Document Information

Date: 1866-11-14
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “The School Laws” Montreal Herald (14 November 1866).
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THE SCHOOL LAWS.

“One thing is quite evident, and of that we are not ignorant—that the Minerve has given a flat contradiction to the Gazette’s assertion as to what is to be done with the school law; and therefore, except by the process of setting logic at defiance, it is impossible to believe that both can be right.”—Montreal Herald of yesterday.

Here is a simple issue; and the editor of the Herald states that he is “not ignorant” of the thing he alleges. We answer in one word: He is guilty of falsification. There has never been, in point of fact, a contradiction between us and La Minerve. Alluding to some absurd falsifications which have been “going the rounds,” La Minerve stated in its impression of yesterday:

“We have never said (referring to the Confederate constitution) that there would not be ‘any clause relative to the rights of the minorities in Upper and Lower Canada.’ All that we stated was that the Imperial Parliament would not be called upon to legislate on our school question. But we have never denied the intention of our Government to add to the Quebec project some clause for the protection of the rights of minorities. This declaration ought equally to suffice for those who seek to place us in contradiction with our contemporary the Montreal Gazette.”—Gazette.

It is unfortunate that this explanation, by which the Minerve seeks to show that it was not in contradiction with the Gazette, merely proves that it is in contradiction with itself. It attempts to set right the Richmond Guardian, which understood it as everybody else did; but how? It formerly sought to repel the statement believed by some persons on the authority of the Gazette, that the interests of the Protestant minority, in school matters, would be protected by something that was to be done in England, of course by a clause in the constitution hitherto declared to be unalterable. Accordingly it made a denial which was intended to convey, and did convey, the meaning, that the position of all parties, as to schools, was to be left as it is made by the Quebec Constitution, which Mr. Cartier has pledged himself not to change. But then this gave the lie to the statements made by, or on behalf of, Mr. Galt; so the Minerve had to try back, and now it says, not only that the position of the minority on one question will be changed, but that its position on an indefinite number of questions will be changed. It first denied that the minority was to have a particular protection—now it asserts that it is to have a general protection which includes the particular. It may be now in agreement with the Gazette—we believe it is; but that does not make it any less true that it was formerly in contradiction to it. But what concerns the public a great deal more than these backings and fillings, conducted on the same principle and for the same object as the manoeuvres of the old man with the donkey, is, that it should know what really is to be done. The Gazette and the Minerve profess to be newspapers, and the Government under which we live professes to be a popular one. It has even gone through the sham of getting the assent of Parliament to the Quebec Constitution; and yet we are now told that it is about to have that Constitution altered, at its own mere will though our mysterious newsmonger would have us believe that the important secret of how this is to be done has been confided to their keeping for a purpose very inconsistent with the business of public information, which they pretend to carry on. As to our comprehension of the Minerve’s first assertion it is not only that of the Richmond Guardian; but also of the Leader at Toronto, and of all the Upper Canadian Ministerialist journals which have quoted it to contradict the Gazette, and so allay the fears which the statements of that journal made for the Eastern market, had excited in the West.