The American Republic | Page 5

statesmen, that "State secession is State
suicide," but modify the opinion I too hastily expressed that the
political death of a State dissolves civil society within its territory and
abrogates all rights held under it, and accept the doctrine that the laws
in force at the time of secession remain in force till superseded or
abrogated by competent authority, and also that, till the State is revived
and restored as a State in the Union, the only authority, under the
American system, competent to supersede or abrogate them is the
United States, not Congress, far less the Executive. The error of the
Government is not in recognizing the territorial laws as surviving
secession but in counting a State that has seceded as still a State in the
Union, with the right to be counted as one of the United States in
amending the Constitution. Such State goes out of the Union, but
comes under it.
I have endeavored throughout to refer my particular political views; to
their general principles, and to show that the general principles asserted
have their origin and ground in the great, universal, and unchanging
principles of the universe itself. Hence, I have labored to show the
scientific relations of political to theological principles, the real
principles of all science, as of all reality. An atheist, I have said, may be

a politician; but if there were no God, there could be no politics. This
may offend the sciolists of the age, but I must follow science where it
leads, and cannot be arrested by those who mistake their darkness for
light.
I write throughout as a Christian, because I am a Christian; as a
Catholic, because all Christian principles, nay, all real principles are
catholic, and there is nothing sectarian either in nature or revelation. I
am a Catholic by God's grace and great goodness, and must write as I
am. I could not write otherwise if I would, and would not if I could. I
have not obtruded my religion, and have referred to it only where my
argument demanded it; but I have had neither the weakness nor the bad
taste to seek to conceal or disguise it. I could never have written my
book without the knowledge I have, as a Catholic, of Catholic theology,
and my acquaintance, slight as it is, with the great fathers and doctors
of the church, the great masters of all that is solid or permanent in
modern thought, either with Catholics or non-Catholics.
Moreover, though I write for all Americans, without distinction of sect
or party, I have had more especially in view the people of my own
religious communion. It is no discredit to a man in the United States at
the present day to be a firm, sincere, and devout Catholic. The old
sectarian prejudice may remain with a few, "whose eyes," as Emerson
says, "are in their hind-head, not in their fore-head;" but the American
people are not at heart sectarian, and the nothingarianism so prevalent
among them only marks their state of transition from sectarian opinions
to positive Catholic faith. At any rate, it can no longer be denied that
Catholics are an integral, living, and growing element in the American
population, quite too numerous, too wealthy, and too influential to be
ignored. They have played too conspicuous a part in the late troubles of
the country, and poured out too freely and too much of their richest and
noblest blood in defence of the unity of the nation and the integrity of
its domain, for that. Catholics henceforth must be treated as standing, in
all respects, on a footing of equality with any other class of American
citizens, and their views of political science, or of any other science, be
counted of equal importance, and listened to with equal attention.
I have no fears that my book will be neglected because avowedly by a
Catholic author, and from a Catholic publishing house. They who are
not Catholics will read it, and it will enter into the current of American

literature, if it is one they must read in order to be up with the living
and growing thought of the age. If it is not a book of that sort, it is not
worth reading by any one.
Furthermore, I am ambitious, even in my old age, and I wish to exert an
influence on the future of my country, for which I have made, or, rather,
my family have made, some sacrifices, and which I tenderly love. Now,
I believe that he who can exert the most influence on our Catholic
population, especially in giving tone and direction to our Catholic
youth, will exert the most influence in forming the character and
shaping the future destiny of the American Republic. Ambition and
patriotism