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PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.

HE Church Times, in its issues of September 9th,

THE

16th, and 23rd, 1898, devoted a considerable portion of its space to a criticism of this book, and has now reprinted these articles as a pamphlet of thirty-two pages. It is generally understood that this is the recognised reply of the Ritualistic party, and therefore it has been thought well that I should answer it in these pages.

I freely admit, at the outset, that if personal insult, libels, and vituperation could kill a book, The Secret History of the Oxford Movement could not survive the attack of The Church Times. But I venture to submit that the thinking men and women of England view with natural distrust a cause which cannot exist without descending to tactics of this kind. They require something more than outbursts of anger, and an exhibition of vexation and annoyance, to convince them that my book cannot be relied on. The Public care little or nothing as to what my personal views may be. What they want to know is,-Did the Tractarians and Ritualists really utter the words cited in the book, and

did they do the deeds therein attributed to them? They will judge according to evidence, and not according to the opinions either of the author or of The Church Times.

It may be well to give some specimens of the insult and abuse heaped on my head by my critic. Here are a few extracts: "The incident provokes more than one question about the 'honourable and straightforward' mode in which Mr. Walsh obtained the private papers of gentlemen who intended them to remain private "-implying, of course, that I obtained them by dishonourable and crooked methods. There is, I freely admit, no doubt whatever that these gentlemen "intended" their papers "to remain private"; and their anger arises from the fact that they are now published in the light of day. Men who work in the dark always hate the light. Again, it is affirmed that I am "either a fool, writing of things which he does not understand, or a knave, trying to gull a still more ignorant public." It would have been wiser for The Church Times to prove me either a "fool" or a "knave," than to thus libel me in its columns. It also affirms that in my book I have inserted "something out of the purloined papers of the Society of the Holy Cross." To charge a man with using stolen property, without producing a scrap of evidence in support of the accusation, is an offence which is held in abhorrence by all upright men, no matter what their religion may be. Yet one more Church Times libel I must quote before I pass on. It affirms that "the perusal of his book

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is rather like peering over the shoulder of a man who is reading a stolen letter."

Now all this is simply an unworthy attempt to blacken the character of a man whose book it has failed to refute. There is not one word of truth in these discreditable accusations, and no one is more convinced of their falsehood than The Church Times itself, for-be not too much startled, my reader, when I tell you that paper has, within the past twelve-months, given me, on these very points, a character for honesty, fairness, and honour, of which, for a time at least, I was exceedingly proud, since I thought I had fairly done my best to earn it. According to The Church Times, of September, 1898, I must be a kind of sneaking villain ; yet in the opinion of the same paper, of January 21st, 1898, page 63, I was fully entitled to the following testimonial (the italics are mine) :

"In The Church Intelligencer, for January, there appeared considerable extracts from what seem to be the private papers of the Society [of the Holy Cross]. It was well known that Mr. W. Walsh had the same laudable object in view as Mr. Miller, and had for a long time been trying in a fair and honest way to obtain some of the Society's papers for publication. Mr. Walsh is a fair and open opponent, and we regret that he has been less successful than his rival."

After reading the above unsolicited testimonial to my fairness and honesty, I am afraid that my readers will think that the editor of The Church Times has a very bad, or at least a very convenient, memory. The desperate necessities

of the Ritualistic cause, owing to the wide circulation of my book, seem to have led my reviewer into the dangerous paths of inconsistency and libel. His conduct, at any rate, furnishes loyal Churchmen with one more illustration of the very tactics exposed in my book. I do not think it will tend to raise the Romanizers in the estimation of straightforward Englishmen. And here I may remark that this is not the first time that The Church Times has noticed my book. It reviewed it with all the honours of leaded type-though now it says it "did not think it worth powder and shot"-in its issue of December 3rd, 1897, pp. 663, 664. It then adopted the line of ridiculing the book, but it ended its review by giving me, in all seriousness, the following testimonial:

"Whatever we may think of his book, we cannot but respect Mr. Walsh. In honourable contrast to most of our latter-day Tappertits, he has regard to the decencies of controversy, and we could wish his pen enlisted in a better cause."

What, may I ask, has happened since December 3rd, 1897, that has led The Church Times to alter its estimation of my personal character? Then I was worthy of honour and respect. Now it declares that "Mr. Walsh has queer notions of honour." I have stated that my copy of The Priest in Absolution cost £6. 6s, and my critic asserts that "None but a dirty-minded man, bent on misusing the book, would buy it at such a price." Evidently the desire is to produce the impression that I have written a dirty and

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