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Council of Bishops before quoted, concludes with the following remarkable admission:—
"We gladly acknowledge that the Church in our Province has attained a greater measure of liberty than, perhaps, in any other part of the world; and we hope and desire that she may, by the kind favour of our civil ministers and leaders of the State, in continuation possess full and perfect liberty as far as it is possible."[1]
Such are the doctrines laid down by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in Quebec, and it is notorious that in very many instances they have been acted upon. But better than a hundred special cases is the present attitude of both ordinary political parties towards the Priesthood, and the evident conviction in the minds of their leaders that victory will rest with the party favoured by the Roman Catholic Church.
I hold that, knowing as we now do the extreme scope that may be given, and, in fact, is given in Quebec to the claims of the Church of Rome, it constitutes a legitimate cause for apprehension and distrust, when we perceive the Local Government of our Province passing completely under the influence of the Hierarchy. With the immense range of power given by the Act of Confederation to the Local Legislatures, covering the whole body of civil law, it is of most serious import to us to learn that the maintenance of all our civil rights is henceforward to be entrusted to a body of men who are taught that the Pope is supreme, and that all human enactments are subject to his revision whenever he may please to pronounce that they fall within the charmed circle of " faith and morals."
Passing, however, from the general to the particu-
- ↑ Lætantes vero confitemur majorem libertatis gradum Ecclesiam adeptam esse in nostra Provincia quam forsan in ullo alio orbis terrarum, loco, simulqe sperantes cupimus ut plenam perfectamque libertatem, in quantum possibile est, deinceps possideat, faventibus gratiosis civilibus ministris et reipublicæ ducibus.
