CHURCH AND STATE.
My recent Pamphlet on "Civil Liberty in Lower Canada" has elicited much comment, and provoked some adverse criticism. The latter appears to resolve itself into two allegations, one of which charges me with the desire to provoke religious animosity for private or political ends; the other, which pronounces my fears groundless, and the position I assume unwarranted either by facts, or by logical deduction from known utterances of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy.
To the former charge against myself personally, no lengthened reply is necessary. As regards private or political objects, it is unworthy even of a disclaimer; while from the accusation of seeking to raise a strife of creeds, I can appeal to the record of upwards of thirty years of public life, most of which has been spent in Parliament, both in and out of office, and many years during a period when the most vigorous efforts were made to excite an anti-Catholic agitation; and I can challenge any one to produce a speech or vote by me calculated to wound the feelings or consciences of my Roman Catholic fellow subjects. If such a record be of any value, it should be accepted as my justification, in now presuming to address both Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, for the purpose of entreating them to recognize in time, the grave dangers which threaten the peace of our common country, through the aggressive character of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, and the irreconcileable conflict they are provoking between the Civil and Religious divisions of society.
