Catholic World, Volume 38

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. II.?MARYLAND TOLERATION. In our last article, reviewing Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States, we took exception to the distinguished author's views on two important subjects?viz., his rejection firstly and his silence secondly in regard to the discovery of America by the Northmen, and his greatly changed and apparently prejudiced position in regard to Catholic toleration in Maryland?and we objected to the alterations which the author has seen fit to make in the text of his last two editions, 1876 and 1883, showing a great change in his opinions since the publication of the fifteen preceding editions, embodying the result of nearly fifty years' study, especially in regard to Catholic toleration in Maryland. Having devoted that article to the consideration of the Northmen in America, we propose in the present article to review Mr. Bancroft's altered positions in relation to Lord Baltimore and religious toleration in colonial and Catholic Maryland. We will first give in the following parallel columns the alterations in relation to Lord Baltimore and Maryland made by Mr. Bancroft in the first volume of his history: FIFTEEN OLD EDITIONS. EDITION OF 1883. " In an age when religious contro- " In an age of increasing divisions versy still continued to be active, among Protestants his mind sought and when the increasing divisions relief from controversy in the bosom among Protestants were spreading of the Roman Catholic Church; a general alarm, his [Lord Balti- and, professing his conversion with- more's