Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/415

Rh its subject. The author is perfectly frank. He takes us in behind the curtains and we are enabled to see what influences secured an appointment to the bench of the United States Supreme Court in 1862; what degree of fitness Judge Miller had for his position; and how with his personality and point of view and the cast of his thought he wrought with his associates in determining the trend of the Supreme Court's decisions. The subject was a large one to handle in two hundred pages, but the author has made excellent use of the space he did take.

This is an extended argument to establish two propositions: That Dr. John McLoughlin treated the early settlers in Oregon with humanity and Christian kindness; and that some of the settlers afterwards ill requited his kindness by speaking ill of his treatment and particularly in exerting themselves to deprive him of his rightful holdings under the Government of the United States. Mr. Holman has put the case strongly, and it seems hardly possible that any unbiased reader should lay down the book without the feeling that both propositions are amply sustained by the facts.

In his preface the author says: "The one great theme of the pioneers was and still is Dr. McLoughlin and his humanity." This sentiment of the pioneers is abundantly attested by many of their public utterances. The community, too, seems to have accepted this estimate of Dr. McLoughlin as final, being the estimate of those who were best qualified to judge. This means that the people of Oregon had already accepted as true the first proposition of this book, and needed no proof of it.

The fact that the first proposition was thus generally and cordially accepted would seem to have rendered unnecessary any extended argument on the second. The late comer to Oregon who has heard from the first and always the name of Dr. McLoughlin mentioned only with affection and all but reverence cannot but regret that the author did not follow more closely the plan laid down in the first sentence of his preface and give us in fact "a plain and simple narrative of Dr. John McLoughlin and of his noble career in the early history of Oregon." There is room in the story of Oregon's origin for just such a narrative of the life of this truly noble man, and no one is better furnished for the writing of it than the author of this volume. J. E. WILSON.