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Letter to Pope Pius X, No. 2.

Subject: The Purcell Case but one instance of Eomanistic greed and intrigue.—Canada fruitful field for papal exploitation.

“Your Holiness:”
John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati, defaulter for at least $4,000,000 to honest German and other toilers—some of these Protestants—was typical agent of your iniquitous System of rapine and pillage, whose history, written in the blood of twelve centuries of martyrs, is one of humanity’s darkest reproaches. How faithfully Purcell toiled for your System, that he might, at nod or beck of some predecessor of yours, be raised to the rank of cardinal, is borne out by Bishop Gilmour in his funeral oration, cited in my first letter. He says:

I have seen him in the rude shanty sitting for hours, hearing the confessions of the people who came from far and near to see and hear the farfamed prelate, and when the day’s work was done for others, hear him in the courthouse, explaining the doctrine of the Church. He seemed never to weary, nor did the gay and cheering words of the hard-worked missionary ever fail. … No matter how hard the work or difficult the task, no one ever heard him complain or murmur at the toil.

How was the fidelity of this trusted agent of your System rewarded by the papacy? A French proverb expresses very clearly the significant truth: “Dans Vadversite on connait ses vrais amis” (In adversity one knows his true friends). When John Baptist Purcell’s day of adversity came, where did the papacy stand? Did it arise, equal to the occasion, and draw from its hoards in British, Dutch, and other banks, the moneys necessary to pay off the sums due to Purcell’s 3,485 creditors? A loan of $4,000,000, secured by the Archbishop of Cincinnati’s diocesan property, worth easily three or four times that amount, could have been, without difficulty, made by your predecessor.

Or, your predecessor might have issued command to the Church in America to raise the needed amount as suggested by the New York Herald. See The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 12, 1879, p. 5, col. 5:

The Archbishop’s Debts.
[New York Herald.]

There are in the United States about six million Catholics, and less than a dollar from each would cancel the indebtedness. It is very probable, however, that upon investigation the grand total of the amount deposited with the Archbishop will be found to be much less than $6,000,- 000 ; but even should it reach that sum it could be paid in a day by general subscription. The moral effect of so splendid an illustration of Christian faith and good works would be incalculable. As an evidence of solid faith it would be of more practical value than a score of costly cathedrals. The Catholics of this country have, in our opinion, the greatest and grandest opportunity to show the faith which is in them, and at the same time perform a noble charity, that was ever offered to a religious denomination. To serve their poor, ruined brethren of Ohio by a united effort would be the most impressive moral spectacle of the century, the brighest chapter in the history of the American Catholic Church. To allow the opportunity to pass unimproved will be to deepen, if possible, the stain that has fallen on the Catholic name and character.

But ungrateful master, indeed, is your Roman System. No helping hand is hers for sorrow or misfortune. No practical sympathy did the papacy show to its fallen and humiliated prelate, of whom a generous writer then spoke in these feeling terms: ‘ ‘ His step is unsteady, his hands tremulous, his eyes unsteady, and his face deeply lined, evidently more by mental anxiety than by years. ‘ ‘

Into Vatican recesses failed to penetrate the sobs and sighs of despoiled, penniless victims of the Purcell fraud. From The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 2, 1879, I take the following:

One man said yesterday in the Trustees ‘ office : “I had $2,000 in the Archbishop’s hands. I have no work and no money. My wife and children are barefoot, and but for the charity of some Jews who are my neighbors they would have starved. This morning a good friend of mine, a good man with a family, who has $900 in the Archbishop’s hands, came to me and said, ‘ Good-bye ; I am desperate ; my family starve, my money is gone, and I will kill myself.’ A poor woman went crazy in the Trustees’ office a few days ago, maddened by her trouble. Scores of such cases might be enumerated of utter desperation born of misery.

One sees them thronging every morning at the Archbishop’s door, asking the monotonous question: ‘Is there anything for us yet? Even a little to buy some bread?’ ”

The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 4, 1879, states :

All yesterday the office of the Trustees, at the corner of Main and 5th Sts., was thronged with creditors of the Archbishop, clamorous for the settlement of their claims. They filled the rooms of Mannix & Cosgrove, the Trustees’ attorneys, so that it was impossible for the Trustees to hold their usual meeting, and at night dozens of them besieged Father Quinn in his room at the Archiepiscopal residence. During the afternoon Father Albrink, one of the trustees, and Mr. Mannix, started out in search of a suitable person to accept the position of assignee to the Archbishop, but their search proved futile. Archbishop Purcell has fully determined upon an assignment and will make it as soon as an assignee can be procured. At present he is engaged in a Lenten retreat [!] a few miles out of the city, but within an hour’s call whenever needed.

The Purcell case attracted universal attention. In the New York Sun, March 25, 1879, appeared another very striking article entitled :

The thing which people seemed to find most difficult in understanding about the failure of Archbishop Purcell is, “What has become of the money?”

It is without precedent in the history of bankruptcies that so vast a sum should leave so little trace of its disappearance. . . .

The allegation has been made that large amounts of the depositors’ money had been sent to Rome.

While the creditors of your System’s agent, John Baptist Purcell, had to go without bread, Catholic authorities were giving strong assurances that all the Purcell obligations would be liquidated. The Enquirer, March 8, 1879, quoted “One (N. Y.) Catholic clergyman’ ‘ as saying:

There need be no fear that the funds will not be furnished to make good all claims against Archbishop Purcell. When St. Peter ‘s Church in Barclay St. was involved to the extent of $100,000 under the administration of Father Pise and Father Power, Archbishop Hughes appointed Father Quinn, now Vicar General, to take charge of its affairs, and under his administration the debt of the parish was almost entirely paid off. Since then, however, St. Peter’s has become deeply in debt again. Another more notable instance occurred recently in Orange, N. J., where a Catholic clergyman bought considerable property, built a fine church, and established an orphan asylum, incurring a debt of about $170,000 on property that would not sell under foreclosure for more than $50,000. Bishop Corrigan, of the Newark Diocese, however, assumed the whole debt, saved the property from foreclosure, and has now paid off nearly all the claim.

With the Vatican’s ears closed, and its heart (?) steeled against cries of distress from Cincinnati, with the failure of brother Bishops in America to make up the Purcell obligation, with the diocesan priests of Cincinnati enjoying life as has been always their wont, oblivious of everything save personal good cheer and comfort, the Purcell creditors went without their money. To their graves have gone hundreds of these plundered people in the last thirty years, some in their dying hour cursing both Pope and Purcell. One of the saddest scenes which I ever witnessed while I was a member of the Eoman Hierarchy was that of an old maiden lady in Manchester, N. H., who died in 1886, cursing Archbishop Purcell and the pope of Rome for having swindled her out of her hard earnings. See “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,” Chapter VI, p. 108.

Here it may be well to ask why was not the like treatment meted out to ordinary bank defaulters and trust looters, administered to the Purcell brothers! The law’s just severity duly applied might have brought about as prompt and complete settlement of the sad affair. Clear is it that the Purcells obtained money under false pretences ; clear, also, that they misused the moneys to their care entrusted. Why were they suffered to escape the punishment such atrocious misconduct so richly deserved?

The Cincinnati steal is but one instance of papalistic intrigue and rapine in America. There has been besides, the Wagoman Catholic University defalcation, and many another of less prominence. Greed and rapacity are predominant characteristics of your infamous System. Look, for example, at one of the garden spots of Romanism in America.

The Province of Quebec, Canada, is certainly striking instance of Roman activities and influences. From a paper, Holy Father, friendly to you and the causes you represent, edited by a Protestant clergyman, Rev. J. A. MacDonald, I take the following clear exposition of conditions in one Canadian city only, in the matter of municipal taxation. Writing from Montreal, February 20, 1913, Toronto Globe’s duly accredited representative, J. C. Ross, says:

Montreal, Feb. 20.—Toronto is not the only city in Canada which is agitated over the land-tax question. Montreal is now facing a phase of this question which promises to develop into one of the most important and far-reaching controversies in the history of the city. In Toronto, apparently, the question is largely one of the relation between improved and unimproved property. In Montreal it is the question of whether or not property belonging to religious organizations shall be exempt from taxation or not.

At the present time over one-fifth of the property in the city of Montreal is exempt from taxation. The seriousness of allowing this wholesale exemption of property to exist is further shown by the fact that Montreal has a civic debt to-day which absorbs every year over 27 per cent of the entire revenue raised by the city.

The case in Montreal is not an isolated one. The city of Outremont, a residential suburb of Montreal, has over one-third of its property exempt from taxation. The city of Westmount and other municipalities adjoining Montreal, show a similar condition of affairs. Not only in these outlying suburbs, but in Montreal as well are located large farms owned by various religious orders, on which not one cent of taxes has ever been paid. In addition, valuable down-town business sections owned by Church organizations are largely free from taxation. To spend over 27 per cent of the civic revenue for interest charges and to exempt over one-fifth of the total property places unnecessary and severe burdens upon the citizens who contribute to the city coffers.

The abuse which has grown to such tremendous proportions began in a small way. At the outset churches and religious orders were poor and comparatively few in number. With the growth of the city they increased in number and wealth, until to-day not only are churches and the property they hold exempt from taxation, but all sorts of charitable, educational, or religious organizations in any shape or form connected with the Church has become exempt. In some cases religious orders have made all their investments in real estate. They purchase valuable property from private owners, which immediately becomes non-revenue-producing to the city as soon as it passes into the hands of a religious order. As they are not forced to pay taxes nor in any way assist in the upkeep of the streets, police, fire, light, or other public utilities serving the property, these religious orders can hold their property for an indefinite time, and undersell, if necessary, the man who holds property alongside, on which heavy taxes have to be paid. As soon as a property becomes sufficiently valuable these religious orders sell it and immediately reinvest in a still larger property; thus the evil spreads, and more and more property is passing from the revenue-producing to the non-revenue-producing class.

An example or two will illustrate this: In May, 1910, the Grey Nuns purchased a property at the corner of St. Lawrence boulevard and Sherbrooke street for $135,000. As soon as they purchased it, it ceased to contribute to the revenue of the city. The nuns held it for a year and a half, and then sold it for $395,000, making a profit of $260,000 not a cent of which went to the coffers of the city, whose activities made the land increase in value. A few years ago the ‘ ‘ Hornerites ‘ ‘ purchased a property on Bleury street for $3,000, built a little church on it which cost $4,000, and sold it a few months ago for over $80,000. St. George’s Church, opposite the Windsor Station, was recently sold for upwards of $1,500,000, although it cost but a very small fraction of this. For the Archbishop ‘s palace on Dominion Square, assessed at but a trifle over $800,000, an offer of $3,000,000 is said to have been made.

The Seminary of St. Sulpice maintains a farm of nearly one hundred acres in the heart of Montreal and Westmount. It is valued at $1,750,000. Various other farms within the city limits are valued at from a quarter of a million to half a million dollars. These farms are entirely surrounded by the highest class residential property and entail enormous expenses on the citizens who contribute to the city’s upkeep. Sidewalks and streets must be opened past these farms, street railway lines constructed, sewers and water mains laid to the residences beyond, telephone lines and all other public utilities carried past these vacant spaces. The improvements made to the residential property adjoining these farms enormously enhance their value, and many of these farms, if broken up into building lots—as is done from time to time—would sell to-day at over two dollars per square foot.

It must not be inferred from the above that the Roman Catholic Church is the only Church which has its property exempt from taxation. Every religious denomination is exempt, but as the Roman Catholic Church constitutes over fourfifths of the population, their exemptions naturally greatly exceed those of all the other denominations combined. In addition the Roman Catholic Church has many semi-religious, educational, and charitable bodies connected with its organization, who seem to have specialized in real estate investments. Many of these orders have become immensely wealthy, and to-day own large farms in the residential districts, on which they pay not one cent of taxes. When the question does come up for settlement, it will be dealt with not as a religious question, but as an economic one. If all the Churches and religious orders were made to pay taxes on their holdings, none of them could reasonably complain. They should at least contribute part of their unearned increment to the city, which furnishes them with public^ utilities and makes possible the increase in their realty earnings.

Certainly something must be done to secure more revenue. Montreal’s total assessment today is $638,000,000, of which $136,000,000 is exempt from taxation. Three years ago the taxable property in the city was $260,000,000, while the exempt property was $68,000,000. In the three years the exempted property has more than doubled, while the taxable property has not shown a similar increase. The city has a debt of $63,- 000,000, or a per capita debt of $118. Out of her revenue $2,750,000, or over twenty-seven per cent, is paid out yearly as interest charges. The city has the unenviable reputation of being the worst governed city on the continent. Its streets are dirty, poorly paved, and ill-lighted, while the whole civic machinery is open to condemnation. In spite of all this, Montreal adds to her exempted property millions every year. The more thoughtful business men in the city and in the council are asking where it is to end. The question is one of the biggest confronting the people of Montreal to-day.

Not alone in the matter of municipal taxation is the Roman Church, of which you are the head, enemy of the people of Quebec and of the Dominion of Canada, but also in the grave issues of sanitation. Read from The Toronto Globe, Ontario, organ of Sir Wilfred Laurier:

Montreal, Feb. 16.—The smallpox situation in the Province of Quebec at the present time is causing some uneasiness in medical circles. There are now 31 counties in the province reporting smallpox cases, and the total of cases reported is between two and three hundred.

The more funerals, the more revenue for priests and Church !

Two rebellions in the Canadian Northwest were started and guided by the Roman priesthood. The leader of each of these rebellions was one Eiel, at one time a student for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Archbishop Tache, the leading Romanist hierarch of the Canadian Northwest, was a hater profound of the English language and, in especial manner, of the Irish race. He wanted the great Northwest, now divided into the flourishing Anglo-Saxon and Protestant provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, closed against immigration and settlement. Certain high officials of the Hudson Bay Company, from which the Roman prelate received large pecuniary subventions, lent inspiration and encouragement to Archbishop Tache’s anti-British and anti-Canadian crusade, in re Northwestern colonization.

But for his anti-Canadian writings on the subject of the Northwest’s acquisition and settlement, there had been no Riel rebellion, no shedding of Protestant blood at Fort Garry in 1870. All of old Canada resounded at the time with the call of the West:

The West is calling, calling,
Seeking men who can rejoice
In her beauties all-enthralling;
Quick, awaken to her voice!

Wild her cataracts are falling,
Reigning lone in mountain glen
Aye, the West is ever calling,
Ever calling loud for men !

Hark, her deserts vast are chanting
Out their song—a voiceless song;
And, her arid wastes are panting
Neath the sun the live year long.

The West is calling, calling;
Wake, ye dreamers, hear her cry !
See her beauties all-enthralling
Spread their wealth beneath the sky!

Golden sunshine in abundance,
Fruits and flowers and joy’s release—
Eden’s garden’s fair resemblance
Lies within her land of peace!

This call, so well expressed by Eugene Carroll Nowland, appealed profoundly to all Englishspeaking and Protestant Canada. But Archbishop Tache, direct agent of the Vatican, desired to have the Northwest closed forever against Anglo-Saxon colonization or transformed by iniquitously partisan and sectarian legislation into another Quebec.

Archbishop Tache ‘s successor in Manitoba is as much in earnest in 1913 as was Tache himself from 1851 till 1894 in the work of Gallicizing and Romanizing the Canadian Northwest. The Montreal Star of May 7, 1913, states :

R. C. Archbishop Commends Roblin Education Policy.

Winnipeg, May 6.—Archbishop Langevin has issued an important pronouncement upon the school question in the form of a letter to be read in the Catholic churches. A portion of the document was read at High Mass in St. Boniface Cathedral on Sunday by Monsignor Dugas, Vicar- General, and the remainder is to be made public on a future occasion. The letter is an exposition of His Grace’s views on the school issue.

The Archbishop laments that the bill enlarging the boundaries of Manitoba did not safeguard the rights of the minority. The Coldwell amendments were, he says, the result of negotiations at Ottawa, following the passage of the bill.

It is also pointed out that the acceptance by the Winnipeg School Board of the proposition made by Mr. Coldwell would be a partial concession, and would not be regarded as a settlement in full.

The Roblin government is highly commended for having given French-Catholics their own normal school, three inspectors of their own language and faith, the right of French schools to employ teachers in religious garb, and to keep the crucifix upon the walls of the schools.

These are declared to be “appreciable services.’ Commendation, though less specific, is also passed upon the Saskatchewan government.

The letter closes with a declaration of unalterable hostility to national schools, State university, and compulsory education.

A province of Manitoba, a postage stamp on the map, was in 1870 carved out of the immense Canadian Northwest. Catholic separate schools and the French as an official language were promptly forced on the new province.

This Jesuitical scheme failed, however, to work. Of the immigrants to the newly-opened Northwest nine out of every ten were Englishspeaking and Protestant. The French was, first, abolished as an official language. Sectarian Romanist schools were, next, done away with. The priests had been drawing salaries, in most cases, as teachers, and never kept school !

No sooner, however, were the so-called Roman Catholic schools abolished, than the Hierarchy raised the cry of persecution! Appeals were made to the general government at Ottawa and to the government of Britain against the action of the Manitoba legislature in providing free public schools for all children in the provinces, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic. Grave crime, of course, in papal eyes!

Your Holiness can not name any non-Christian country on earth into which your missionaries have entered and bettered permanently the inhabitants. I present, in this connection, the following Washington dispatch published in the Courier- Journal, Louisville, Ky., February 8, 1913:

Washington, February 7.—With the transmission to Congress to-day by President Taft of a special State Department report on Anglo- Saxon exploitation of South American Indians in the Putuyamo District of Peru, conclusions on the same subject by Frederico Alfonso Pezet, Peruvian Minister to the United States, were made public by the State Department.

The latter statement shows that the Peruvian Government has been aware of every step taken by American Consul Stuart J. Fuller, and the minister gives the assurance that already steps have been taken by his government for the improvement of conditions in the Putumayo territory.

Although it was at first feared that Consul Fuller’s efforts had been rendered valueless in many respects by the espionage of agents of a British rubber company, State Department officials now are hopeful that the crying abuses of which the native Indians have been long-suffering victims eventually will be terminated.

In bringing the Putumayo District under the protection of Peruvian law, the administration of justice, the minister points out that his government will rely largely upon the co-operation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The moral uplift of the aborigines has received very special attention [says Minister Pezet] . The administration ha s decided to erect at Iquitos, on the Amazon, a bishopric, and to establish at different places in the region five missions.

These will have a sufficient number of priests to serve the spiritual needs of the Indians, as well as to furnish instructions to them. By thus living with and among them, these Indians will be effectively protected from any new attempts to maltreat or brutalize them in any manner or form.

He says the government at Lima will seek to keep in constant communication with the Putumayo country by wireless, and a flotilla of gunboats will patrol the streams in the district to see that there is no return to the old outrages.

As a result of the investigations by the Peruvian Judicial Commission [he continues] the several parties indicted for the crimes against the aborigines will be brought to justice and such of the criminals as had fled the country will be brought back as soon as the proper extraditions can be obtained.

Consul Fuller finds that the travesty on justice which exists in the rubber section is entirely in the hands of the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company’s section chiefs. It is the Putumayo country’s remoteness from the Peruvian capital, from all governmental authority, that has left the natives entirely at the mercy of the company, according to the report.

The Andes form an almost impassable barrier to the westward, while, to reach the outside world through the Atlantic Ocean, river craft must traverse almost the entire 3,300 miles of the Amazon. Railroads are unknown, and no highways exist worthy of the name. In this far-away corner, with no means of appeal or redress, the Indians were held at the mercy of the company’s overseers. When they failed to bring in a toll sufficient to satisfy the demands of the overseers, flogging, mutilation, and sometimes death followed, it is asserted. Several of the overseers are declared to have admitted that they had put Indians and even white laborers in stocks for minor offenses. Many of the Indians whom Mr. Fuller saw bore scars of floggings and other maltreatment.

Mr. Fuller found that the labor of the Indians is secured by a system of peonage based on advance of merchandise. Although payment is made for this labor, it is declared to be nothing more nor less than forced labor.

Debt is declared to have been the chain with which the Indian has been fettered. By being encouraged to buy more imported goods than they could ever hope to pay for, they have been reduced to what Consul Fuller found was virtually slavery. As claims are transferable, the person of the debtor being transferred to the new creditor, the Indians and their families really are bought and sold. Families pass on indebtedness from generation to generation.

Your missionaries have been for four centuries among the aborigines of South America, Peru, of course, included. They should, surely, in that time have made the influences of Christianity, if these influences were really represented and reflected by them, felt among the aborigines of South America. The fact is that your Romanistic System does not anywhere, either in the Canadian Northwest or in Central or South America, work for the real upliftment of the ignorant or the downtrodden.

When Roman hierarchs in Montreal, Canada, in anarchical defiance of their country’s and of the British Empire’s laws, annulled a marriage legal before God and man, reducing lawfully wedded wife to rank of concubine and branding her children as bastards, the Orange Order of the Canadian Dominion rose up generously to protect womanhood wronged and childhood outraged.

Romish divorce courts, sitting under the very shadow of the very Vatican itself, are, every day, issuing divorces. So they are in all other countries of Europe and in all parts of America — conspicuously so in the United States and in Canada. These anarchical agencies act more openly and defiantly in French-Catholic Canada, where in very recent times they have separated a vinculo et thoro Mrs. Tremblay, a lawfullymarried woman, from her husband, who, on finding another woman he liked better, went to popish priest and had the latter declare null and void, for cash considerations, of course, his marriage to lawful wife, and mother of his children, that he might marry the other and younger party with full approval of Church and State.

How utterly indefensible is the Roman Catholic priesthood’s action in this matter is very clear, from the fact that the priest who first married the Tremblays was bound by Church law to ascertain if any relationship or other impediment existed to prevent their marriage. Having satisfied himself on this point, he might proceed with the ceremony, either on his own authority or through the dispensing power of his bishop.

No justification whatever, in any case, is there for the annulment of a marriage between third cousins when the Church, after every opportunity to investigate, declares the parties competent under ecclesiastical law to wed. The State allowing such infamy is unfit for self-government.

Thus tells The Toronto Globe, April 5, 1913, of the Tremblay case:

Ottawa, April 4.—The Grand Master of the Orangemen of British North America, Lieut-Col. J. M. Scott of Walkerton, has, it is understood, forwarded to Montreal the balance of the amount of the security required by the judgment of the Court of Review of Quebec to be deposited within fifteen days for appeal to the Privy Council in the Tremblay-Depatie marriage case.

Arnold Wainwright, K. C, of Montreal, has the now famous suit in charge. Although both parties are Roman Catholics, it is felt by the Orange Order that the cause is one of justice to Mrs. Tremblay. The limited time set for the appeal to the Privy Council necessitated immediate action, and the response to Mr. Wainwright ‘s appeal has been prompt. J. H. Burnham, M. P. for West Peterborough, contributed $500 to the fund earlier this week.

Montreal, April 4.—Arnold Wainwright, K. C, counsel for Mrs. Napoleon Tremblay, the appellant in the fourth-cousins marriage annulment case, this morning made application before the Court of Review for an extension of the time set for the deposit of $2,000 as security for costs before the appeal to the Privy Council can be taken.

Mr. Justice Delorimier said that it would not be necessary to put up cash, as real estate would be considered as security by the court. His Lordship also stated that Mr. Wainwright yet had nine days in which to get the security, and he thought that would be adequate.

Mr. Wainwright, it is said, had made his application because the court rose to-day until the sixteenth.

Paul Germain, K. C, who appeared on behalf of the husband, objected to the delay, and argued that Mrs. Tremblay, when the appeal proceedings were begun, months back, should have then made provision for the security for costs. He also held that an affidavit from Mrs. Tremblay authorizing the appeal should have been submitted to the court.

Mr. Wainwright said he had filed his own affidavit that Mrs. Tremblay ‘s authorization to proceed had been secured. He further remarked that no matter what happened, the decision of the Privy Council on the case would be obtained.

Judgment was reserved by their Lordships.

Quebec is the most illiterate and backward Province of the Canadian Dominion, because its school system is priest-ridden. Ontario is every day becoming more and more a Romanized satrapy, because political partisan exigencies connive at the Gallicization and Romanization of whole counties in its eastern section. Rome has blotted out the Protestants of Quebec as a political factor in that important section of the Dominion. There were, in 1867, when the Canadian Provinces were federated, from fourteen to sixteen counties in Quebec, with Protestant populations sufficiently large or influential to entitle the minority to sixteen out of sixty-five representatives in Parliament. There are to-day four counties only in Quebec out of sixty-five where the Protestants are numerically strong enough to insist on having a Protestant representative in Parliament.

The school system of Quebec is under control, absolutely and exclusively, of the French bishops of Canada. All the bishops who have dioceses, either wholly or partially in Quebec, are members ex-officio of the Council of Public Instruction. The Archbishop of Ottawa, the Bishop of Pembroke, and the Vicar Apostolic of Temiskaming, who all live in Ontario, and the Bishop of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, having portions of their dioceses within the territorial limits of Quebec Province, are also members exofficio of this French Canadian Council of Public Instruction. Three or four lay delegates are reluctantly permitted by the Bishops to sit and vote as members of this Council.

This Council, having full and entire charge of the school system of Quebec as to religious instruction, discipline, text-books, teachers and their qualifications, meets four times a year in the Parliament Buildings at Quebec City.

The members are given mileage to and from their places of residence, all the Bishops having at the same time in inside pocket railroad passes ; they are further paid $10 per diem for arduous services in the promotion of popular benightment and moral degradation.

The rural schoolhouses of Quebec, and many of those in towns, are in disgraceful condition of dilapidation and inefficiency, the text-books antiquated and inferior, the teachers poorly qualified. But their “Graces” and their “Lordships” of the French Hierarchy of Canada wax fat and rich on the unfortunate people forced to bow to their i i educational control. Of Americans and all other civilized men, I ask—Do you want this Romanized Quebec present-day system of schools foisted upon your children to darken their minds, enslave their bodies, and paralyze their every energy?

The English language was at one time frequently enough heard in the Quebec Legislature. Now it is very rarely used in that body. No French member thinks of using it. The English speaking member who employs the English language in a supposedly British Legislature at Quebec is forced to address empty benches!

Your System has made the English-speaking British subject an alien in language, laws, and religion in a land over which his country’s flag is by the Vatican still permitted to float!

I am, Respectfully,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.