proved fatal, and it is not unlikely that his precipitation may make shipwreck of his enterprise in Quebec.

The Church in Quebec is immensely rich, while the people are poor and the treasury is empty. Besides the tithe, which by a strange anomaly on this continent of religious equality she legally levies, and imposts for fabrique, she owns not a little of the most valuable land in the Province, and her wealth is constantly growing by investment, for she is active in the financial as well as in the spiritual field. The devotion of the people is guarded by their illiteracy. Ecclesiastical statistics, compiled under ecclesiastical influence, throw not much light on the subject. The journal of Arthur Buies, "La Lanterne", throws more. It gives a letter from a correspondent who, it says, has held high political employment and has lived in a rural district for forty years. This correspondent says that among men of from twenty to forty years of age you will not find one in twenty who can read, or one in fifty who can write. They will tell you that they went to school from seven to fourteen, but that they have forgotten all they learned. This "all"—what was it? We may judge, says the correspondent of "La Lanterne", from the fact that the teachers are for the most part young girls taken from the convents because they are too poor to pay their pupils' fees, and with a salary of from ten to twenty louis a Those who have passed any year. time among the habitants confirm this statement, and say that the mayor of a town is not always able to write. The school-books, of which a set is before us, appear to be highly ecclesiastical in spirit and in the economy of the knowledge which they are calculated to convey. No wonder that miracles in abundance are performed at the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, while they are performed nowhere else upon this northern continent. antagonism between this civilization and that of British Canada is complete.

The

The French peasantry of Quebec, if they have little to live on, can live on

little; their Church sedulously preaches early marriage, their women are good mothers, and they multiply apace. Before their increasing number and pressure the British are rapidly disappearing from the Province. In the city of Quebec there are now only about six thousand left. In the eastern townships, once their almost exclusive domain, their numbers are rapidly dwindling, and the Protestant churches are left without worshippers. The Church advances money to the Frenchman to buy the Englishman's farm, which in French hands will become subject to tithe and fabrique. The commerce of Montreal is still in Protestant hands, but a Legislature of French Catholics has found its way, by taxing banks and other financial corporations, to the strong-box, just as a Legislature of Celtic Catholics in Ireland would find its way to the strong-box of the Scotch Protestants of Belfast. As matters are now going, the future of the commercial community of Montreal is not free from clouds. If that community has hitherto thought of little but its trade, it will find that without paying attention to questions of public principle trade itself cannot be safe.

The weak point in the case of the opponents of the Jesuits' Estates Act is that two years ago an Act incorporating the Jesuits was allowed to slip through without protest. The explanation is that the Protestant minority in Quebec is so weak and so thoroughly overborne, that it has been sinking into a state of torpid resignation, while the British Province usually takes little notice of anything that is going on in Quebec. The Jesuits' Estates Act seems, however, at last to have aroused the Protestants of Quebec as well as the people of Ontario. Not that it would make any difference with regard to the question of principle if all the Protestants of Quebec, deserting the cause of their own rights and interests, had acquiesced in the Jesuits' Estates Act. The right and duty of the people of the Dominion generally to put a veto on the endowment of

Jesuitism and the recognition of the Pope in legislation would be the same; and it would be equally necessary to uphold the principle that no religious majority in a Province shall have the power to make war on the religion of the minority by endowing propagandism out of the public purse.

The French Revolution for the time estranged Quebec with its clergy from Old France. But the estrangement is now at an end, and France is recognized as the mother country. France on her part welcomes the returning affection of her daughter, and the old relations, saving the political connection, are renewed.

The history of Canada used in the French schools is a history of French Canada alone. Scarcely does it notice the existence of the British Provinces. In a perfectly national spirit it magnifies the victories of the French in Canada over the British, belittles those of the British, and presents the British in an odious light. It accuses the English of wishing to treat French Canada as they treated Ireland, and ascribes the deliverance of the French to their own patriotic efforts, animated by their religious faith, and seconded by fear of the United States which drove England to concession. It is evidently intended to implant in the heart of the young French Canadian allegiance to French Canada as a separate nation, love of France, and antagonism to the British conqueror.

Poli

But the aspirations of the French are not confined to the Province of Quebec. "La Vérité," as we have seen, boasts that they have conquered the eastern townships of Ontario. ticians of Ontario styling themselves Liberals, but under the influence of the Catholic vote, have helped to open the gate; the French have not only introduced their language into the schools but their ecclesiastical system into the localities, and resistance to them now comes late. Their advance is probably helped by a Protectionist policy, which, applied to a country like Canada, produces commercial atrophy,

and sends many of the best of our British farmers out of the country, thus making room for the Frenchman, who is content with pea-soup while the Englishman requires beef. But into the North-Eastern States of the Union

also the French have passed by hundreds of thousands. There are said to be one hundred and fifty thousand in Massachusetts alone. The French priesthood of Quebec

scent

a danger to faith from this connection, and "repatriation" has been attempted, it is needless to say, in vain. Apparently the lingual and intellectual unity of the continent, on which the unity of its civilization depends, is in jeopardy from the intrusive growth of a French nation. It will not be saved by the statesmanship of American politicians, whose treatment of the Canadian question vies in feebleness, inconsistency, and vacillation with the treatment of the Irish question by their British counterparts. Thus strangely the struggle between the rival races for ascendency in the New World, which seemed to have been settled for ever on the Plains of Abraham, is now renewed in a different form.

The ambition of French nationalism is extended to the Canadian NorthWest, where there is a population of French Half-breeds under clerical rule, the political power of which during the infancy of the settlement has been sufficient to force bilingualism on the Legislature of Manitoba. But in that quarter there is little hope for the Nationalists. The half-bred population does not increase, and if immigration takes place on a large scale it will soon be overwhelmed.

Till now there have been political parties in Quebec, the Bleus or Tories and the Rouges or Liberals, connected with the Tory and Liberal parties of Ontario, though in a loose way, and, especially in the case of the Bleus, with more of interest than of principle in the connection. But now, in the person of Mr. Mercier, a Nationalist and Ultramontane leader, independent of any Dominion party, has arisen. He calls all good Frenchmen to union on

the ground of nationality. "Cessons nos luttes fratricides, unissons-nous." He says it is time that the Blue and the Red should be blended in the Tricolour. Apparently the people answer to his appeal. He has at all events got power into his hands, and seems likely to hold it.

No one can blame the French for their aspirations, which are natural, or for their attachment to their own mother country, which is natural also. An English colony placed in their circumstances would do as they do except that it would not put itself under priestly leadership and rule. But this does not alter the situation. Imperialism in the case of Canada has two things to accomplish. It has to separate this line of Provinces permanently from the English-speaking continent of which they are the northern fringe, and it has to fuse British Canada and New France into a nation. What chance is there of thus fusing a French Ultramontane theocracy with a community of British Protestants? If, as "La Vérité"says, the ideal of the French Canadian people is not the ideal of the British Canadian, and he is making towards a totally different goal, how is it possible that the two elements should really become partners in the foundation and development of a nation? Where, it may further be asked, is the use of constraining them to make the attempt? What is gained for Canada, for the mother country, or for humanity, by thus forcing or bribing two antagonistic civilizations to remain in quarrelsome wedlock within the same political pale?

The conflict was sure to come, and it has come. On what field battle will

be joined it is not easy to say. The Government, while its organs challenge the people to try the question in the courts of law, itself bars access to the Supreme Court, and has even had recourse in Parliament to most questionable strategy for that purpose. The Equal Rights Association is to have an interview in a few days with the Governor-General, but the Governor-General is a Constitutional puppet

in the hands of his Ministers, with whom, moreover, his own sympathies as an extreme Tory are known to be, and nobody expects the interview to have any practical result. Its chief fruit will probably be exhortations to peace, which, is an excellent thing, but cannot be permanently established without justice. The only lists apparently open for the combatants are the courts of Quebec, in which the Jesuits have brought a libel suit against "The Toronto Mail" for admitting to its columns a document called the Jesuits' Oath. Out of this suit appeals may arise which will bring the question of principle with regard to the incorporation of the Jesuits before superior and impartial courts. The verdict of a Quebec jury in such a case could obviously settle nothing. It would be the verdict of the Jesuits themselves.

In the meantime reflections suggest themselves.

1. Imperial Federationists must surely be sanguine if they think that the difficulty of this French nationality will disappear in Federation. To the French Canadians Imperial Federation or anything that would tighten the tie to Great Britain is an object of abhorrence. They were at first disposed to give the present Governor-General a cool reception because they had been told that he was an Imperial Federationist. In a war with France the hearts of the French Canadians, if not their arms, would be on the enemy's side. Distance is not the greatest of obstacles with which the Federationists have to contend. Australia is inhabited by a single race, and lies in an ocean by herself. How can the same treatment be applied to her and to Canada, divided as she is between two rival races, and at the same time joined to a great continent inhabited by the kinsmen of one of them?

2. Reformers who propose to cut the United Kingdom in pieces and pass it through the wonder-working caldron of Federation will perhaps hesitate for the future to appeal to the triumphant success of Federation in Canada as a proof of the safeness of their

experiment: not that there would be the slightest analogy in any respect between a union of the North American Colonies under Imperial tutelage and a dissolution of the legislative unity of the British Islands.

3. Those who think that nothing is easier than the creation and operation of a federal union, no matter what the materials may be, or what may be the prevailing tendencies at the time of federation, have also a lesson here set before them. British and French Canada were divided from each other by race and religion; but there was not on the part of the French Canadians towards British Canada anything like the active hatred which has been stirred up among the Irish towards Great Britain. The circumstances in which a political arrangement is made, and the tendencies prevailing at the time of its introduction, require consideration at the hands of statesmen as well as the arrangement itself.

4. We have an inkling in the case of Quebec of the treatment which a Protestant minority would receive at the hands of a Roman Catholic and Celtic Legislature in Ireland. The Jesuits' Estates Act endows out of the public funds, to which Protestants as taxpayers contribute, not only a religious body opposed to Protestantism, but a Society the special and avowed object of which is to destroy Protestantism and to subvert Protestant institutions, as well as to put civil rights and liberties under the feet of the Pope.

5. The fourth reflection is one to which the attention of British Home Rulers is specially called. Their instrument for keeping an Irish Parliament in the traces, and preventing divisions of Legislatures from being followed by dissolution of national unity, is an Imperial veto on Irish legislation. Now this very expedient was tried by the framers of Canadian Confederation. The veto given to the Dominion Government upon Provincial legislation is perfectly general, no limitation of any kind being suggested by

the British North America Act; nor can there be any doubt that it was intended to keep the action of the local Legislature in harmony with the general policy of the country, and at the same time to protect minorities of race and religion in the several Provinces. That such was understood to be its object plainly appears from the debates on Confederation in the Canadian Legislature. Mr. Mackenzie, afterwards Premier of the Dominion, adverting to the possibility of injustice being done by a Provincial majority of race, said, "I admit that it is reasonable and just to insert a provision in the scheme that will put it out of the power of any party to act unjustly. If the power that the central authority is to have of vetoing the doings of the local Legislature is used, it will be ample, I think, to prevent anything of that kind." "The want of such a power", Mr. Mackenzie observed, was a great source of weakness in the United States, and it was a want that would be remedied in the Constitution before very long." The disruption of the American Union by Southern secession was vividly present to the minds of the architects of Canadian Federation, and led them to fear and avoid above all things weakness in the central power. Mr., afterwards Sir John, Rose said, "Now, Sir, I believe this power of negative, this power of veto, this controlling power on the part of the Central Government, is the best protection and safeguard of the system; and if it had not been provided, I would have felt it very difficult to reconcile it to my sense of duty to vote for the resolutions." Opponents of the measure, such as Mr. Dorion and Mr. Joly, in criticizing it took the same view of the power of veto.

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One of the ablest and most eminent among the fathers of Confederation was Sir Alexander Galt. Everything relating to the framing of the Constitution was fresh in memory when, in 1876, Sir Alexander published the pamphlet on Church and State, already mentioned, as a warning blast

against the danger with which the civil rights of Protestants and of the laity generally were threatened by ecclesiastical encroachment in Quebec. With regard to the veto he says:

The veto by the Federal Government is

the real palladium of our Protestant liberties in Lower Canada. I have already shown that our educational rights are only safe under its shelter, and that our representation guarantee will, some day, "dissolve into thin air" without its exercise. Let me now point out that in the firm but moderate use of this vast power safety may yet be found from the undue encroachments to which both Protestants and Catholics are exposed. But it is negative only, and if the opportunity for its exercise be lost, it is impotent to remedy the evil.

Now mark the result. The Jesuits' Estates Act, by which Protestantism and Civil Right are compelled by an Ultramontane majority to pay for their own subversion, is about as clear and as strong a case as could have been devised for exercising this "vast power" and invoking the protection of this palladium. What follows? The grand safeguard totally fails. Both the political parties alike, in dread of the Catholic vote, shrink from the application of the veto. Not only so, but they in effect give up the political veto altogether. They proclaim that the veto cannot without violating the principle of self-government be exercised except in cases where the Provincial Legislature has exceeded the legal jurisdiction, and when the veto in fact would be superfluous, since the Act would be declared void by a court of law. "Quebec must be allowed to do what she likes with her own." She is at liberty to tax her Protestants if she pleases for the destruction of their own religion. So much for the "vast power", the grand "guarantee", and the "real palladium" !

Would not the very same thing take place so soon as the Irish Parliament did anything calling for the exercise

of the Imperial veto, either in the way of oppression of the Protestant minority or of departure from the policy of the Empire? Would not British parties, dreading the Irish and each other, shrink, as Canadian parties have shrunk, from the use of the power, and under the name of respect for selfgovernment allow timid counsels to prevail ? There can be little doubt as to the answer to that question if the party system continues to exist, especially as the Irish vote in Great Britain is large and would of course be arrayed on the Home Rule side. The veto power would prove a nullity, and the separation of Ireland from Great Britain would be virtually complete.

GOLDWIN SMITH.

P.S. August 2nd.-The reception of the petitions against the Jesuits' Estates Act by the Governor-General has now taken place at Quebec. The result was what it was sure to be. His Excellency repeated in substance the speech of the Roman Catholic Minister of Justice, Sir John Thompson, including the somewhat hazardous assertion that the Jesuits in the nineteenth century have always been loyal and quiet citizens. The people might as well have presented their petitions to Apis as to a Governor-General bound to act and speak as he is directed by his constitutional advisers. Apis indeed would have been neutral, whereas His Excellency's personal sympathies have not been concealed. This interview has settled nothing. It was confidently reported that the opinion of the British Law Officers had been taken. This would not have settled much either, even as to the purely legal question which is the least part of the matter. The people would hardly have been satisfied without the judgment of their own Supreme

Court.

G. S.