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Date: 1865-02-17
By: True Witness
Citation: “The Great Meeting in Kingston”, True Witness (17 February, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

The Great Meeting in Kingston.

—On our first and second pages will be found a full account of the Meeting held at Kingston on the 3rd instant, under the auspices of the Very Rev. the Vicar General of the Diocese. We are indebted to the British Whig for this report.

As we have often said, it would be presumptuous on our part as Lower Canadians to inaugurate an agitation on the Upper Canadian School Question, or to dictate how it should be carried on. But the Catholics of Upper Canada who are the best judges of their own wants having inaugurated the agitation under the auspices and with the sanction of their spiritual guides, we, the Catholics of Lower Canada, are bound to come to their assistance, and to lend them every aid in our power, to promote the ends which they have in view. They are our brethren, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; partakers of the same spiritual manna, nourished by the same body and blood of Christ, and heirs to the same hopes of eternal life. If they suffer, we, as members of the same mystic body of Christ, suffer with them; their wrongs are our wrongs, their cause is our cause, and shame to us if we do not make common cause with our brethren calling to us for assistance.

This is the one redeeming thing in the Union of the two Canadas—that thereby we may in some measure ameliorate the condition of our brethren, through our greater influence in the government of the country. This consideration alone reconciles us to the injustice which that Union inflicts upon Lower Canada; for it would be selfish on our parts, unworthy of Christian charity, were we altogether to forget those whose claims on us are so great as are those of the Catholic minority of Upper Canada, and to think only of purchasing our own safety at the expence of our weaker and less fortunately situated brethren.—Besides, that minority may yet be of value to us, and by their united political action may help in some degree to neutralise the effects of that ill-will which the Protestant majority bear towards Lower Canada, her religion and her peculiar institutions. We therefore advocate to day, as we have advocated for years, through good repute and evil repute, a close political union, an entente cordiale, a league defensive, though not offensive, betwixt the Catholics of the two Provinces—French, Irish, and British; that so united they may the better make head against their common and “natural enemies,” the Protestant Reformers, and motley crew of Liberals, Orangemen, and Clear-Grits who follow the standard of Mr. George Brown, our common enemy, and the obscene libeller of our Holy Mother.

My apologies! I completely dropped the ball on dropping those citation tags. Let me make sure they stay gone completely. Here is the clean transcription for that image:

There is no time to lose. The Union scheme, which the Brown-Cartier Ministry are now forcing through the House once carried, and put in execution, not only will it be useless for the Catholics of Upper Canada to attempt any amelioration of their condition, but they will be lucky indeed if they shall be able to retain those scant instalments of justice which they now enjoy. It seems to us therefore that we of Lower Canada must insist upon justice to Catholics in Upper Canada as the condition of our supporting the claims of Protestants in the Lower Province; for we may be sure that were we, trusting to the generosity of the latter and their love of fair play, to postpone the settlement of our claims until after they had obtained all they want and have asked for, they would turn round upon us, and repudiate the very principles upon which they now insist in their own behalf, and on which they base their claims.

The two Bills therefore—one for a reform of the School Laws in Upper, the other for a reform of the School Laws of Lower Canada—should be introduced together, and passed or rejected together; the support of Catholics to the latter should be made conditional upon the action of Protestants towards the other; and the counterpart of every grant or endowment of any kind, made in favor of the non-Catholic minority in Lower Canada should be insisted upon in behoof of the Catholic minority of the Upper Province. Now is the time to test the value of the liberal professions of Protestants; now is the time to force them, either to grant us all that, but no more than, they ask for themselves; or else to give to the world a striking proof of their inconsistency and dishonesty, in that they have one law of right and wrong for themselves, another and contradictory law for Papists.

Were we to expect much, or indeed any thing, from our Protestant fellow-citizens sense of justice and love of fair play, we should, we fear, be sadly disappointed. Already we can detect the first signs of the active hostility which the request of the Catholics of Upper Canada to be put in all respects on an equal footing in the matter of Schools, Colleges, and Universities, with the Protestants of Lower Canada, is destined to meet with from the foremost advocates of Protestant claims in this section of the Province. The Gazette—Ministerial—for instance publishes a communication in which the reasonable claim of the Catholics of Upper Canada for the establishment and endowment of a Catholic University, with the like privileges, powers and advantages as has the (Protestant) University of McGill in Lower Canada, are treated with contempt—and the writer asks “is it a ball ?”—This shows what we have to expect from the very men who clamor so loudly for “Freedom of Education” for themselves; who insist upon their right as parents to educate their children as they please: and who as a logical consequence of this parental right, insist upon exemption from all taxation, direct or indirect, for the support of educational institutions to which they do not please to send their children.

The argument of the writer in the Gazette, who signs himself Hibernicus, is borrowed from the Montreal Witness, and amounts to this : That the Montreal University, whose “Governors must be Protestants,” is “non-sectarian,” and therefore entitled to an endowment out of the common property, that is property common to both Catholics and Protestants; but that a Catholic University would be “sectarian” and therefore not entitled to such an endowment.—This argument betrays a complete ignorance of the grounds upon which alone the principle of “State Schoolism” can be refuted, and that of “Freedom of Education” defended.

The only grounds upon which any one, Catholic or Protestant, can logically demand exemption from State taxation for any particular educational institution is this: That he, in the exercise of his parental rights, does not choose to send his children to such or such a school, college, or University; and that Education in all its branches is the function, not of the State, but of the Family. With the reasons for this refusal on the parent’s part to send his child to any particular educational institution, the State has nothing to do; into the relevancy or irrelevancy of conscientious scruples it is by its nature incompetent to enter; its sole duty is to recognise their existence, and to bow to them. As Catholic parents we say to the State, we do not choose, and we condescend to assign no reason for our determination, to send our children to the school, college, or University which you have endowed out of funds in which we have a right to share, as forming part of the “Common” property; we demand therefore that if you do take of our property at all for endowing educational institutions, you give us our share in proportion to our numbers for the endowment of schools, colleges, and Universities to which we in the exercise of our absolute rights, as parents, do see fit to send our children. It is in the name of the Family, and in defence of our parental rights, not in the name of the Church or in behalf of any particular dogmas, that we insist upon Freedom of Education.

We will endeavor to illustrate our position as Catholics towards Protestants in this matter of “sectarian” and “non-sectarian” education by means of an hypothesis. Let us suppose that there were in Canada a large, wealthy, and politically influential section of the community standing towards all Christians, and indeed Theists generally, in precisely the same position as that in which Protestants or non-Catholics, stand towards all Catholics; that these non-Christians and a-Theists were as active and zealous in asserting and spreading their anti-Christian and anti-Theistical principles as are Protestants in their assaults upon Popery; and let us suppose also that these non-Christians and a-Theists held large endowments from the State for educational purposes, and that it was the rule of the non-Christian college or University so endowed that the Governors “must be non-Christian,” or a-Theists;—would Christian parents hesitate to demand as a right that the State, since it had endowed the non-Christian College and the University of which the “Governors must be a-Theists,” should also endow a Christian College, and a University to whose Governors it would be lawful to believe in the being of a personal God? And would the Christian applicants for an endowment under such circumstances accept as a logical or equitable reply to their demands, the argument that the non-Christian College and the a-Theistical University were non-sectarian; that in them no religion of any kind was taught, no allusion made to a God either as the Creator, or as the Ruler of the Universe?

Now this is a precise statement of the case as it stands betwixt the Protestant or non-Catholic, and the Catholic. The former differs from the latter precisely as does the non-Christian from the Christian, the a-Theist from the Theist. In the one case as in the other the difference can be marked only by the alpha privative, or a prefixed sign of negation: and when the Rule of the Protestant McGill University requires that the Governors of that institution “must be Protestants,” this condition is fully complied with, provided the said Governors are not in communion with the Catholic Church, and disbelieve her doctrines either in whole or in part. For the rest they may hold, in matters of religion, as much or as little as they please; they are still Protestants.

Now as we contend that a State numbering Christians as well as non-Christians, a-Theists as well as Theists, amongst its subjects would have no right to make an endowment out of the common property for educational purposes to non-Christians or a-Theists exclusively; that such an endowment would be a wrong and an insult to all the Christian and Theistical subjects of the State, irrespective of the truth or falsity of Christianity and Theism; and that it would be no palliation of such wrong and injustice to urge that non-Christian Colleges and a-Theistical Universities were non-sectarian, and therefore entitled to State aid to the exclusion of Christian and Theistical institutions—so also we contend that a State numbering Catholics as well as non-Catholics amongst its subjects has no right to make an endowment out of the common property, for educational purposes, to non-Catholics or Protestants exclusively.