for liberty would commence to be made manifest, till the eruption of the flood of revolution and war would effect great destruction of life and property.  But also in the case, that the enemies of the old institutions would succeed so far as to sweep away every vestige of them on the surface of the Globe, they would be as little able as the supporters of the old systems to preserve Peace; because there is no pacification in the spirit world, except by receiving and spreading the means shown us from the spheres of spirits by whom we are commissioned to introduce the New Era of Harmony and Peace amongst mortals as well as amongst their congenial departed.  But the more materialism subdues the Globe, the more the inner causes for new out-breaks of revolutions and wars are operating to find crevices for the outbreak, so that there is absolutism and despotism as necessary for those who without the use of the old forms promise to make people free, as for those who promise the same in the support of the new systems.  Emperor Louis Napoleon and Emperor Francis Joseph are quite remarkable representatives of the two systems, while Napoleon makes such a use of the old form as to satisfy many of the open opposers to it, and the Emperor of Austria endeavours to sustain with hundreds of thousands of soldiers the inheritance of the old abominations which should have been abolished by the application of our message without murder of any man and for the greatest benefit of the departed and the mortals of the family of Hapsburgh, while the whole empire and all nations would have been benefited.

From the scattered hints in this book you may collect, that since Francis Joseph’s Government I was rather endeavouring to effect in one or the other manner a movement in this country, by which at length also the Bishops and the Government of Austria might be awakened from their fatal lethargy; because I saw that my direct applications to the young Emperor would have been for no use.  I am in no direct correspondence with my native country, and I receive news either in newspapers or from occasional reports, and shortly before I wrote the weighty Epistle to Anthony Slomshek I met with a countryman who was professor in Vienna, during the revolution of 1848, and on account that he inspired students for fighting, he had to leave the country, and he told me besides other news, that he heard that Anthony Slomshek was Prince Bishop in Laibach.  Several years before that I received the news that he was Prince Bishop at Saint Andrew in Lavant Valley of Carinthia, only five miles from the monastery of Saint Paul, where I became a monk of the Benedictine order.  I wrote to him, when I received that report; but I received no answer.  At length the Epistle which appears in this treatise, has been sent to him as to Prince Bishop of Laibach, on the above mentioned authority.  The Epistle would retain in this book the same value also in the case, that the report should not be correct that he is Bishop of Laibach; because the facts which I relate in the Epistle as facts known to him are facts of my own experience and such as occurred in close connection with my experience, and have been attested by many witnesses directly after they happened.