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A FEW WORDS WITH SIR MACKENZIE BOWELL. 
 
 Sir, — Speaking from your place in the senate on 
 the reply to the governor's speech you stated it 
 was an — 
 
 Important fact, that when the resolutions were introduced admit- 
 ting Manitoba into the Confederation, it was believed at that time 
 that we were granting the same rights and privileges to the Komaiv 
 Catholics of Manitoba that had been granted to the minority in Que- 
 bec and to the minority in Ontario in relation to schools. 
 
 The importance of this assertion is due to its 
 coming from the premier of the Dominion. Speak- 
 ing as the head of the government, you assure the 
 country that the educational privileges of the min- 
 ority in Quebec were extended to the minority of 
 Manitoba, and, consequently, to deprive the min- 
 ority in Manitoba of these privileges would imperil 
 the position of the minority in Quebec. Is that 
 the case? Is il true that the Catholics of Manitoba 
 and the Protestants of Quebec stand alike; that 
 there is no difference in their position, and that 
 whatever is done to the one, may, with equal 
 justice, be done to the other? If that be not true, 
 you are doing a serious wrong to the Quebec min- 
 ority, for you are exposing them to the danger of 
 the majority acting on your assertion, and of re- 
 taliating upon them the wrongs they suppose and 
 which you lead them to believe are being done to 
 their co-religionists in Manitoba. 
 
 I challenge you to make good your assertion 
 that the rights and privileges of the Quebec min- 
 ority^were granted to the Manitoba minority — to 
 prove that there is the slightest resemblance be- 
 tween the positions of these minorities. If you 
 cannot, then you are endeavoring to bolster the 
 claims of Archbishop Langevin at the expense of 
 the Protestant remnant of the province of Quebec 
 and prejudicing them injuriously in the opinion 
 of the electorate of the Dominion. 
 
There is only one ground upon which the inter- 
 ference of the State with education can be justified, 
 and that is, for the protection of society. Were 
 it not for that, the State would have no more right 
 to provide schools for the youth of the country 
 than it would to arrange for giving them food 
 and clothing. Ignorance is so great a danger to 
 the public weal, the peril in the working of self- 
 ffoverninff states from an illiterate electorate so 
 menacing, that the State steps in to make sure 
 that every child will have opportunity to at least 
 be furnished with the keys of knowledge — that 
 he will be taught how to read, write, and count. 
 Nobodj^ pretends that is all the child ought to 
 know, but it is all the State is justified in teaching, 
 and all that it has any interest in having him 
 taught, for the boy who knows how to rt^ad, will, 
 when he becomes a man, cast a ballot more intelli- 
 gently, and the boy who knows how to write will 
 mark it more correctly, than the man who was not 
 taught to read or write. There are other dangers 
 that confront the working of self-governing states, 
 but there is no other so ever-present or of such 
 vital importance as ignorance. Give an electorate 
 a majority of whom can neither read nor write, 
 and self-government becomes impossible, for the 
 voters are the ready dupes of demagogues and 
 wield their power at the ballot box to their own 
 hurt. To see what kind of government results 
 from attempting to work free institutions with 
 an ignorant body of electors, we have only to look 
 to the republics of Central and South America, 
 w^here revolution follows revolution, and, under 
 the name of president, dictator succeeds dictator. 
 To guard against this danger of popular ignorance, 
 to ensure that, at least, a large majority of the 
 
s 
 
 electors shall be able to use the franchise with 
 intelligence, the State provides a system of public 
 schools. On no other ground than this, can the 
 maintenance of schools by the government be 
 justified, and that they may do the work for 
 which they were established, it is, of necessity, 
 indispensable that the government control them. 
 But in Quebec the government does not control 
 the larger part of the schools, it has abdicated its 
 functions to the hierarchy, giving them the grant 
 and tax for their maintenance, and leaving the 
 bishops to do as they deem proper. It was not 
 always thus. To tell how, point by point, poli- 
 ticians bartered the rights of the State for clerical 
 support, would take too long. Enough to say, 
 the transference is now so complete that the 
 government is bound to introduce into the legis- 
 lature no amendment to the school act until it 
 has been submitted to and been approved of by the 
 bishops. All this is not only a usurpation of the 
 rights of the State, but it is an innovation. The 
 bishops had no such control of the schools fifty 
 years ago; they had not even at Confederation. 
 Yet this system, which is of yesterday as it were, 
 is the system you would fasten on Manitoba under 
 the pretence of prescriptive right. All the schools 
 of Quebec have not so fallen from the original 
 purpose for which they were instituted. The 
 schools of the non-Catholic population have re- 
 mained true to the standard of ihe common- 
 schools of the rest of the Dominion and are, today, 
 the only representatives in this province of the 
 true State school. Inch by inch the hierarchy 
 has extended its hand over the schools of Quebec, 
 until it has grasped all save a few, and that these 
 few schools, true to their origin and design, are 
 
perinitted to exist, the hierarchy claims praise for 
 its toleration ! Do you know what the schools of 
 the majority in Quebec have become? Do you 
 not know that they are as much a part of the 
 Church of Rome as its convents and churches, 
 that the burden of their teaching is instruction in 
 the observances, services, and tenets of that 
 church, and that they do not fulfil the end for 
 which the State founded them, for illiteracy 
 abounds. For these schools money is drawn from 
 the public chest and taxes authorized by the legis- 
 lature are levied, yet they do not do the very 
 work in consideration of which these grants and 
 taxes were designed, so that the practical outcome 
 is, the State is paying so much yearly to enable 
 the Church of Rome to train its youth in its creed. 
 I leave it to you, if it is not impudent that those 
 who have devised and maintain such schools should 
 claim it as a merit that, after contorting the State 
 schools to serve the purpose of their church, they 
 allow those schools that have not undergone their 
 transmutation to exist! Is it a privilege to permit 
 the non- Catholic population of Quebec to have 
 non-sectarian schools? It strikes me to be a right, 
 and ought to be in the eyes of the State a merit 
 in them to have remained true to such schools. 
 Sir, the non-Catholics of Quebec have had no 
 rights or privileges granted them by the majority 
 and are ignorant of any favors received from that 
 majority, they have simply been left in the enjoy- 
 ment of what is their inherent right, the non- 
 sectarian schools designed by the old legislature of 
 the united provinces. Because, during of late, the 
 system of education in Quebec has changed, are 
 the few non-sectarian schools that survive to be 
 treated as exotics, dependent on the breath of the 
 
majority? Are schools in accord with the prin- 
 ciples upon which governments rest to be placed 
 on an equality with the separate schools you insist 
 on fastening upon Manitoba? You say the min- 
 ority of Manitoba is entitled to the same rights 
 and privileges as have been granted to the min- 
 ority of Quebec. Let me enumerate to you a few 
 of these privileges. When the non-Catholics are 
 not numerous enough to maintain a school of their 
 own, they are taxed to keep up a school it is im- 
 possible for them to send their children to, when 
 a non-Catholic becomes a stockholder in a factory, 
 lie pays taxes to support Catholic schools, when 
 the non-Catholic looks into the blue books he 
 learns that the legislature pays yearly out of the 
 public treasury, in the name of education, sub- 
 sidies to 200 convents and a score of colleges, 
 among the latter being the institutions of the 
 Jesuits. To parallel these "privileges" in Manitoba 
 would be difficult, for Protestants have no con- 
 vents. Possibly if Archbishop Langevin insists 
 on similar privileges, you might get over it by 
 compelling his people to pay taxes to Protestant 
 mission schools and the legislatures to give grants 
 to P.P.A. lodges, as the nearest approximation to 
 Jesuit seminaries. The Quebec minority resent the 
 representation that they are specially favored. 
 On the contrary they hold they have valid cause 
 for complaint, and if they wished ill to the min- 
 ority of Manitoba they could not desire them the 
 treatment they submit to. 
 
 The non-Catholics of Quebec have no fear for 
 themselves should Manitoba remain true to the 
 stand it has taken in favor of secular schools, for 
 to speak of the majority retaliating upon them 
 is absurd. How could the majority retaliate other- 
 
6 
 wise on the Quebec minority than by decreeing 
 what is impossible — that Protestants be compelled 
 to send their children to schools taught by nuns 
 and friars. Supposing such a law to be enacted 
 by the majority, it would end in benefitting the 
 minority, for the attention of the Empire would 
 thereby be so pointedly directed to this province, 
 that the usurpations of the hierarchy would be 
 upset and sectarian schools cease to exist. To 
 speak of the minority of Quebec as existing at the 
 sufferance of the majority is degrading to the one 
 and offensive to the other. There are certain 
 rights that pertain to every British subject, and 
 so long as the minority claim naught beyond those 
 rights, they thank no man for being allowed to 
 enjoy them. Quebec is British, not foreign soil; 
 it is under British law and custom; and to let it 
 be inferred that any portion of its inhabitants 
 enjoy those attributes that belong to British sub- 
 jects because of the gracious permission of the 
 majority, is the nonsense of obsequious creatures 
 unworthy of a place in a British parliament. Let 
 no member of parliament endeavor to excuse his 
 vote on the Manitoba school question, by a pre- 
 tended regard for the minority of Quebec. 
 
 The question before the Dominion is not one 
 of schools, but whether its government is going 
 to take cognizance of the creed of its people, and 
 make exclusive laws for a certain number who 
 profess a particular creed. Because a body of men 
 say "We believe so-and-so," is parliament bound 
 to give them exceptional treatment and enact laws 
 different for them from those that govern the rest 
 of the people? This has been done to a large 
 extent in the province of Quebec; done in defiance 
 of British law and of the interests of the minority 
 
7. 
 
 Is what has been effected in the province of Que- 
 bec under exceptional conditions to be made the 
 standard for Manitoba and the Northwest? Are 
 the exceptional rights and privileges, not of the 
 minority as you wrongly put it, but of the ma- 
 joriiy of Quebec to be grafted on our new settle- 
 ments? That is the real point at issue. The 
 Protestants of Quebec have no privileges. As 
 regards school matters they stand on the same 
 plane as the people of Ontario, Nova Scotia and 
 the other provinces, with certain disabilities pe- 
 culiar to themselves. To impute imaginary rights 
 and privileges to the Protestants of Quebec as an 
 excuse for extending favors to the Catholics of 
 Manitoba is cowardly and dishonest. The excep- 
 tional privileges you speak of pertain to the Que- 
 bec majority, and what you are proposing to do is 
 to force Manitoba to grant the unconstitutional 
 and dangerous concessions obtained by the hierar- 
 chy in this province. That is the plain English of 
 the matter, and no sophistry or garbling of words 
 can change the fact. I could admire the boldness 
 that would frankly say, "We are going to put in 
 the hands of the hierarchy of the Northwest the 
 same power as is exercised by the hierarchy of 
 Quebec," but despise the hypocrite who, while en- 
 deavoring to do that, pretends he is only giving 
 the same rights and privileges to the Catholics of 
 Manitoba that have been granted to the Protes- 
 tants of Quebec. 
 
 I would the people of Canada realized the sig- 
 nificance of what its government is proposing to 
 do. A stroke of the pen by George III. w^ould 
 have prevented those struggles between church 
 and state which have made the government of 
 Canada at all times difficult and twice in our his- 
 
8 
 
 tory brought it to a standstill. The remedial 
 order, looked upon by some as a small matter, is 
 going to decide whether our Northwest is to 
 be free from the strife that has afflicted the pro- 
 vinces by the St Lawrence or to be subject to it. 
 Force upon the Northwest separate schools, and 
 the point of the wedge is entered which will in- 
 volve the West in the troubles and difficulties that 
 perplex Quebec. The granting of separate schools 
 concedes the principle that those to whom they 
 are granted are entitled to special legislation apart 
 from tlieir fellow - subjects, and that dangerous 
 principle once conceded, it logically requires that 
 the legislature also provide for them, separate in- 
 stitutions for deaf mutes, for the blind, the poor, 
 the sick, the insane, for dealing with the criminal 
 class, all to be controlled not by the State, but by 
 the hierarchy — the State merely providing the 
 funds. Is the pall that stifles enterprise and pro- 
 gress in Quebec, to be thrown over the free soil 
 of our Canadian West? Is there to be in that 
 virgin country two sets of laws and two measures 
 of dealing with its people? Are the legislatures 
 of Manitoba and the Northwest to be ordered 
 imperatively by the Dominion to provide exclusive 
 privileges for a chosen caste, who will not sit at 
 the national table and eat out of the common dish 
 but demand separate dish and table? That is the 
 issue before tlie Dominion, and there is not a Pro- 
 testant in Quebec, outside the circle of politicians 
 and place-hunters, who does not sincerely hope 
 that the Dominion's great heritage west of the 
 lakes may be spared the troubles and drawbacks 
 that afflict this province. 
 
 RoBT. Sellar. 
 Huntingdon, Que., May 1, 1895.