stand out in marked contrast, after all allowances and qualifications
have been made, with the fate, past and prospective, of the aborigines
in North America, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, and Australia,
and clearly differentiate in their respective tendencies and results
the Spanish and English systems. The contrast between the effects of
the Spanish conquest in the West Indies, Mexico, and the Philippines
reflects the development of the humane policy of the government. The
ravages of the first conquistadores, it should be remembered, took
place before the crown had time to develop a colonial policy.

It is customary, too, for Protestant writers to speak with contempt
of Catholic missions, but it must not be forgotten that France and
England were converted to Christianity by similar methods. The
Protestant ridicules the wholesale baptisms and conversions and
a Christianity not even skin-deep, but that was the way in which
Christianity was once propagated in what are the ruling Christian
nations of today. The Catholic, on the other hand, might ask for some
evidence that the early Germans, or the Anglo-Saxons would ever have
been converted to Christianity by the methods employed by Protestants.

The wholesale baptisms have their real significance in the
frame of mind receptive for the patient Christian nurture that
follows. Christianity has made its real conquests and is kept alive
by Christian training, and its progress is the improvement which one
generation makes upon another in the observance of its precepts. One
who has read the old Penitential books and observed the evidences
they afford of the vitality of heathen practices and rites among the
people in England in the early Middle Ages will not be too harsh in
characterizing the still imperfect fruits of the Catholic missions
of the last three centuries.