There was romance in old-time smuggling, if the story-books speak true. There is precious Tittle in that present-day form of it called ‘rum-running,’ if James Barbican’s account is to be considered authoritative. It is a cold, hard business proposition, with abundant possibilities of trickery, fraud, bribery, and murder, as a background. That the ethics of rumfunning are, therefore, a somewhat complicated issue will not be surprising.

Why the general title of ‘rum-running’ has been adopted is a mystery. In point of fact, rum is seldom carried. The normal stock-in-trade is whiskey, with ‘brandy and wines for a side-line. It is probably ‘one of the many words used by the American journalist in his love of alliteration.’ The men engaged in the business are titled according to the part they play, and if there are heroes in the game at all they are the ‘rum-runners’ properly so-called. These are they who command the whiskey-ships which lie anchored twenty miles or so off land, contending with storms, pirates and mutiny; they who own the Seabright dories, those small cockle-shell speed-boats by means of which the cargo is landed, and play a lone hand against storms, fogs, revenue cutters, prohibition agents, police and ‘hijackers’; they who drive motor lorries at breakneck speeds for hundreds of miles at a stretch and who are, as often as not, shot down (‘bumped off’ in the slang phrase) either by police or hijackers.

It is not long since a book bearing almost the same title as the one before me now appeared under the aegis of a judge’s name; which, while it set out to give a clear and readable account of the Monmouth rising and its consequences, was a disappointment to the serious student because of its obvious Whig bias and lack of that chief essential of the judicial mind—the sense of balance. Judge Parry, moreover, was content to perpetuate many errors because they fitted in with his own conceptions, and I fear that, backed by the influence of his name and position, they have been strengthened in the mind of the casual reader.

The present volume is unlike its predecessor in all but name; the whole aim and intention so different that in a sense the title is misleading. Mr. Muddiman is not really concerned at all with the rising itself, nor does he attempt to give us dramatic sketches of the characters connected with it; we find here no suggestion of the Walking Gentleman, the Low-Comedy Buffoon, or the Comic Villain, no tolerance for Oates or Tutchin, no special tenderness for Dissenters, and above all no bias against ‘Judge’ Jeffreys. Even the standpoint—and the book is written from the Tory standpoint on the whole—is one of reason, moderation, and restraint. In short, it is necessary to realise from the beginning that these pages deal less with opinions than with facts; and that, while Judge Parry aims at giving us his own New of the period and the personalities who played their parts in it, Mr. Muddiman is inquiring into the foundations on which our knowledge of that period and of those personalities is based.

They belong to history, many papal encyclicals, bulls and briefs; to interpret their meaning, to understand their purpose, and to measure what they accomplished, we must have knowledge of the circumstances that provoked these papal utterances and injunctions.

What can we make of Clericis Laicis of Boniface VIII (was it not annulled by Clement V, first of the Avignon popes?); of the Regnans in Excelsis of St. Pius V (judged to be of doubtful expediency by a later pontiff, Urban VIII); of the Unigenitum of Clement XI; the Dominus ac Redemptor of Clement XIV; the Mirari Vos of Gregory XVI—pronouncements all of interest in the history of the papacy and of mankind—unless we know the conditions and occasions? The commentary of the historian is necessary if there is to be profit from the perusal of these important documents. While it may be urged, truthfully enough, that as the judgments of the Holy See on things temporal, all briefs, bulls and encyclicals are to ‘be received with respect; yet without knowledge of the pressure that urged utterance our respect is liable to be without understanding.

As with the injunctions of a more remote past, so with the collection of encyclicals recently issued by the Catholic Truth Society annotation is needed, if the reader is to be fully enlightened on the papal teaching of our times. It is even highly probable that the documents may be misinterpreted without adequate guidance. ‘The Bible without note or comment’ was the cry of some of our undenominational educators in the past. Papal encyclicals without note or comment can easily lead the minds of men astray.

That little band of Franciscans in the wake of Cortes, who brought the light of faith to the Aztecs, and gave to Mexico, or New Spain, as it was then called, its first bishop, Don Francisco de Zumarraga, had its counterpart in the company of twenty-two sons of St. Dominic, who landed at Santa Marta on the southern shores of the Caribbean Sea, four hundred years ago, July 29th, 1529. Don Tomas Ortiz was their leader, and he in his turn was the first bishop of Santa Marta, the first, indeed, in New Granada. Another of the friars, Don Domingo de las Casas, was a near relative of the intrepid Fray Bartolomé, so conspicuous for his defence of the natives, since he fourteen times crossed the ocean to gain the ear of Charles and of Philip on their behalf.

Don Domingo was selected by Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada as chaplain to his troops on that expedition into the interior which resulted in adding to the Spanish crown the famous empire of the Muysca Indians or Chibchas. It was due, indeed, mainly to the brave friar’s encouragement and exhortations that they eventually reached the great plateau of Bogota and took possession of the capital.

At sight of his soldiers decimated by hunger and thirst, and the appalling difficulties of the passage of the Cordilleras, de Quesada was several times on the point of turning back to Santa Marta, but the good Dominican urged him to press forward and animated his troops by the thought that they were suffering for the eventual triumph of the Faith.