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Les diagrammas suivants illustrent la mAthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 £3 6 ^YVN. The Manitoba School Question, 166 A^> ' THE MANITOBA SCHOOL QUESTION. IN April, 1895, this Review published the words of Mr. John S. Ewart, Q.C., the enthusiastic and chivalrous counsel for the Manitoba Catholics in their struggle against the instinct and prejudice of a young "British Philistine" community. Mr. Ewart was hoping then to see the grievances of his clients settled by their own provincial government, that so there might be no great public Canadian quarreling, and that the federal govern- ment would not have to pass a bill of relief. But there has been a great quarrel, and there has been no thorough relief of grievances. For the moment there is a lull. Nor has this been violently disturbed by the decision from Rome, lately received by the Canadian bishops, and just now, early in January, made public. Though "something has been done to amend the law," the Holy Father says, yet " the law which has been enacted for the purpose of reparation is defective, imperfect, insufficient." And yet the Pope's words, as they counsel " modera- tion, meekness and brotherly charity " to Catholics, so they do not irritate others at vhe outset ; nor can any fail, in their better selves, to hear the tone appealing for the gospel law in treating others, and expressing the spirit of Pope Leo XIII. 's own words elsewhere : s^rny 166 American Catholic Quarterly Review, <(' The first law of history is to dread uttering falsehood ; the next, not to fear stating the truth ; lastly, that the historical writings should be open to no suspicion of partiality or of animosity." Almighty God reminds His creatures once again what is the law of life under His full revelation. Every Catholic Christian must feel now even something more of the great responsibility that is laid on him not to speak or write except in the spirit of His law and His counsel. Catholics were urged by Rome to avoid, in the interim, the very semblance of being contentious. And these latest words of the Church, while telling them what is of God, and what is of Caesar, counsel a generous readiness to meet justice in any men, and help it forward wherever found. The moment is fitting for placing clearly before our minds this school question, " assuredly one," as the encyclical says, " of the greatest importance and of exceptional gravity." In these pages it is not necessary to tell of what interests are at stake in an education question, nor of how wandering thoughtful minds seem to be looking in the same direction as does the Church — with blinkers on, however, as it were, lest by any means they should be found to be seeing eye to eye with Rome. Still she must be glad, though saddened, too, even if not amused, noting their strange infatuation about the one guardian of the Christian family and school. And her mind is not least interested just now in these matters as they stir among English-speaking people or their fellow-subjects. American readers will spend some time well in looking once again at this school question in Manitoba. And they will not be offended at information set down here as to the condition of Canada. Many of them naturally know little about that thinly populated country — too little, often, whether they be business men, patriots, or founders of true and wise rela- tions between the American countries of the future. Canada, i.e., almost all the habitable country north of the United States — so we mean for practical purposes in our writing now — has yet a population of barely 5,000,000; the Province of Ontario (formerly Upper Canada) having over 2,000,000 ; the Province of Quebec (formerly Lower Canada), about 1,500,000. For the whole of Canada the chief religious statistics (1891) are: Catholics, 2,000,000; 41 per cent, of whole. Methodists, 850,000; 17 per cent, of whole. Presbyterians, 750,000; 15 per cent, of whole. Episcopaliano, 650,000; 13 per cent, of whole. Baptists, 300,000 ; 6 per cent, of whole. And for national descent the 1 87 1 Census gave : French, more The Manitoba School Question. 167 than 1,000,000; Irish, 850,000; English, 700,000; Scotch, 550,000. There can read and write (1891): of the whole population, 3,176,667; 'i Manitoba, 106,250. Manitoba is therefore above the general average in reading and writing. For the population of Manitoba, these are the figures: 1870, 12,000 (2000 whites, 5000 Scotch or English half-breeds, 5000 French half-breeds); 1871, 25,228; 1881, 62,260; 1891, 152,- 506. The chief religious statistics in 1891 : Presbyterians, 30,000; Episcopalians, 25,000; Catholics, 20,000; and the number of en- rolled pupils in the schools, 28,706. Manitoba has been, since 1870, a province of this new Do- minion of Canada, which came into existence by the British North America Act of 1867, the act confederating Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and now known as the Cana- dian constitution. It is a farming, wheat-growing country — "the prairie prov- ince" — very cold and very hot. At first it had been settled chiefly from French-speaking Catholic Quebec. In 1870, the Catholics were 50 per cent. ; in 1 890, about 1 5 per cent. This is the minority of whose troubles men have heard. Before 1870, when Manitoba became a Canadian province, there were Catholic and Protestant schools. From 1 87 1 to 1890 there were still separate schools, placed more regularly under Catholic and Protestant Boards of Educa- tion — something like those in Ontario and Quebec, where separate schools exist to-day. In 1 890 separate schools were abolished in Manitoba. From 1 890 to 1 896 there were appeals and decisions this way and that as to (Catholic) minority rights, the two chief being ( i ) that the abolishing separate schools was legal, and (2) that an aggrieved minority had a right of appeal. June 23, 1896, the present Liberal party, under Sir Wilfred Laurier — as he is, since Queen Victoria's Sixtieth Jubilee honor distribution — came into power, and made a " settlement " of the Manitoba school question, which the Catholic Archbishop of that province — Langevin, of St. Boniface — declared to be no settle- ment at all. '• I do refuse you for my judge, and here. Before you all, appeal unto the Pope, To bring my whole cause 'fore his holiness, And to be judged by him." 168 American Catholic Quarterly Review, With " Rome, the nurse of judgment," it lay to decide for Catholics whether " the Laurier Settlement " is to be accepted, tolerated or rejected. So much for a sketch of the facts. And now let us go over them in some detail, and be thus able to give a reason for the faith that is in us, taking note, as we pass, of some strange treat- ment given by the letter of the law to its spirit I. The Manitoba Act of 1S70. This was passed by the Dominion of Canada Federal Parlia- ment at Ottawa. By it, part of the Northwest Territory was made into the province of Manitoba. T/ie British North America Act of 1867 (providing that any province having separate schools before confederation shall have them for all time ; also that any province not having them at the union, but conceding them at any time, shall concede them as a right which can never be taken away), was made to apply to Manitodar— -except those parts of the act referring to other provinces specially ; and except as the B. N. A. Act might be varied by the Manitoba Act. How did this affect education ? The B. N. A. Act guarantees separate schools to those prov- inces that by law had separate schools at the time they entered the Dominion of Canada. Hence Ontario (Upper Canada) and Quebec (Lower Canada) had guarantee of separate schools. Hence New Brunswick, another entering province, had no guarantee. And the New Brunswick separate schools, existing by custom or practice only, were abolished. [An " understanding," by which, in a few places, certain State schools have Catholic teachers, is all the Church in New Brunswick has kept. And for this compromise there is no pro- tection by any existing law.] The Manitoba Act had before it the law of Ontario and Quebec (protected by the B. N. A. Act) and the practice of New Bruns- wick (not thus protected) ; and therefore it enacted that no law should be passed by the Legislature of Manitoba which should " prejudicially affect any right or privilege with respect to denomi- national schools whirh any class of persons have by law or prac- tice in the Province at the Union." Those italicized words, therefore^ and by practice^ let all readers consider over again in their context, and bear in mind when read- ing what follows. Now, if you are guaranteed separate schools, " by practice," ■ i The Manitoba School Question, 169 ;i i does that imply that you are guaranteed exemption from paying for public or State schools? And the answer is that the 1871 Act legislators either did not consider that, or else that they did indeed consider it, but meant "to keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope." For a pla'n man the meaning would probably be plain that it did so imply. Certainly, when the declarations of the legislators were read, with no word in them as to the legally established " separate-school parent " being bound to pay also as a " non-sec- tarian parent," and when is added the consensus of general pub- lic understanding as to implication, then the plain man would feel sure. So much for the spirit of the law. But what of its letter ? We shall see. However, first, des pieces justicatives : {a) " I think every man in the country understood the Manitoba Act of 1871 to mean that the minority, whether it was Catholic or Protestant, should enjoy the same privileges as the Catholic minority enjoys in Quebec. [The Privy Council did not ap- pear to see the matter in that light. I have no doubt they came to an honest decision, but they went by the strict letter of the law."] (Hon. G. W. Ross, Minister of Edu- cation for Ontario, December I9, 1895.) (3) " By the Manitoba Act the provisions of the B. N. A. Act respecting laws passed for the protection of minorities in educational matters are made applicable to Manitoba. .... Obviously, therefore, the separate school system in Manitoba is beyond the reach of the [Manitoba] Legislature or of the Dominion Parliament." (The Late Sir John Macdonald [Conservative] Prime Minister of Canada, and a framer of the Manitoba Act. Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 248.) (c) "We [when passing tie Manitoba Act] certainly intended that the Catholics of Manitoba, or whatever denomination might be in a minority, should have the right to establish and maintain their own schools. You see, the words • or practice ' were inserted in the Manitoba Act, so that the difficulty which arose in New Brunswick ivhen sepa- rate schools actually existed^ but xvtre not recognized by the law, should not be repeatea in Manitoba. [And thus the right of appeal to the Federal Parliament was given to make assurances doubly (jtV) sure."^ (Hon. W. MacDougall, 1892.) (ight take exquisite courtesy for an uncomfortable joke, and whose acts might prove the truth of Burke's words on chiv- alry being gone. But things are as they are. And yet not all Canadian Protestants speak as these mini.^-ters do. Ministers of another sort sometimes speak differently. In the Toronto " Mail and Empire" for April 12, 1895, occurs : "The Rev. Mr. Andrews, the oldest Methodist minister in active service in Mani- toba, says that the restoration of separate schools, with a provision for the definite quali- fication of the teachers and the public inspection of the schools, should be satisfactory to all, but no injustice to Protesta:its, and would heal the breach which is rending the Dominion." Yet a young Methodist minister from that province, a gentle but hard-working man, is heard this year saying that he thinks the minority have no grievance. And perhaps the old man stands alone — like Sydney Smith for Catholic Emancipation among the Tory Yorkshire parsons — for he has these words, too : " As I see it so must I write. When a resolution was brought up in the Methodist Conference in 1890 expressing approval of the act, I aloHt^' opposed it. He said he had been five years in Quebec, and felt ashamed at the moral effects which our School Act would have in Quebec, [he little knows, poor old man. Fancy Archbishops Bruchesi and Begin agitating to force Protestant pupils into their schools] , VOL. XXIII. — 12 178 American Catholic Quarterly Review, having seen the working of r'rotestant schools in that province. For if here in Manitoba, where the Catholics have had separate schools for eighteen years, we can take these away, just because we are in a majority, what about Quebec ? " We have always boasted of Protestant fair play, yet in this case the might downs (jtV) the right '« The real contention [of the Catholics] is that we Protestants have taken what the highest court of this great Empire has decided was their right, according to the decla- ration of the Constitution, and they are seeking its restoration in a legal and regular manner " That it would be better for all to be educated together seems highly desirable {sic) ; yet if the minority concerned think it otherwise, surely we have slender ground to set aside law and justice to accomplish our purpose. " There is little weight in the argument that Mennonites, Germans and others [of our settlers] may also seek separate schools. No one seriously thinks these would ever be established. Besides, along these lines of action only the great division between Catholic and Protestant has ever been legally received, and no other is likely to be introduced ; and the permanent healing of even this breach can only be done {sic) by kindness and fair treatment ; and this I believe our Protestant people will be roady to accord when the excitement arising from heated declamation shall have subsided, and a calm and de- liberate view of the situation is taken." " The North West Baptist," too, wrote : «' Let Manitoba recognize this decision. There ought to be a readiness on the part of the Provincial Government to be a party to discovering {sic) when our legisln'ion has wronged our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens ; and upon discovering, willingly make every endeavor to do them justice." And the Presbyterian Principal Grant, of Queen's University, Kingston, probably the most prominent Presbyterian minister in Canada, moved in the General Assembly, in 1895, the following resolution, acknowledging facts, and approaching them in a temper leaving little to be desired, and inspiring hope even yet : " Whereas the Dominion of Canada is a confederation of provinces in which federal and provisional rights respectively are finally deiined by her Majesty's Privy Council ; and whereas the Privy Council decided that the National School system established in 1890 by the Province of Manitoba was within its constitutional power ; and whereas the Privy Council has since decided that the Act of 1890, though constitutional, in- flicted grievanro", on the Roman Catholic minority of the province, and that the said minority has the right under the constitution to appeal to his Excellency, the (jovernor- General-ln-Councll, for a remedy, and that the Parliament of Canada has the right, in the event of failure on the part of the province, to pass remedial legislation ; and whereas it is admitted on the one hand that remedial legislation by Parliament would interfere with provincial autonomy in education, and lead to deplorable friction between the Dominion and Provincial Governments, and, on the other hand, that when the Su- preme Court of the Empire has decided that a minority in any province is suffering a grievance that province should, in the interests of righteousness and the genernl welfare, give immediaie attention to the matter and seek to remedy the grievance ; therefore, Resolved : i. That the General Assembly has seen with pleasure the earnest efforts that have recently been n^ade by all the parties concerned to find a settlement of the qucs- The Manitoba School Question. 179 Dvince. jparate lecause ht downs what the lie decla^ 1 regular ile (jiV) ; nd to set rs [of our Id ever be 1 Catholic troduced ; dness and ord when n and de- 1 the part legislp'ion igly make iversity, lister in (Uowing m in a 1 yet : ch federal |r Council ; iblished in d whereas itional, in- it the said (jovernor- le right, in (tion ; and lent would jn between en the Su- suffering a rnl welfare, I therefore, cflbrts that f the ques- tions involved which would give relief to the minority without imperilling either the principle of national schools or the principle that education should be based on religious sanctions, and inspired by Christian ideals. 2. That the General Assembly, learning that the Government of Manitoba claims that there was not available to the Governor- General-in-Council full and accurate information on the subject, and suggests a delib- erate investigation, with the offer to assist in making such an investigation, and thus finding a substantial basis of fact upon which conclusions could be formed, and a rea- sonable and permanent settlement come to, earnestly presses upon the Dominion Gov- ernment the duty of acceding to this request of the Government of Manitoba. 3. That the General Assembly, impressed with the conviction that national unity and well-being can rest securely only on a spirit of mutual confidence animating the various creeds and races who inhabit the land, trusts that on this and all questions affecting the feelings, and even the prejudices of any section of the people, no hasty action shall be taken, but that, on the contrary, the greatest care and deliberation shall be exercised, full and thorough investigation made, and full and fair compensation offered for any injustice that may have been done." The Toronto "Mail," alluding to the Low Church Anglican Archbishop of Rupert's Land's words about this difficulty, notes that at least not a word was said by him in favor of the refusal of Manitoba [in his diocese] to act according to the decision of the Privy Council. As to Manitoba politics, indeed, the " anti-remedial " govern- ment was returned last year again with an overwhelming majority; and for Manitoba the words of one indignant writer may be used : " . . . . Then, indeed, has Might usurped the throne of Right, and we in Canada no longer acknowledge that fundamental principle of British jurisprudence, ' Ubi jus ibi remedium.' " V. The Federal Election of 1 896, and The Laiirier "Settlement:' Here was heard the cry from the Liberals-in-opposition, " no coercion," " no interference with provincial legislatures, even if according to the constitution." The cry comforted Catholic Lib- erals, and disheartened or won over Protestant Conservatives. Writers like the one last quoted had written as Liberals, pro- testing that there was a duty of interference : " This right of the Manitoba minority to Separate Schools was clearly stipulated for, and solemnly accorded as one of the terms of the arrangement under which that province entered Confedera- tion ; and the preservation of that right was certainly intended to be guaranteed by the provisions of the Manitoba Act And are we now to be told that the provisions of this solemn compact are futile ; that a wronged minority must look in vain for redress ; that the Dominion authorities are powerless to restore to it rights thus acquired and thus guaranteed ?" The Conservative Protestant (such as the son of Sir John Mac- 180 American Catholic Quarterly JReview, donald) could say — ^for party purposes, in momentary generosity, or from sound principle — that he would have expected the Catho- lics to obey a decision adverse to them, and he is prepared to do the same now that it has gone against him. Even an Orangeman — Mr. Sawers, of Peterborough, Ontario, could say io his brethren : " Remedial legislation was entirely and aggressively opposed by me until the recent decision of the Privy Council. But .... it seems clear to my mind that under the con- stitution the Roman Catholic minority of Manitoba has a grievance." And perhaps even more admirable (in both senses) was the confession of the hopelessly anti-Catholic Montreal " Daily Wit- ness," thus turning the tables of no coercion : " Bound to protect the liberties of the most erroneous faith as much as we protect the liberties of our own .... we are strongly convinced that Protestants not living as strangers and foreigners in a land, but in a country which they call their own, would strongly resent any dictation from a majority holding different views as to how their children should be educated ; and feeling this in our bones, we, as honest Christians govemea oy the golden rule, cannot but sympathize with others who do so." But all was of no avail — principle, generosity, or craft. The party bringing in a remedial bill by the Federal Parliament, now that the Provincial Legislature had refused to bring one in, was beaten, and beaten by the vote of Catholic Quebec. But our French champion, M. Laurier, would settle everything; he will arrange with the Manitoba Government ; they are Liberalj together ; that promise stood out because the Federal Government was on the other side ; and so on. Yet Mr. Greenway, if once false to Arclibishop Tache, that he might get into power, was now, with his new provincial majority, falsely true enough. His letter during the Dominion campaign might have sounded a warning : ^ " It has been reported that the Manitoba Government would settle the school ques- tion if M. Laurier came into power. The Local Government, so long as I have any connection with it, would never make any settlement of the school question which would involve the restoration of separate schools." It must be noted that at this election of 1 896 many Protestant Conservatives were elected pledged against remedial legislation, and many Catholic Liberals pledged for it. This is important to bear in mind when considering all men and things now, and in the stirring time that may be. M. Laurier's arrangement or settlement was published in No- vember, 1896. The minority in Manitoba were not consulted. ■'if The Manitoba School Question. 181 7« By this arrangement, of course, there were no separate schools ; but if (i) a majority of the Board of Trustees authorized it, or if (2) a petition came signed by parents or gua dians of at least ten children in a rural district, or at least twenty-five in a city, town, or village, then religious instruction might be given out of the time for secular school-work ; for within this line there shall be no sepa- ration by religious denominations. If the average attendance of Catholic children in villages and rural districts reaches twenty-five, and in towns and cities forty, they may claim a Catholic teacher. The Archbishop (Langevin) of St. Boniface protested in his cathedral against calling this a " settlement," in a country where Catholic schools had been given, guaranteed, taken away. And taken away we may surely agree they were, as Mr. Gold- win Smith recognizes when judging the Privy Council judgment by common sense. For " you do compel a struggling settler in a new country to send his son to your school when you take from him, by the school tax, the means of sending his child to a school of his own." The Archbishop said : ■ " No Catholic can approve of these schools unless he wishes to separate himself from the Church "We wish (l) control of our schools; (2) Catholic school-districts everywhere; (3) Catholic histories and reading-books; (4) Catholic inspectors; (5) competent Catholic teachers instructed by us ; (6) our taxes, and exemption from taxes for other schools. "The Remedial Bill gave us all that in principle But what has been given ns in its place ? Not one of our sacred rights, not a single one." "The Western Churchman," described as the organ of the Anglican Church in Manitoba, said : " Some people, who know no better, speak as if the Roman Catholic minority had got more than they had any reason to expect. The whole thing, as his grace of St. Boniface put it, is a miserable farce We do not blame his grace if he does pub- licly announce that the strife is just commencing. No earnest Roman Catholic could accept such a settlement at all. It is not permission to teach their children the truths of their faith for half an hour or even an hour a day that will satisfy the Roman Catho- lic minority. They want, and rightly so, to surround their children all day long, and every day, with an atmosphere of religion. They want not merely to impress upon their young people's minds certain important dogmas, but to so fill them with a sense of the close relationship that ought to exist between these dogmas and the conduct of their everyday lives, that they will grow up Christian men and women." Mr. Goldwin Smith, from Toronto, wrote in the local " Sun " (December i, 1896) in words showing that he understands the Christian ideal in education, though he is out of sympathy with it. His words illustrate what the most cultivated English Liberal I 182 American Catholic Quarterly Review. :i can say, and suggest that in Canada he has a fit audience, if few. Of course, Mr. Goldwin Smith writes, himself, as a disbeliever in Christianity : " At last the curtain has risen, and disclosed the terms of the Manitoba settlement They have evidently been framed with great care, and a sincere desire to do justice. They will, probably, satisfy the bulk of Protestants, who wish the question out of the way, --.nd the less-exacting Catholics. The thoroughly devout Catholic no mere safe- guards, or hoUrs reserved for doctrinal teaching, will entirely satisfy. He wants the Catholic atmosphere, the Catholic surroundings. He wants the child's whole character moulded upon the Catholic model. Nor is it very easy to see how you are justified in compelling him to send his child to your school, as you must do when you take from him, by the school-tax, the means of sending his child to a school of his own. Our public-school system, overriding paternal nght and conscience, rests on considerations of public policy superior to natural justice." Which, of course, is pretty good Paganism, or Platonism, but hardly good Protestantism for those Protestants who believe in Christianity and its law of life. The Catholic press in the United States condemned the " settle- ment," the " Sacred Heart Review," of Boston, adding : " Nor .... is it a victory for the Protestant majority. They have defied the Con- stitution of Manitoba and repudiated their promises before the world." Adding further what, as was said, must not be forgotten now and in the near future : « Yet it was the Catholic voters of Canada who permitted this thing, and a Catholic Premier who consummated it." This coming election, the London " Tablet " had written, will be decisive for at least a decade, and it " fears Mr. Blake's opinion must be accepted as final," that M. Laurier's "settlement" is " infinitely more advantageous to the Roman Catholic minority than any Remedial Bill which it is in the power of the Parliament to force upon the Premier of Manitoba." Mr. Blake was the counsel for the minority. He is the eminent lawyer, once leader of the Canadian Liberals, now an Irish Home Rule member. The " Casket," of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, that small but in- teresting paper, with principles, thoughts and ideas, severely criti- cises the "Tablet" and Mr. Blake (March 4, 1897). It quotes against him Mr. David Mills, "perhaps the ablest man in the Liberal ranks," who says that the claim to a remedial law, as guaranteed by the British North American Act, impHes that those making the claim have a right, and that they are invoking the party to whom the law has given the power of redress. The Manitoba School Question. 183 The "Casket" considers as "almost unspeakably absurd" the "Tablet's" remark that "practically it comes to this: that the judgment [of the Privy Council] does nothing but establish a moral claim on the part of the Catholics of Manitoba to the fa- vorable consideration of the Government of the Province." And that, as was said above, is the conclusion to which the writer of this article came, independently. So he respectfully says to the " Casket," though thus he seems like the humble dancing-master, who said : " II n'y a en Europe que trois grands hommes — le roi de Prusse, Voltaire et moi." If(nu have Catholics received this Laiirier-Greenway " settle- ment"; and what do they look forward to ? All Catholics would be uncompromising, surely ; and they ought to be so. That is what the world says, when it is not in conflict with the Church's children, nor desiring to get anything of its desires from them or through them. Indeed it has a cynical or amused contempt for what in the American sense is a Liberal Catholic, a sort of Joseph-ite G»rman Catholic of the generations before Windhorst, a political GcUican Catholic without old Gal- ilean religious severity, almc "^ a would-be Elizabethan Anglican. " Render unto Caesar " and " render unto God " is for them a text whose directions never conflict. Thoughtless, or ignorant, or wilful, or corrupt, they are instinctively sure of one thing, that " On fait avec le ciel des accommodements." And then the power of party. There are older priests from Ireland, such good haters of Tories that Sir Wilfred Laurier is still well trusted by them. There are many religious Catholic law- yers whose worldly course of rational public life is to be run with the Liberal party. There are thousands brought up under sys- tems of school and college compromises tolerated by the Church ; and a sort of public Sunday and private week-day Catholicism seems to them very nice ; and indeed who knows how excellent these men often are, notwithstanding this semi-penal-law-hunted Christianity, shy at least and timid, fitting nicely into the modern world's conspiracy of silence about the Church. All this seems silly enough to those who think, whatever be their religious belief, or lack thereof. The real life of the Church does not theorize continually about it, but simply lives on as if this compromising of some of its members were an ill-fitting gar- ment that somehow was clinging to it, or s >me malady on the sur- face, causing indeed, discomfort, and even pain. The only wonder, to those who think, is that the Church is not in practice even more severe than she is, about religious education ; nothing, indeed, can I 184 American Catholic Quarterly Jtevieio. be more severe about it than are her mind and heart. She is not less logical and rational in the eyes of the Revolution- Masonic spirit — deistic or atheistic, as the accidents of country just now may determine — than she is in her own, that is in the eyes of her Lord. In 1895 one good Catholic and good Liberal almost echoed the words of the Ontario Protestant Liberal Minister of Education, who advised Catholics to refrain from using even their constitu- tional right of Federal Government power over provincial. Be- ware of blind Protestant bigotry, the Minister implies : "If pressed in the present tone and temper of the country, interference will produce an irritated condition of the public mind which will not subside for many years." And here is the Catholic echo : :.| _i^ 1 ■'■■k J 1 / 1 e 1 e 1 g t « " As the Catholics have now the constitutional victory, it would redound to their credit, and at the same time evoke a generous feeling likely to end in a fair compromise, were the Manitoba Catholics to make a public declaration of their general opposition to any interference by the Central Government with provincial laws To my mind there is an immense field of usefulness open to a few cool-headed politic Catholics of Manitoba at this juncture ; but I fear they may be disposed to stand firmly by their well-won laurels to the end. Still nothing crowns victory like generosity, and perhaps the clergy may favor and guide such a step." Children of this world, and children of light, one may well ex- clsum, when one reflects on the contrast between victors on one side and on the other. And now here is a Catholic lawyer-politician of last month (December 8, 1897): " I have not changed my views on the Manitoba School question ; if anything they are stronger now than ever. Of course if Rome speaks we must obey ; but, I have too much confidence in the far-seeing and progressive policy of the illustrious Leo XIII. to think for one moment that he will condemn the Laurier settlement in Mo or command us to desert our respective political parties. I have no doubt that he will affirm what is and always has been the Catholic teaching on the subject of education, but at the same time will counsel prudence and moderation for the attainment of the end we all so earnestly seek." The writer continued : We are "between the duplicity of the Conservatives and the failure of Laurier' s settlement to meet the views of the more sanguine Liberals ; between a ' remedial bill' unworkable and ineffective, and a 'settlement' that gives something but not cnov-gh ; between a warlike attitude that can breed nothing but contention, animosity and strife and a ' sunny way of peace.' " The matter, it appears to me, resolves itself into three questions : l. Did the Privy Council decide that the minority had a grievance ? 2, Can the Federal Parliament pass such a measure of remedial legislation as will be a substantial remedy ? 3. If they can- aot, what is best to do in the circiunstances ?" i''^sH ^^M t'fl^l J; a \* 1 i 1 .^! ■^ 1 The Manitoba School Question. 185 As to (l), he thinks the Privy Council gave no decision that there was a grievance. The letter added : " That a great grievance exists, you and I admit." And it must be further added here (as already stated), that even if the Privy Council gave no " decision " that there is a grievance, yet they "admit" its existence, at least by implica- tion. As to (2), /'/ is a question of financial aid. And this writer said : " It is admitted on all sides that no ren^edial legislation can compel Manitoba to con* tribute to the maintenance of separate schools ; but it is claimed that the Federal Par- liament can relieve the minority from taxation in support of the Common Schools. Is this so ? Notwithstanding that Mr. Dickey, then Minister of Justice, in his speech on the bill when it was before the House, expressed very grave doubts, his camp followers were and are far more confident about it. They argue that as the power is given to do a certain thing, so all things incidental thereto follow. This is the argiunent of the lay- man rather than the lawyer. Any lawyer of ordinary reading knows that legislatures frequently pass laws which become dead letters on the statute-book because no ma- chinery has been supplied for the carrying out of them. We have now, however, the opinion of Mr. Blake, counsel for the minority, that such is not within the purview of the Dominion Parliament. It is not denied that Parliament might make an allowance ; but what would the tax-payers of Canada say ? With all due respect to his C>race the Archbishop of St. Boniface, I think that he expressed the severest condemnation of the Conservative remedial bill when he said that he admitted that it did not amount to much, but that it legislated the principle, and the rest would be secured afterwards. In other words, a perpetual religious war in Canada, with its inevitable result in a country where the majority is antagonistic." And as to (3) ; " Now, if I be correct in saying that Parliament cannot legislate a substantial remedy, what is best to do in the circumstances? (