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past as a guarantee for the future. The object seems at this time to extend no further than the complete subjection of the section of the Roman Catholic party who do not accept the extreme views enunciated at Rome; and partly through fear, but greatly through the indirect allurements of future political power, it seems not unlikely that the Ultramontanes will overcome their opponents, if we Protestants continue to lend them our powerful aid. The contest must appear to them hopeless when they find arrayed against them all the religious forces of their own Church, and the influence of those who ought to sympathize with their desire to be free from ecclesiastical tyranny.
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; or force on us such a physical contest as must be most deplorable.
To say that I had any fear of the ultimate result of the present attempt to make Lower Canada a Province of Ecclesiastical Rome, would be untrue. The strength of the Protestant Church in the Dominion, and on this Continent, renders it beyond all doubt, where the final victory must rest, but grievous injury must meantime arise, not the least of which will be the blight that will fall on the prosperity of the people by the mental subjugation of so large a part of our Roman Catholic fellow subjects.
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
