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involves issues of a magnitude far transcending the ordinary political questions which now separate men.
Other conservative Protestants may perceive some different and yet safe course, but for my own part, acting under the sense of responsibility for my past acts, I find but one line of duty open to me, and that is to give my hearty support and sympathy to the Liberal Catholics of Quebec. With a plain and unmistakeable declaration on the part of the Protestants that they will, equally for their Roman Catholic fellow citizens, as for themselves, resist the encroachments of the Church upon the State, it may be possible to arrest the arrogant course of Bishop Bourget and his confreres. If not, it requires no prophetic vision to predict an early agitation for the separation of the Montreal, Ottawa, and Eastern Townships districts from the Ecclesiastical tyranny of Quebec.
With very great respect for the gentlemen who have organized the Protestant Defence Association, I venture to think that it would be wiser to abandon an organization which must necessarily repel conscientious Catholics,—and considering, that it is the civil rights of free speech, a free press, and free political action, and not in any way religion itself which are endangered, I would suggest that a more general name might be adopted, and a much wider scope given to its action, so as to include within its sphere all those who desire the action of the State to be untrammelled by ecclesiastical influence and interference.
MONTREAL, 17th February, 1876.
