FAIR PLAY IN HISTORY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 69, 22 August 1874, Page 12

FAIR PLAY IN HISTORY.

As the moat lovely flowers are at times hidden away, just managing to steal sufficient of the sun's rays, from their rocky hiding place, so, on looking over our exchanges, we discover in the mostmodest of our faroff acquaintances, evidences which go to chow that we can learn much f fom the perusal of such enterprising and carefully edited journals as ' The Catholio Sentinel,' of Oregon. Among various articles that we have noticed in the ' Sentinel ' we have been particularly struck by one entitled •' Catholic Foot-Prints in Amerioan History," in which attention is justly called to the fact that if we — " Take up any school history of the United States we find it filled with encomiums upon the enterprise which led the Pilgrim Fathers to settle near the Plymouth Book, but not a word about those other fathers — the missionaries of the Catholic Church, who were the first to tread the forest and tho prairie, and to whose example we owe the discovery and settlement of a vast portion of the United States." The same thought has struck us repeatedly, and it has been more than once the subject of remark and lengthy criticism in our contemporary, ♦ The Catholic Record.' It is not difficult to understand that Protestant publishers will not compile Catholic histories or Catholic Readers, but it is undoubtedly a mystery to many how the few attempts at writing school-books of history have signally failed when undertaken by Catholic writers, one would suppose, from a Catholio standpoint. The books most used in Catholic schools, for the study of United States History, are Kerney's, Wilson's, Swinton's, Quackenbos,' Goodrich's and Frost's. As the best proof of the deplorable poverty of detail to be found in these, as far as justice to Catholics is concerned, let us take up what these authors have to say on the early settlement of various portions of this continent. Certainly we will find reason to assert with the ' Sentinel,' if our scholars have no more of Catholic history than is found in the text-books, that —

" That there is no denying the fact that our Catholic youth are not sufficiently educated in the history of this land upon those historical events which should be made familiar to their youthful minds, as, in too many instances, they receive their ideas of their country through Protestant sources, and thus their historical education is completed to the exclusion of all knowledge of the" noble deeds performed by the heroes of the cross. Such education as that is not calculated to make more zealous Catholics or better citizens of the rising generation, and the sooner our histories are re-written or re-modeled on a wider basis, the better will it be for the Catholic Church and the Catholic youth of America."

It will require no effort to substantiate our own position, as well as that of the ' Sentinel.' The history of Maryland is one with which most people are supposed to know the Catholic side of the question. Frost's School Histories disposes of it in the following summary faßhion : —

" Although Sir George Oalvert was a Roman Catholic, he allowed the most perfect religious liberty to the colonists under his charter, and Maryland was the first State in the world in which complete religious liberty was enjoyed." Frost continues : " The Catholics were persecuted from 1652 to 1658." Not a. word of disapproval, however. Goodrich, used by many of our best Catholic schools, and highly recommended by the principals of such institutions, finds he has said enough when he hus told us that the Catholics were liberal. He takes care to say nothing of what was afterwards done against Catholics. Florida opens a very fine field for a compliment to Catholic piety and bravery, yet we look in vain through Quackenboa' History for more than this slim piece of information, which says : ' Florida -vus first visited by Ponce de Leon, in 1502, and received its name from the day on which it was discovered, Easter Sunday, called in Spanish pasqua florida." Our authors give the following account of other States in which Catholics are entitled to a large share of praise. Of New Orleans we only leara from these that "In 1718 more French colonists were sent over ; a city was laid out with much ceremony, and named New Orleans, after the Duke of Orleans, then Regent. For several years it grew but little ; huts were put up without order ; and the people who had been sent to build a city, encamped on it borders, 'waiting for houses."' What industrious people these Catholics were ! „ Pennsylvania also offers a very fair chance to those who might wish .to speak of the efforts of Catholics during the Revolution. Any tyro of history may learn that our predecessors took a glorious part in furnishing men and , weapons for that struggle, yet not a word in their favor. Thus we might go on indefinitely extending quotations — all showing that, as far as Catholics are concerned, there is no such thing as " fair play in history." We trust the report is true which says that the Catholic Publication Society is about to issue a eeries of Catholic school-books. With the influence this Society possesses, and the hints and suggestion that may be given by the various bodies of clerical and religious teachers in the metropolis, there is no reason why we should not soon have a firstclass course of works that will tell, at least, something about the Catholic side of the questions involved in the history of the United States. We may include in this notice for the present the remarks of a most successful writer, whose views are worth examining. In a late issue of one of our Catholic magazines he says, in substance, that " Catholics have done more than anybody else to keep Catholic history from being tried in Catholic schools." From this we may assert, in conclusion, with the ' Sentinel, that "The study of the holy lives of these men," whose absence in American books of history we protest against, "is calculated to instil into the minds of the Catholic youth the claim which they have as Catholics to a share in the glory of the land ; moreover, it would imbue them with a spirit of religious zeal which, in the future history of our common country, will doubtless be called into action, and lacking which they will have to succumb to the march of events which will ovowido their rights, and deny thorn oven a place in their couutry's history."— Standard.