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Date: 1866-09-28
By: True Witness
Citation: “THE PRESBYTERIAN” True Witness (28 September, 1866)
Other formats: TBA

THE PRESBYTERIAN.

— Sept. 1866. — A friend has sent us a copy of this publication, directing our attention to its leading article on “Confederation,” under which caption it treats of the School Question, apparently in a very untruthful, and uncandid spirit. But as this may be the effect of pure ignorance, rather than of malice, we will, without taxing the Presbyterian with the latter, do our best to make him see the School Question as it presents itself to us; and as alone it can be dealt with by a State, or Government such as ours, which makes open profession and boast, that it has no semblance ever of connexion with the Church.

A State so constituted is evidently incompetent to deal with the School Question as a religious question; it must, if it entertain it at all, entertain it without any reference to any religious considerations whatsoever. Before its tribunal Catholics and Protestants, Christians and heathen stand upon an equal footing. To it they are all alike; and if it has no right to subject any to civil disqualification or disadvantages because of his religious belief or unbelief, so neither can it recognise in the suitors before its bar, any religious distinctions, or titles whatsoever. It cannot allow any one to plead before it, either as a Catholic or as a Protestant. It knows only citizens; all having as before it, no matter what their religion, equal rights and equal duties. Whether this be a desirable state of affairs as betwixt State and Church; whether these mutual relations of the two orders—the temporal and the spiritual—are the best conceivable, are questions with which we have now nothing to do. We simply state a fact; to wit, that by its own deliberate act, officially embodied in its Statute Book or public archives, the State in Canada has declared that it has no connexion, not even the semblance of any connexion, with the Church. Though in this declaration many prominent Catholic legislators concurred, we do not profess to admire it; and our business is simply to state, or as the French would say, “constater” the fact.

Such being the case, the State, or Canadian Legislature cannot pretend even to take cognisance of religious or conscientious scruples of any kind, so as to adjudicate upon their validity or invalidity. All that it can do is to take cognisance of their existence, and to respect and recognise them as a barrier which it has no right to overleap. It, the State, has, and can have, no jurisdiction as a Court of Conscience.

So when the Lower Canadian Protestant comes before it, and pleads that he entertains conscientious scruples against sending his children to the Catholic Schools of the Lower Canadian majority, the Legislature cannot so much as entertain the question—“Are these scruples well or ill-founded?” It has no jurisdiction in the domain of conscience. And so in like manner when the Catholic of Upper Canada comes before its bar, with the plea that he has conscientious scruples about sending his children to the non-Catholic Schools of the Upper Canadian majority, the Legislature is utterly incompetent to entertain the question as to the validity or the invalidity of the so urged scruples.

If a purely secular tribunal, such as is our Canadian Legislature, so much as allow that question to be raised in its presence, it violates logic, natural justice, and the fundamental principles of religious liberty, for it arrogates to itself the functions of a Court of Conscience, or spiritual tribunal. Permit it upon any pretext whatsoever to discuss and adjudicate upon the validity of conscientious scruples, and you have established the most dangerous of precedents. It was—we would fain remind the Presbyterian—upon the pretext that the alleged conscientious scruples of the Covenanters against taking the oath of allegiance, were frivolous, and that it was competent to decide upon the validity or frivolity of conscientious scruples, that the Scotch Privy Council in the seventeenth century took such vigorous measures against the refractory sect; and the sin of Lauderdale and his colleagues consisted, in the eyes of the Scotch Presbyterians, in this—not they adjudicated erroneously upon a question of conscience, but in that they presumed to adjudicate thereon at all. This premised, and we defy the Presbyterian to impugn the validity of our premises without contradicting principles always asserted in its own behalf by the sect that it represents—it follows that the Catholic parent of U. Canada, pleading [his?] conscientious scruples against sending his child to the “mixed” or “non-Catholic school which his religion teaches him is “altogether dangerous to faith and morals,” is as much entitled to the respectful consideration of the State or Legislature, as is the Protestant parent of L. Canada, who before the same tribunal pleads his conscientious scruples against sending his child to a Catholic school. In neither case has the State the right to entertain even, the question as to the validity or invalidity of the conscientious scruples urged by the several suitors at its bar. It may, in the plenitude of arbitrary power, refuse to entertain either as a plea for exemption from taxation for obnoxious school purposes—and this would be even handed tyranny: but it cannot accept the plea in one case, and ignore or disallow it in the other, without inconsistency, and a gross violation of the fundamental principles of religious liberty as laid down by Presbyterians themselves when, in the last days of the Stuart dynasty, they themselves were the victims of State tyranny and persecution.

If then the conscientious scruples of the Lower Canadian Protestant afford a valid reason why he should be exempt from all taxation for the support of a Catholic school; so also, as before a tribunal incompetent to adjudicate upon the validity or invalidity of such scruples, or to sit as a Court of Conscience, do the alleged conscientious scruples of the Upper Canadian Catholic against non-Catholic schools—which he believes to be altogether dangerous to faith and morals—afford an equally valid reason why the latter should be exempt from all taxation for the support of such schools. Whether his belief be erroneous or well founded, is a question we repeat, which the State cannot so much as rightfully entertain: for having no semblance even of connexion with the Church or spiritual Orders, the State has no means by which it can determine what is, or what is not, dangerous to the faith and morals of the Catholic child.

To this line of argument, which is conclusive against the sophisms of the Presbyterian there is no reply possible save this—That the State, or civil magistrate has the right to sit in judgment upon conscientious scruples, and to adjudicate upon their validity. Will the Presbyterian assert this principle broadly and generally? We think not: for the pages of Presbyterian history in Scotland are open to contradict him. Will he assert it in a limited and particular sense, so as to mean that the State or civil magistrate has the right to adjudicate upon the conscientious scruples of Catholics? Yes: we think he will adopt this line of defence, because it is but too common for Protestants in their dealings with Catholics, to have two different sets of weights and measures, two essentially different standards of right and wrong. Our contemporary will therefore very probably argue that, though under Confederation, a Lower Canadian Legislature would be morally incompetent to sit in judgment upon the validity of the alleged conscientious scruples of the Protestant minority, an Upper Canadian Legislature would be perfectly competent to sit in judgment upon, and return a verdict against, the alleged conscientious scruples of the Catholic Minority of their Province. In short, Protestants generally assume, in all controversies, that there is one law for themselves— another, and a contradictory law for their opponents: and this it is that has hitherto so embarrassed the discussion of the School Question. As a preliminary therefore, essential to the profitable ventilation of the said question, we respectfully invite the Presbyterian to define its principles, as to the competency, or incompetency of a purely secular tribunal, to adjudicate upon the validity of conscientious scruples. We pause for a reply.