The following essays and reviews are republished from Brownson's Quarterly Review. They have been subjected to a rigid revision, but are reproduced as originally published, excepting a few verbal corrections, the suppression of a few superfluous sentences, and the omission of some paragraphs which have lost their interest.

It is very possible that in selecting these articles for republication, I have not chosen those which the student of theology or philosophy would have recommended, nor even those which I myself regard as the least unworthy of my writings during the past seven or eight years; but essays of a somewhat abstruse and metaphysical nature, though they may be tolerated in a periodical where they appear along with others of a less unpopular cast, will hardly find in these times readers if published in a volume by themselves. I have selected such articles as have seemed to me best adapted to the tastes of the general reader, and the most likely to be useful to the public at large, whether Catholic or Protestant.

The reader must not expect too much from these articles, and must be content to take them for what they are,--simply articles originally written for a Quarterly Review. They are by no means separate and complete treatises on the several topics they discuss. But, if read in connection, in the order in which I have arranged them, they may, perhaps, be found to give a tolerably full view of the argument for the Church and against Protestantism, of the origin and constitution of Government, the principles of Authority and Liberty, the sacredness of Law, the duty of Loyalty, and the madness and danger of modern Socialism.

If any one looks over this volume for something new, original, or striking he will, most likely, be disappointed. I have not labored to present novel or startling speculations on theology, philosophy, ethics, or politics, but simply to ascertain the principles and doctrines of the Church of God, and to apply them to the great practical questions of the day. My aim has been to bring up anew the old and too often forgotten truth, not to bring out a novel theory. From first to last I think and write as a man many centuries behind his age.

The articles before being printed in the Quarterly Review were submitted to the revision of a competent theologian, and I have no reason to suppose that they contain anything not in accordance with Catholic faith and morals; but they are as a matter of course republished with submission to the proper authority, and I shall be most happy to correct any error of any sort they may contain the moment it is brought authoritatively to my notice. It is not my province to teach; all that I am free to do is to reproduce with scrupulous fidelity what I am taught. Religion is for me the supreme law; it governs my politics, not my politics it. I never suffer myself to inquire whether such or such a religion favors or not such or such a political order; for if there is a conflict the political must yield to the religious. I therefore have not labored to show that the Church is favorable or unfavorable to monarchy, to aristocracy, or to democracy. I do not find that she erects any particular form of Government into an article of faith,--the monarchial no more than the democratic, the democratic no more than the monarchical. Any one of these particular forms may be legal government, and when and where it is the good Catholic is bound to support it, and forbidden to conspire to subvert it. The republican order is the legal order here, and I owe it civil obedience. I am the citizen of a republic, and therefore a republican citizen; I am a Catholic, therefore a loyal citizen, and no radical or revolutionist, either for my own country or any other.

My Catholic friends, who have been frequently disturbed by hearing it alleged that Catholicity is antirepublican and incompatible with popular institutions, will find no direct attempt to refute so silly, nay, so absurd an objection. I respect my religion, and even the great body of my own countrymen, too much to undertake to do that. But they will find that I have attempted, not unsuccessfully perhaps, to prove that without the Catholic religion it is impossible permanently to sustain popular institutions, or to secure their free and salutary operations. Indeed no form of government can be secure or operate well without the Church. Without Catholicity you can have, in principle at least, only despotism or anarchy. All that our countrymen find in our institutions has been adopted from England, and inherited from Catholic ancestors. I seldom throw a sop to Cerberus. I have made no attempt to propitiate popular opinion by pandering to popular prejudice. I was not born to be a courtier, either of king or people. I seek to enlighten public opinion, not to echo it; and I always say, in a plain, straight forward way, what I am convinced ought to be said, leaving popularity or unpopularity to look out for itself. But if my language is free, bold and sometimes severe, I would fain hope that it is never inconsiderate, rash, or gratuitously offensive.

I shall be found to have seldom indulged in frothy declamations about liberty, the rights of man, and the dignity of human nature. There are enough others to do that. I assert my liberty in my practice; I exercise my rights as a man, and I aim to show my respect for the dignity of human nature in my deportment. Liberty is, no doubt, threatened in this country, but the danger comes chiefly from the side of license, and is best averted, not by common place declamations for the largest liberty, but by asserting and maintaining the supremacy of Law.

I have shown no sympathy with the various classes of fanatics with which the country teems,--philanthropists, reformers, as they call themselves. They have become as troublesome as the frogs of Egypt, and are far more dangerous. They strike at the root of all individual liberty and manly independence of character, and are doing their best to revive the absurd and despotic legislation of the early Colonial times of New England. Of Christian Charity, that supernatural virtue which loves God supremely and its neighbor as itself for God's sake, we cannot have too much; but of the whimpering sentiment of philanthropy, which an unbelieving age substitutes for it, and which is the love of all men in general and the hatred of every man in particular, unless a criminal, we cannot have too little. Charity redeems the world, and gives us a heaven on earth; philanthropy effects no good, and tramples down more good by the way in going to its object, than it could possibly effect in accomplishing it.

Whatever the imperfections of these articles, and no one can be more sensible of their imperfections than I am, there is this to be said in their favor, that they are the production of no youthful aspirant seeking notoriety by paradox and excentricity, nor of an old man soured by disappointment, and seeking to vent his spite upon an unoffending world. I have lived in the world, and shared its vicissitudes, but I have no wrong to complain of, no sense of injustice rankling in my bosom. I have no mortified ambition, and have attained to more than in the most ardent dreams of my youth I ever aspired to. I am contented with my lot in the world, and have no desire to change it. Conviction, not desperation, led me into the Church, and I have found a thousand times more than I expected. It is true, in my youth and early manhood I held and published views very different from those set forth in this volume, and this fact will have its weight against whatever I may now say. But it is no crime to grow wiser with years, and to profit by

experience or by the grace of God. The deliberate convictions of a man of mature age are worth more than the crude speculations of impetuous and inexperienced youth. But there is nothing in these essays and reviews that rests on my personal authority; they are to be taken for what they are worth, without any reference to the much or little respect due to their author.

Much has been said first and last in the newspapers as to the frequent changes I have undergone, and I am usually sneered at as a weathercock in religion and politics. This seldom disturbs me, for I happen to know that most of the changes alleged are purely imaginary. I was born in a Protestant community, of Protestant parents, and was brought up, so far as I was brought up at all, a Presbyterian. At the age of twenty-one I passed from Presbyterianism to what is sometimes called Liberal Christianity, to which, I remained attached, at first under the form of Universalism, afterwards under that of Unitarianism, till the age of forty-one, when I had the happiness of being received into the Catholic Church. Here is the sum total of my religious changes. I no doubt experienced difficulties in defending the doctrines I professed, and I shifted my ground of defence more than once, but not the doctrines themselves. I was during many years, no doubt, a radical and a socialist, but both after a fashion of my own. I held two sets of principles, the one set the same that I hold now, the other the set I have rejected. I supposed the two sets could be held consistently together, that there must be some way, though I never pretended to be able to discover it, of reconciling them with each other. Fifteen years' trial and experience convinced me to the contrary, and that I must choose which set I would retain, and which cast off. My natural tendency was always to conservatism, and democracy, in the sense I now reject it, I never held. In politics, I always advocated, as I advocate now, a limited government indeed, but a strong and efficient government. Here is the sum total of my political changes. I never acknowledged allegiance to any party. From 1838 to 1843, I acted with the Democratic party, because during those years it contended for the public policy I approved; since then I have adhered to no party. No party as such ever had any right to count on me, and most likely none ever will have. I do not believe in the infallibility of political parties, and I always did and probably always shall hold myself free to support the men and measures of any party, or to oppose them, according to my own independent convictions of what is or is not for the common good of my country.

But after all, this is not a matter worth taking any notice of. I am not anxious to prove that I have always acted consistently, and have never changed my opinions. Charges may be alleged against me that are not true, but the public is not likely to believe anything worse of my life before I became a Catholic than I do myself. I was a Protestant, and had the virtues and the vices of Protestants, and probably was not much better nor much worse than the average of my class. I was, of course, all unworthy to be a Catholic, and in myself am now all unworthy of the confidence of Catholics. There is no question of that; and if the truth or falsity of my writings depended on my own merits or demerits, they would deserve not a moment's consideration. I have referred to the subject only as an act of justice to my Catholic friends, who have so generously given me their hearts. But I certainly had errors, gross and inexcusable errors, and I beg the public to accept this volume as a slight token of my sincere repentance, and of my earnest wish to do all in my power to atone for them.

I respectfully lay this humble volume at the feet of the Venerable Prelates and Clergy of the United States, not as worthy of their patronage, or even of their notice, but as a mark of filial reverence and submission, and of profound and lively gratitude for their kind encouragement and generous and uniform support of my humble labors in the cause of Catholic truth.

I would also inscribe it to my Protestant countrymen. They will find in it many reasons why I have ceased to be a Protestant, but none I hope, for believing that I have lost any of my former interest in them, or that their welfare here or hereafter is less dear to me than ever it was. My sympathies with my fellow men, which, perhaps, are livelier and deeper than some Suppose, have been quickened and expanded, not deadened and contracted, by my conversion to Catholicity. I have said nothing in the following pages in wrath; I have spoken only in love.

Placing this volume, though all unworthy, with devout gratitude, and tender love, under the protection of Our Blessed Lady, as I do myself and all my labors and interests, I send it forth to the public, hoping that it may contain a fit word fitly spoken for some earnest mind struggling to emancipate itself from error, and to burst into "the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Mount Bellingham
Maundy Thursday, 1852