Alexander Tilloch Galt

“ The law now restrains our liberty in everything that is injurious to us—in most things at least. Liberty, as I understand the true definition of it, is freedom to do good. As a necessary consequence of the ability to do good, you must have the prevention of evil. Therefore freedom is in harmony with everything which goes to suppress vice in the community. Besides that, we have a case in point which must be familiar to you all. We know that for the last two hundred years the Indians have been prohibited from using liquors. ”

“ With the immense range of power given by the Act of Confederation to the Local Legislatures, covering the whole body of civil law, it is of most serious import to us to learn that the maintenance of all our civil rights is henceforward to be entrusted to a body of men who are taught that the Pope is supreme, and that all human enactments are subject to his revision whenever he may please to pronounce that they fall within the charmed circle of " faith and morals." ”

“ A Liberal Catholic is a man who, to a certain degree, partakes of this sentiment, whether in this party or in this doctrine the more sick is he as the more Liberal; the less sick is he as he is more Catholic. Liberalism always seeks to subordinate the rights of the church to the rights of the State in the measure of prudence and high wisdom, and even to separate the church from the State where it desires a free church in a free state. Liberalism claims that the clergy is called on solely to defend religion, and that the laity have not this mission. ”

“ Ordinary party politics lose all their significance in the presence of a contest which involves the right of holding any opinions at all hostile to the Roman Catholic hierarchy—and much reflection has convinced me that we shall be false to our own immediate and future interests, if we hesitate in now repudiating in the most decided manner the threatened encroachments upon the rights of our Roman Catholic fellow citizens, equally as if our own were at this moment attacked. ”

“ We shall search in vain for a period when human power, human law, and Civil government, have not been grasped at by the Church as a means of compelling obedience to their dogmas. It is thus clear, that unless Civil society chooses to wield the weapon against itself, the "spiritual sword" of the priesthood will be powerless to wound. ”

“ Our business should be, as far as possible, to retain within our reach all the sources of wealth and of industry which we are able to secure, and, therefore, if we find that one particular cause produces enormous waste to the country, an enormous waste of money, an enormous waste of energy, and, I am sorry to say, an enormous destruction of intellect, then, I say, it becomes the duty of the Government and of every good citizen, to do their best to diminish that waste and correct those evils. ”

“ And I, I am nothing, I never have been anything in the Church, but you, who are unquestionably the first man in the Church of Germany, how could you refuse the mission of defending her, and representing her in this formidable crisis? God has bestowed upon you a blessing whose value you can never know, in granting you not merely a long life, which is a very small thing, but an old age without debility. It is your duty in return to consecrate this priceless gift to the glory of His Church and the defence of the truth. ”

“ Other conservative Protestants may perceive some different and yet safe course, but for my own part, acting under the sense of responsibility for my past acts, I find but one line of duty open to me, and that is to give my hearty support and sympathy to the Liberal Catholics of Quebec. With a plain and unmistakeable declaration on the part of the Protestants that they will, equally for their Roman Catholic fellow citizens, as for themselves, resist the encroachments of the Church upon the State, it may be possible to arrest the arrogant course of Bishop Bourget and his confreres. ”

“ I have been struck, as we all have, with the fact of what we call the hard times, under which we have suffered during the last live years, and under which the country is still suffering, and I have noticed that the consequence of these hard times has been to produce on all hands, on every side, and in every family, economy. Economy has been found to be absolutely necessary as the only wholesome and reliable cure for much of the distress which previous extravagance had brought upon us. ”

“ What we have to dread is the action of the formidable Church party, after it has brought into harmony with itself all the members of its own Church—all those of French-Canadian origin. Our turn will then come, and, having under their control the whole machinery of Legislative and Executive power, the rights we enjoy and the safeguards we possess will be, one by one, attacked, until our position will be so intolerable as to induce us to become, as their organs even already term us, aliens or strangers ”

“ I do not propose this evening to make any appeal to your sympathies. The cause which is advocated here will find other and more eloquent gentlemen to make those appeals. Fortune has generally required me to deal with any subject on which I had to speak rather with the hard facts that surround it, rather with the reasons which attend it, than with those passions and sympathies regarding it which others may, perhaps, have a greater gift in exciting. ”

“ Should the encroachments of the Hierarchy, and their influence over their people, once more provoke a contest, history will possibly repeat itself, and the discord of Quebec be extinguished by the change from a Federal to a Legislative Union of British North America. Many events already transpiring point to such a change, and if the Protestants are once thoroughly alarmed, and find their civil rights invaded, it may be found the easiest and safest measure to restore harmony. ”

“ Politically they had been for many years under the leadership of men of known and tried liberality. Lafontaine, Morin, and Cartier, were names synonimous with upright dealing and even-handed justice, irrespective of race or religion. Whilst at the same time the course of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and Clergy had ever been distinguished by such devotion to their duty of inculcating piety and virtue, and such moderation towards all who differed with them, that it may truly be said they had earned the respect and confidence of all. ”

“ It must be brought up to that, and in order to bring it to that point we have before us to-day the Canada Temperance Act, which is regarded as a very considerable step in the direction pursued as the one most in the interests of society. I cannot fail to see that while the present Act is in itself wise, it is at the same time the best preparation for future progress, which will be carried out, perhaps, after we are gone. It is a question that will live, and we have evidence that it will grow. ”

“ It is impossible that in a Province of the Protestant empire of Great Britain, on the continent of America, in the presence of Forty Millions of Protestants, a slavery should be imposed upon us by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, which exists no longer even under the shadow of the Vatican. Free speech—free thought—and a free press, must have the fullest scope in America ”

“ In order to well comprehend it, it will be sufficient just to cast a glance at the horrible evils which desolate European Governments and peoples, struck with an inconceivable vertigo in punishment for their Liberalism. Thus, Christian brethren, the certainty that Catholic Liberalism is hidden among us, and the fear that this terrible monster causes not only the evils which he necessarily drags in his train are sufficient to make us tremble and make us cry out against our dangers. ”

“ The 'Syllabus,' as its title shows, is nothing but a collection of those errors of the age that we live in, which Pope Pius, in earlier Rescripts of different dates, has declared to be errors, and which accordingly he has condemned. The condemnation of errors, according to the traditional practice of the Church, is made in various forms; sometimes they are condemned as heretical; sometimes as savouring of heresy; sometimes as schismatic; sometimes simply as erroneous, or false; sometimes as dangerous, or scandalous, or perverse ”

“ The sacrifice of their own enjoyments, I have no doubt, many who do not belong to a temperance society will gladly make when they understand that in giving up that which they may not consider hurtful themselves, they really produce a good result to other individuals. (Hear, hear.) Now, I am bound to say—and I hope my friends from Montreal will not find fault with me for saying it—that I think the principles defined on the Dominion Alliance cards go a little further than they will carry everybody with them. ”

“ As a natural consequence, a freedom of thought sprang up among the laity, and was shewn in the public utterances of their press, which held forth the hope that the liberal views of the so-called Gallican Church would ever prevail in Lower Canada, and that Protestant and Catholic would alike respect their several opinions, cordially uniting in all that concerned the prosperity of their common country, without either Church claiming undue supremacy, or introducing the fatal element of religious strife. ”

“ It must be by the intelligent education of the people on these subjects that you can create such a public sentiment as will enable you to give effect to the legislation that you obtain from time to time. Now, I think, with regard to legislation, and to what is known as the Dunkin Act, that the advocates of temperance have great reason to be thankful for the progress that has been made under it. ”

“ It is eminently suggestive of the light in which our Quebec rulers are regarded to observe the very different ground occupied by the Roman Catholic Church in this Province, from that taken in Ontario and the Maritime Provinces.
The contradictory attitude of the Church of Rome in different countries, and at this moment even in the Dominion, can only be explained by the extraordinary elasticity with which it adapts itself to surrounding circumstances. Wherever it reigns supreme, and controls the Civil Government, it is exclusive, despotic and grasping ”