Chapter I: Front Matter

Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/a545521400arthuoft

THE POPE THE KINGS AND THE PEOPLE

"Take thou the tiara adorned with the triple crown, and know that
thou art the Father of princes and of kings, and art the Governor
of The world."--_Coronation Service of the Pontiffs._

THE POPE THE KINGS AND THE PEOPLE

A History of the Movement to Make the Pope Governor of the World by a Universal Reconstruction of Society from the Issue of the Syllabus to the Close of the Vatican Council

by the late

WILLIAM ARTHUR A.M

Author of "The Tongue of Fire" etc.

Edited by W. Blair Neatby M.A

Author of "The Programme of the Jesuits" etc.

London Hodder and Stoughton 27 Paternoster Row 1903

Butler & Tanner The Selwood Printing Works Frome and London

EDITOR'S PREFACE

Though I am named as the Editor of the present edition of the late Rev. Wm. Arthur's _The Pope, the Kings, and the People_, it is right to say that, by a restriction of my own choosing--for the publishers were good enough to leave me a considerable discretion,--my editorial care has been limited to the work of abridgment.[1] It was clear from the first that in the short time at my disposal no attempt could be made to verify the multitude of Mr. Arthur's references and quotations, drawn as they were with a lavish hand from the contemporary literature of half Europe. Happily, all his readers must recognise how intelligent, laborious and scrupulous he has been. On the other hand, I had hoped to add a certain number of footnotes explanatory of allusions to events and circumstances that are much less fresh in the public memory to-day than they were twenty-six years ago. I should also greatly have liked to point out the extent, sometimes remarkable, to which Mr. Arthur's forecasts have been already verified. But I soon found that if I were to introduce fresh matter it must be at the expense of portions of the original edition that were not to be lightly discarded. I have therefore directed my efforts to adapting the book as far as possible to the requirements of the present time by the process of simple retrenchment.

This process I have carried out most scrupulously. Every word in the abridgment is Mr. Arthur's own, and in Mr. Arthur's order. I have not even allowed myself to supply insignificant connecting words, however convenient they might have been, or however plainly they might be implied in the original work. This rule has entailed extra labour, but the gain seems to me immense. Every reader of this abridgment may know that he is reading Mr. Arthur's _ipsissima verba_, and that he may safely quote them as such. Not one word is mine.

And here I may perhaps be allowed to express my opinion that Mr. Arthur's words deserve to be very widely read and quoted. It would be hard to find a book that would shed more light on many of the most urgent questions of to-day. As an _annus mirabilis_ of history, 1870 may yet take its place with 1453 or 1789. It was the year in which the Jesuits signalized the triumphant consummation of a struggle, waged during more than three centuries, for the capture of the Papacy. It was the year in which the new Vaticanism was formally constituted, and in which it gave the world notice, plainly and ostentatiously, of the policy to which it held itself committed. It was also the year of the Franco-Prussian war, a mighty convulsion which was after all but an incident in the great drama of Vaticanism, as Mr. Arthur, amongst others, has clearly shown.

I have said elsewhere that "the Jesuits, who brought France to the verge of ruin in 1870, seemed on the very point of completing their work of destruction a year or two since; and [that] he would be a very bold man who would dare to say that the peril had passed even yet."[2] The writer who makes such a statement assumes a grave responsibility; but if any one wishes to know how abundantly the statement can be justified he has only to turn to Mr. Arthur's pages. Mr. Arthur demands from us no confiding trustfulness. Even at some expense to the flow of his narrative, he wisely made his work a repertory of contemporary documents, either transcribed entire or quoted with great fulness. Without resort to _ex parte_ representations of adversaries, we may thus learn from the Vatican's own organs that clerical education, which has so signally proved itself the bane of modern France, is the very groundwork of Vaticanism. And from the impressive picture of the remorse that embittered Montalembert's last hours as he looked back on the share he had taken long before in shaping the educational policy of his country, we may perhaps learn the great lesson of distinguishing between a false liberalism and the true.

Never more than in this instance is the history of the past the key to the present; and no man, unless his acquaintance with Vaticanism is of quite exceptional extent, can rise from the perusal of this book without feeling that he has obtained a momentous and far-reaching addition to his stock of religious and, perhaps even more, of political knowledge.

W. BLAIR NEATBY.

_November, 1903._