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Date: 1866-07-27
By: True Witness
Citation: “A FALSE ALARM” True Witness (27 July, 1866)
Other formats: TBA

A FALSE ALARM.

—Our contemporary of the Daily Witness has another grumbling article, in a late issue, on the School Question. This time the learned editor’s anxiety, or rather ire, is excited by the sad prospect looming in the distance, that the present School Bill before Parliament is to put the Protestant minority of Lower Canada completely under Popish sway,—a sway which, if we believe the Witness, is of a most merciless description. So far, however, as the public have been let into the secrets of the Bill referred to, there does not seem to be the slightest foundation for this storm of indignation on the part of our contemporary. There are many other organs of Protestant opinion in Lower Canada besides the Daily Witness of Montreal, and we have failed to see in them a single remark showing that the interests of their co-religionists in the matter of education are in the slightest danger. So long as this is the case, and until Parliament will have given us a little more inkling into the matter, we will treat this last cry of “ Popish encroachments ” on the part of the Witness as only another “ false alarm,”—a species of childish play in which our contemporary appears to be quite an adept. We, too, will watch the fate of this Bill with some anxiety, because we believe that every change in the School Laws of this Province has, as a general rule, an important bearing on the rising generation, and, as such, is well worthy of the attention of every well-wisher of his country. There is, however, one great principle on which the whole foundation of education rests, and which we have frequently endeavored to instil into the mind of our contemporary ; but as yet, it appears, in vain ; else, why all this hue and cry ? It is this : That the education of the child belongs to the parent before it belongs to the State ; and that it is consequently an act of gross injustice, and a flagrant abuse of power on the part of the State to compel the parent to contribute to a school to which he has a religious objection to send his child. This is the principle on which the whole fabric of education depends ; this is the principle which the greatest names in the annals of statesmanship have unswervingly defended, and if in this age of ours, when almost every principle on which society rests, has met with opponents, any person will be found foolhardy enough to contest this great truth, he may safely promise himself the well-merited scorn, some day or other, of the wisest and best of his race. If the Protestants of Lower Canada shall have any reasonable cause of complaint in this particular matter of legislation, they know well in what quarter to apply, to remedy their grievances. So far as we are concerned, we earnestly hope that equal and impartial justice will be meted out to all irrespective of creed or nationality, and as we will never be satisfied if we see our co-religionists deprived of a single right that belongs to them, according to the principles of the natural law and of the Constitution under which they have the happiness to live, so are we anxious that our Protestant fellow-colonists should have every advantage to which in justice they have a right. More than this no reasonable man will ask us to grant ; to wish for less, would be contrary to the first promptings of Christian justice. Such being the case, and such the sentiments which animate the whole Catholic body in Lower Canada, it is with no little surprise that we observe the Daily Witness raise, without the slightest reason, this tremendous shout of “ Popish encroachments,” thereby contributing most effectually to generate much lamentable dissension in a community which has, up to the present, been distinguished for a remarkable degree of harmony, union, and happiness. From the gloomy bigotry of the Daily Witness we appeal with pleasure to our other Protestant exchanges of Lower Canada, equally able if not more so, but less bigoted, and we respectfully ask them if anything in the previous history of this Province justifies this grave suspicion raised by our Evangelical contemporary against the Catholic majority of Lower Canada.