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Date: 1866-11-09
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “The Protestants and the School Law” Montreal Herald (9 November 1866).
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THE PROTESTANTS AND THE SCHOOL LAW.—When one of our Ministerial contemporaries gave out a few days ago that Mr. Galt had accepted the place of a delegate to England, in order to protect the educational interests of his “countrymen and co-religionists,” we had no hesitation in saying that the statement involved another fraud. It is plain that Mr. Galt could do nothing in the direction indicated in England, except by inducing the Imperial Government and Parliament to insert in the Quebec constitution some clause which is not now there; and this, although our own Parliament had not been allowed to make any amendment in that document, and although Mr. Cartier had solemnly asserted that he would permit no amendment to be made in England. One of two things therefore. Either the assurance given to the Protestants of Lower Canada, as an excuse for the acceptance by Mr. Galt of a quasi seat in the Cabinet which he had left, professedly because it had already broken the word he had pledged in its behalf, was a false assurance; or else Mr. Cartier was about to do in England that which he had solemnly declared he would not do. There was no escape from this dilemma. We never doubted that the assurances made in the name of Mr. Galt on this head would turn out as fraudulent as those which he had previously given, for we at all events remember the line in which an eminent deceiver was warned that

“Once a traitor, thou betray’st no more;”

and Mr. Galt’s betrayals of his friends are very far indeed from being at the first experiment. Those who are interested in this matter need hardly wait for the result in order to make up their minds. Here is an extract which we translate from the Minerve, the organ of Mr. Cartier, in which all the statements made officially on behalf of Mr. Galt are distinctly repudiated in advance. After stating that Mr. Cartier has again pledged himself to do justice to everybody—though he has broken the promise given by Mr. Galt in his name to do this justice in a given and definite manner—the Minerve continues thus, with an egotism which makes us suppose that the Attorney General does not confine his utterances to verbal orations, but sometimes deigns to honour the columns of our contemporary by his essays:—

“Nothing could be more explicit than the solemn engagements taken by Mr. Cartier at the last banquet”

(except the written engagement made in his name by Mr. Galt and subsequently broken)

“Mr. Cartier did not say that he trusted to Mr. McGee or to any other of his colleagues to assure to the Catholics the guarantees to which they are entitled. He engaged himself to have equal justice accorded to all creeds.”

Our contemporary then proceeds:—

“We can state that our delegates set out for England thoroughly determined to accept no humiliating condition. Some journals have pretended that our Government had resolved to cause the Imperial Parliament to legislate on our system of instruction. A newspaper which is usually well informed — the Richmond Guardian said, a few days ago, ‘We have reason to believe that all the details of the measure, which is intended to protect the interests of the Protestants of Lower Canada, will be prepared by the Ministry, before the Delegates leave for England, and these details are nearly all the work of Mr. Galt.’ We are in a position to affirm that there is no truth in these rumours. The Canadian Government has no intention whatever of obtaining the intervention of the English Parliament in our school legislation, and Mr. Galt cannot have contributed to the drafting of a measure in this sense, since none such has been drafted. The guarantees given to Mr. Galt to assure him as to the future of his co-religionists in Upper Canada, are of a different character, though quite as secure. Lastly, let us speak out our whole thought—we believe that the mission of Mr. Galt to England is rather to aid the scheme of Confederation in England than to watch over the execution of any special promise made to Protestants; for he knows that the Catholics have an interest in profiting by the occasion to give the school question a solution simple and satisfactory to every one.”

All this is very mysterious. Something is to be done for two classes of people, which is to give them supreme content; but not a word is vouchsafed to the interested parties as to the character of the wonderful concoction, which, for the first time in the history of the world, is to please every one. In the meantime, either the Minerve is stating an utter untruth, which we do not believe, or the Gazette was employed to announce a falsehood, and that we do believe. It is pleasant also for the laughing philosophers to see the turn which things have taken in Mr. Brown’s last happy attempt to put down “Lower Canadian domination.” Mr. Cartier has a Siamese twin brother in the Premiership—Mr. John A. Macdonald, and a body of Upper Canadian Ministers, including two Liberals, pledged by everything sacred in the engagements between man and man, against the extension of the Separate School system in Upper Canada. But Mr. Cartier’s special organ informs us that he—he alone—and without considering any of these Upper Canadian gentlemen, is going to settle this Upper Canadian question in the way which he graciously supposes must be acceptable.