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Date: 1864-12-30
By: True Witness
Citation: “No title”, True Witness (30 December, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

“Not that thou and I have promised to each other, but what the balance of our forces can make us perform to each other; that, in so sinful a world as ours, is the thing to be counted on.”—Carlyle His. French Revolution.

There is a difference of opinion between the TRUE WITNESS and the Minerve as to the value of the security to the Catholic minority of Upper Canada over the education of their children, given in the proposed Union of the British North American Provinces. We, taking the menaces of the Globe as an index of the wishes of the Protestant majority of Upper Canada on the School question; and taking the text of the proposed Union as published in the journals as our authority as to the powers which that measure will confer upon them, have arrived at the conclusion that they, the said Protestant majority have the will, and will also have the power under the new Constitution, to impose on the Catholic minority an unjust and oppressive school system. Any Bill to that effect passed by the local Legislature of Upper Canada, and not disallowed within twelve months by the central government, would become law for the Upper Province; and as there is no machinery in the proposed Constitution for compelling the central government to disallow a measure passed by a local legislature, and unfavorable to the interests of a Catholic minority, the latter will have nothing to rely upon except the good intentions and integrity of a government in which their enemies, and the avowed enemies of Freedom of Education, will exercise a paramount influence. Such a guarantee as this, is in our opinion not worth a straw; for if all men were true men, or if the majority of men were disposed to do what in honor and justice they were bound to do, there would be little or no need of Courts of Law, and Judges; and these are necessary, simply because as a general rule, all men are apt to be influenced more by their passions or fancied interests, than by the pleadings of right, when the latter are not backed by material force. This is our view of the case; these our reasons for looking upon the proposed written guarantees for the educational rights of Catholic minorities, as worth no more than the parchment upon which they are to be engrossed.

The Minerve is of a different opinion, and looks upon the proposed guarantees as amply sufficient. It is but just that we should allow our contemporary to speak for himself, citing his reasons for the faith, and the child-like trust that is in him; and for this purpose we translate from an article which he has published on the subject, under date 19th inst.:—

“The True Witness looks upon all constitutional guarantees as illusory.”

Unless there be a third power able, and willing to enforce them. In justice to the TRUE WITNESS the Minerve should not have omitted this all important proviso. Our contemporary thus continues:—

“We think that the general government of the confederation will make it a point to enforce a strict observance of all the clauses of the constitution. We are fully convinced that it will be rigorous in the extreme, when the question comes up for giving effect to the clauses which guarantee the provincial minorities the enjoyment of rights and immunities necessary to the development of their nationality, and the exercise of their religion. Why have we this conviction? Because we have the simplicity to believe that the foremost men of the five colonies of North America are neither idiots nor monsters, and that they have undertaken in good faith the grandiose task of creating a British Empire on this Continent; but if they are neither fools nor knaves, if they are serious and sincere, they must desire the working and solidity of the new order of things which they are now seeking to build up. To assure this working and solidity, must not the constitution be rigorously applied, especially in those delicate points which touch the very life of the several races united in the great empire of confederation?—Minerve, 19th inst.

It is difficult to deal with such arguments seriously. Analysing them, they amount to this—

The Minerve is fully convinced that the central government will deal equitably with the Catholic minority of Upper Canada, even when the passions and anti-Catholic prejudices of the Protestant majority incite it to pursue a different course:—

Therefore, the Catholic minority will be equitably dealt with, and will have nothing to fear on account of the education of their children.

This purely subjective logic may be very conclusive to the Minerve, but will hardly prove satisfactory to those who see no reasons for being “fully convinced” of the good faith of the future central government. Indeed, if the Minerve is so confident that Protestants when in a majority will never abuse their political power to the detriment of Catholics, we see not why our contemporary should have opposed the policy of the Brown-Dorion ministry which proposed to give us representation by population, with “constitutional checks and guarantees” for the rights of the minority. If written “checks and guarantees” would have been good for nothing in 1858 against the aggressions of Upper Canada, they are as worthless to-day; for neither then, nor now, was, or is, it proposed to create any third power, greater than either of the two contracting parties, to enforce the observance of said “checks and guarantees.” It was because in ’58 the Minerve held the same views as does the TRUE WITNESS to-day, as to the worthlessness of all mere “constitutional guarantees,” that it opposed so heartily the policy of the Brown-Dorion ministry, and denounced the latter as a traitor. But let this pass, and let us examine the reasons that the Minerve assigns for its “full conviction” that the central government will never abuse, to the detriment of the Catholic minority of Upper Canada, the power which the proposed Union Act will confer upon it.

The Minerve is so convinced, because the persons who have drawn up the plan of the said Union are neither idiots nor monsters; and because, if serious and sincere, they must desire its success, and the harmonious working of all its parts, which would be impossible were its provisions to be violated to the detriment of the Catholic minority.

To this we reply that the working of the proposed Union will soon be altogether beyond the reach of the dozen or so of individuals who met at Quebec to arrange its terms, and will have passed into the hands of an irresponsible Protestant majority. It is absurd to suppose that some twenty years hence for instance, when in all probability most, if not all, of the said individuals shall be in their graves, that the Protestant majority either in the local legislature of Upper Canada, or in the central government will be restrained in its hostile designs against a Catholic minority, by the seriousness and sincerity of the defunct delegates to the Quebec Conference of 1864.

And again, since the Minerve bases its “full confidence” in the future honesty and impartiality of the central government upon purely personal grounds—to wit, the honesty and sincerity of the Quebec delegates, we also may be pardoned for assigning personal grounds for doubting there, where the Minerve confidently believes Mr. George Brown for instance is one of those delegates on whose good faith so much depends and upon whose honesty and truthfulness the Minerve bases its “full confidence;” and yet but a short time ago M. Cartier, in open Parliament, solemnly and deliberately put on record this opinion of the said Mr George Brown:—

“That he—Mr George Brown—had a moral defect; that he could never keep within the truth.”

In this opinion of Mr. George Brown we fully concur with M. Cartier; and therefore we conclude that the “full confidence” of the Minerve is based on a very rotten foundation.

And this we will add, that our contemporary does not reduce his theories to practice; when his personal interests are concerned he lays aside his simplicity or bonhommie, and becomes as sceptical even as the TRUE WITNESS. He is confiding, full of trust, and liberal only when the interests of others, and notably the moral and spiritual interests of the Catholics of Upper Canada, are at stake. For instance—

Our “full of confidence” contemporary shall have, we will suppose, an important business transaction in which his property is seriously concerned. Does any one suppose that, upon the grounds that he did not look upon the other party with whom he contracted as “either an idiot or a monster,” he would neglect to take ample legal security, or that he would knowingly leave it in the power of that other party to defraud him? No, certainly. He would be content with nothing less than a formal contract, the terms of which—and this is the essential point, the Minerve pretends not to see it—the terms of which might, and would, should the other contracting party be inclined to play false, be enforced in a Court of Justice, and by the strong arm of the law. In all contracts or constitutions which may be so enforced, we also have full confidence; for any contract, guarantee, or constitution which cannot be so enforced, we would not give one straw, neither would our contemporary were his personal and material interests at stake.