used for the burial of the dead, as apart of its larger claim to control the destiny of people in the future world. And, for many centuries, this has been one of the most potent means of its influence. The case of Joseph Guibord, of Montreal, which has now perhaps reached its close, affords an instructive illustration both of the character of this old churchly assumption, of the tenacity with which it is still held, and of the vigor with which it is maintained wherever there is power to enforce it. The circumstances have been widely published, but it is desirable here briefly to recall the leading facts:
A literary society in Montreal, known as the "Canadian Institute," some years ago introduced into its library a number of works that came under the ban of the Roman Catholic Church. The Bishop of Montreal disapproved them and commanded their exclusion, which being refused by the Institute, the bishop appealed to Rome, and a papal decree was fulminated. The society remaining contumacious, the bishop pronounced a ban upon its members excommunicating them and forbidding them the last offices of the Church in "the article of death." The consequences of this decree first fell upon Guibord, Who died in 1869. His estate owned a burial-lot in the Catholic cemetery of Notre-Dame, and the widow applied for ecclesiastical burial for her husband. This was refused: he could not be buried in his own lot, and the only place permitted for the remains was the unconsecrated part of the cemetery devoted to excommunicants, malefactors, suicides, and unbaptized infants. The case was then taken to civil trial and a long lawsuit followed; the Canadian Superior Court, the tribunal of last resort, deciding ultimately against the priest and trustees of the cemetery. This decision not being respected by the Catholic authorities, an appeal was taken to the Privy Council, and a royal decree issued commanding the priest
??and trustees of the cemetery to inter the mortal remains of Guibord in consecrated ground. The priest replied that he was forbidden to do this by the bishop, and could not comply. An order was then served on him under the decree of the Privy Council, and the funeral appointed for the 2d of September. The priest, however, refused to be present. The members of the "Canadian Institute" and their friends, numbering about three hundred, accompanied Guibord's remains, from the vault of the Protestant cemetery where they had been placed, to the Catholic cemetery, where they were met by a mob of some five hundred French Canadians who closed and barred the gates, and refused entrance to the hearse, which was attacked with stones by the mob that had rapidly increased to about two thousand. They drove back the procession with derisive shouts, filled up the grave, and tore down the cross at its head.
The burial was thus defeated, and riotous demonstrations were continued for two or three days. Preparations were then made by the civil authorities for enforcing the burial, the military were called out to maintain order, and on the 16th of November, after six years of contention and delay, the body of Guibord was placed in his lot, the coffin being bedded in cement as a protection against the violation of the grave.
We do not refer to these facts merely as furnishing a new example of the inevitable collision that arises between the civil authority and the Roman Catholic Church wherever that organization feels able to assert its power—of which so much has recently been said. But the case impressively illustrates a single and most interesting phase of this ancient conflict. In the attempt to get the bones of an old man, long since dead, into their final and chosen resting-place, a city is convulsed with riot, a whole province thrown into excite-
