[Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, April 28, 1864.]
<The preface continued, in 1865 edition: see p. 487>
<I make this extract from my Apologia, Part 2, pp. 29-31 and pp. 41-51, in order to set before the reader the drift I had in writing my Volume:—>
{ 87} What shall be the special imputation, against which I shall throw myself in these pages, out of the thousand and one which my accuser directs upon me? I mean to confine myself to one, for there is only one about which I much care,—the charge of Untruthfulness. He may cast upon me as many other imputations as he pleases, and they may stick on me, as long as they can, in the course of nature. They will fall to the ground in their season.
And indeed I think the same of the charge of Untruthfulness, and [I] select it from the rest, not because it is more formidable[,] but because it is more serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will not stain: Archbishop Whately used to say, “Throw dirt enough, and some will stick;” well, will stick, but not <, will> stain. I think he used to mean “stain,” and I do not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer than other dirt; but no dirt is immortal. According to the old saying, Prævalebit Veritas. There are virtues indeed, <about> which the world is not fitted to judge [about] or to uphold, such as faith, hope, and charity: but it can judge about Truthfulness; it can judge about the natural virtues, and Truthfulness is one of them. Natural virtues may also become supernatural; Truthfulness is such; but that does not withdraw it from the jurisdiction of mankind at large. It may be more difficult in this or that particular case for men to take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult for the Court of Queen’s Bench at Westminster to try a case fairly[,] which took place in Hindoostan 1; but that is a question of capacity, not of right. Mankind has the right to judge of Truthfulness in [the case of] a Catholic, as in the case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of a Chinese. I have never doubted, that in my hour, in God’s hour, my avenger will appear, and the world will acquit me of untruthfulness, even though it be not while I live.
Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing that my judges are my own countrymen. I think 2, indeed, Englishmen the most suspicious and touchy of mankind; I think them unreasonable<,> and unjust in their seasons of excitement; but I had rather be an Englishman, (as in fact I am,) than belong to any other race under heaven. They are as generous, as they are hasty and burly; and their repentance for their injustice is greater than their sin.
For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation, of which I am at least as sensitive, who am the object of it, as they can be, who are only the judges. I have not set myself to remove it, first, because I never have had an opening to speak, and, next, because I never saw in them the disposition to hear. I have wished to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. When shall I pronounce him to be himself again? If I may judge from the tone of the public press, which represents the public voice, I have great reason to take heart at this time. I have been treated by contemporary critics in this controversy with great fairness and gentleness, and I am grateful to them for it. However, the decision of the time and mode of my defence has been taken out of my hands; and I am thankful that it has been so. I am bound now as a duty to myself, to the Catholic cause, to the Catholic Priesthood, to give account of myself without any delay, when I am so rudely and circumstantially charged with Untruthfulness. I accept the challenge; I shall do my best to meet it, and I shall be content when I have done so.
3 [I confine myself then, in these pages, to the charge of Untruthfulness; and I hereby cart away, as so much rubbish, the impertinences, with which the Pamphlet of Accusation swarms. I shall not think it necessary here to examine, whether I am “worked into a pitch of confusion,” or have “carried self-deception to perfection,” or am “anxious to show my credulity,” or am “in a morbid state of mind,” or “hunger for nonsense as my food,” or “indulge in subtle paradoxes” and “rhetorical exaggerations,” or have “eccentricities” or teach in a style “utterly beyond” my Accuser’s “comprehension,” or create in him “blank astonishment,” or “exalt the magical powers of my Church,” or have “unconsciously committed myself to a statement which strikes at the root of all morality,” or “look down on the Protestant gentry as without hope of heaven,” or “had better be sent to the furthest” Catholic “mission among the savages of the South seas,” than “to teach in an Irish Catholic University,” or have “gambled away my reason,” or adopt “sophistries,” or have published “sophisms piled upon sophisms,” or have in my sermons “culminating wonders,” or have a “seemingly sceptical method,” or have “barristerial ability” and “almost boundless silliness,” or “make great mistakes,” or am “a subtle dialectician,” or perhaps have “lost my temper,” or “misquote Scripture,” or am “antiscriptural,” or “border very closely on the Pelagian heresy.”—Pp. 25, 27, 43, 45-50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 61.