all its power. Early in January, Mgr. Begin was able to announce in a circular letter that the offending pamphlet had been condemned by the Sacred Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius, that "each and every believer is held, under pain of grave disobedience to the Holy See, to destroy this book, or remit it to his confessor, who will do so," and that the author had, like a good Christian, submitted without reserve to this decree.

This high assertion of episcopal authority was a challenge not merely to the Liberal party but to the selfrespect of individuals and the liberty of the State. How was it to be met in its political bearings? There were some Liberals who wished to bow before the storm, and await whatever crumbs of future favour the clergy might give. In counties where there were not a score of Protestants, where the parish was the community, it was not easy to face a condemnation which virtually meant ostracism, a barring of social intercourse and of public service. 1 On the other hand, there were some old Rouges who were more than ready to take up the challenge and to fight to a finish. Ex-Mayor Beaugrand of Montreal declared in his

1Speaking in parliament in March, 1897, Mr. Tarte declared: "In the diocese of Chicoutimi there is not one Roman Catholic who goes to confession without being asked if he is a subscriber to my sons' paper, 'La Patrie'. . . . If the answer is in the affirmative the man is told that he has to send back the paper or that he will be refused the sacraments of the Church.... My honourable friends of Protestant persuasion may not understand fully the meaning of those words. A man to whom the sacraments are refused is a man who cannot be buried in consecrated ground. He is a disgraced man before his countrymen and cannot live among them. Practically he is a doomed man."

journal, "La Patrie," that Quebec was the Spain of America; the episcopal attack was the beginning of a struggle to the death between the hierarchy and the government; no compromise was possible, and if "L'Electeur" was too cowardly or too poor to continue the struggle others would do so for it: "We have had our victories of June 23, as our fathers had the victories of St. Denis, St. Charles, St. Eustache, in spite of the threats of the religious authorities. I fight not for myself but for poltroons who do not dare to raise their heads."

Laurier faced the crisis squarely. He would not submit, and he would not be led into a war against the Church. Once more, as twenty years earlier, he determined to uphold the right of Catholics to be at once free citizens and faithful sons of the Church. In parliament, before the public, and at Rome itself, this was the policy he and his colleagues had already pursued, and it was the policy they determined to continue.

In parliament there was surprisingly little discussion of the issue. The government urged its followers not to taunt the losers, and to give the parties concerned in the settlement an opportunity to work it out in quiet. On occasion, however, their position was made clear beyond question. Israel Tarte put it with his usual frankness and lucidity in a debate in March, 1897:

Some of our honourable friends opposite do not seem to realize the currents of public opinion. The days are gone by when the people of Quebec could be deceived and treated as my honourable friends opposite would wish them to be

treated. I say that more progress in the ideas of liberty and freedom has been made in the province of Quebec in the past ten years than in any other province of the Dominion. When I started out from my parents' farm I entertained then and entertained later many of the doctrines now held by many of my Roman Catholic friends in the clergy, and it is on that account I forgive them many things. Sir, the Roman Catholic clergy of the province of Quebec is composed of good men, of moral men, there is not a more moral body of men than the priests of the province of Quebec, but I am bound to add at the same time that those men have been brought up, as it were, within closed walls, and some of them have become the unwilling tools of such men as those who sit on the opposite side of the House.

The Conservatives were quite as reluctant to make the settlement a party issue. The Conservative survivors from Quebec still demanded "justice, not a sham," and taunted the Liberal members who had signed the bishops' pledge, but the Conservatives from other provinces washed their hands of the whole question. The bishops had not delivered the goods in the last election; why worry further? Sir Charles Tupper frankly refused to pull any more episcopal chestnuts out of the fire; while denying that he had made any compact with the bishops of Quebec, he admitted he had naturally expected more support than he had received:

I am free to confess that I entirely overrated the importance of this question. . . . I find there has not been that deep importance attached to this question by a very large part of that denomination that I had previously supposed. I make this admission frankly to the House, and I cannot but feel that it is not unlikely that it will be much more difficult in the future than it was in the past. . . to induce gentlemen

to sacrifice their own judgment to some extent, and the feelings of their constituents to some extent, to maintain a policy which when subjected to the test of actual experience, is not found to have the importance attached to it that was previously supposed. . . . I am glad to know that the responsibility rests no longer on my shoulders, but upon those of the gentleman who is now the First Minister of the Crown.

In Quebec, the Liberals stood to their guns. They pressed to a successful conclusion their protest against the election of Dr. Marcotte in Champlain, on the ground of undue influence of curés who had declared it a mortal sin to vote for a Liberal. When in a byelection in Bonaventure in March, 1897, Mgr. Blais asked both candidates to sign a pledge to vote in the House against the Laurier-Greenway settlement or any other settlement not approved by the bishops, and to forbid their fellow-campaigners "to speak one single word in favour of the Laurier-Greenway settlement or of giving it a trial," the Conservative candidate agreed, but the Liberal candidate, Mr. J. F. Guite, flatly refused: he would like to see still better terms for his compatriots, but must use his own judgment as to the best means: "I am a Catholic, and in all questions of faith and morals I am ready to accept without restriction the decisions of the Church. In all political questions I claim the freedom enjoyed by every British subject. . . . I cannot before God and my conscience renounce the freedom of exercising my privilege as a member, to the best of my judgment." He was elected by double the previous Liberal majority,-though possibly the prospect of government railway extension

through the country had some influence on the result.

At the height of the crisis Mr. Laurier made his own position clear. At a banquet held by the Club National in Montreal, on December 30, a few days after “L'Electeur" had been banned, he defended the school settlement as the best practicable solution, and then, in terms which revealed the strain and tension of the hour, referred to the clerical crusade:

I have devoted my career to the realization of an idea. I have taken the work of Confederation where I found it when I entered political life, and determined to give it my life. Nothing will deter me from continuing to the end in my task of preserving at all cost our civil liberty. Nothing will prevent me from continuing my efforts to preserve that state of society conquered by our fathers at the price of so many years and so much blood. It may be that the result of my efforts will be the Tarpeian Rock, but if that be the case, I will fall without murmur or recrimination or complaint, certain that from my tomb will rise the immortal idea for which I have always fought.

It is to you, my young friends, that I particularly address myself. You are at the outset of your career. Let me give you a word of good counsel. During your career you will have to suffer many things which will appear to you as supreme injustice. Let me say to you that you should never allow your religious convictions to be affected by the acts of men. Your convictions are immortal. Their foundation is eternal. Let your convictions be always calm, serene and superior to the inevitable trials of life. Show to the world that Catholicism is compatible with the exercise of liberty in its highest acceptation; show that the Catholics of the country will render to God what is God's, to Cæsar what is Cæsar's.

While defending himself resolutely from attack,