THE main question which Mr. Gladstone has started I consider to be this:—Can Catholics be trustworthy subjects of the State? has not a foreign Power a hold over their consciences such, that it may at any time be used to the serious perplexity and injury of the civil government under which they live? Not that Mr. Gladstone confines himself to these questions, for he goes out of his way, I am sorry to say, to taunt us with our loss of mental and moral freedom, a vituperation which is not necessary for his purpose at all. He informs us too that we have “repudiated ancient history,” and are rejecting modern “thought,” and that our Church has been “refurbishing her rusty tools,” and has been lately aggravating, and is likely still more to aggravate, our state of bondage.