CARDINAL WISEMAN
439
present he was the most conspicuous, and he \vas President of the Commission to which the preparation of their address was intrusted. No account of it, therefore, can be more authentic than that \vhich he is able to give. The reserve imposed by his office, and by the distinguished part he had to bear, has been to some extent neutralised by the necessity of refuting false and exaggerated rumours \vhich were circulated soon after the meeting, and par- ticularly two articles which appeared in The Patrz.e on the 4th and 5 th of July, and in which it was stated that the address \vritten by Cardinal Wiseman contained "most violent attacks on all the fundamental principles of modern society." After replying in detail to the untruths of this news- paper, the Cardinal proceeds as follows :-
\Vith far greater pain I feel compelled to advert to a covert insinuation of the same charges, in a publication avowedly Catholic, and edited in my own diocese, consequently canonically subject to my correction. Should such a misstatement, made under my own eyes, be passed over by me, it might be surmised that it could not be contradicted; and whether chronologically it preceded or followed the French account it evidently becmnes my duty to notice it, as French bishops have considered it theirs to correct the inaccuracies of their native writers. Otherwise, in a few years, we might find reference n1ade, as to a recognised Catholic authority, for the current and unreproved state- ment of what occurred at Rome, to The H01lle and Foreign Review. And that in a matter on which reprehension would have been doubly expected, if merited. In its first number the Address, which has, I believe, wonderfully escaped the censure of Protestant and infidel journals, is thus spoken of: "This Address is said to be a com- promise between one which took the violent course of recommending that major excommunication should be at once pronounced against the chief enen1ies of the temporal power by name, and one still more moderate than the present" (The Home and Foreign Review, p. 264). Now this very charge about re<.on1mending excommunica- tion is the one made by the French paper against my Address. But, leaving to the writer the chance of an error, in this application of his words, I am bound to correct it, to whomever it refers. He speaks of only two addresses: the distinction between them implies severe censure on one. I assure you that neither contained the recom- mendation or the sentiment alluded to, My Brethren, I repeat that it pains me to have to contradict the repetition, in my own diocese, of foreign accusations, without the
