also by very many have been positively withheld from Rome by his teaching than have been kept back by any other." I fail to see how this, or similar statements, affect the point with which I dealt. I believe that Wilberforce was right when he declared that the secession of Pusey's disciples to Rome was the direct result of his teaching. They were "set by him on a Romish course.' "You seem to me," wrote Wilberforce to Pusey, "to be habitually assuming the place and doing the work of a Roman Confessor, and not that of an English clergyman" (Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. II., p. 90). The harvest of such a work was sure to be largely reaped by the Church of Rome.