three. The Liberals did not want to be led so much, but they followed the banner which had been left to them by the regretted and most beloved leader Mr. Dorion; and they were in no hurry to put that banner into another man's hands. MR. MASSON: Your leader is distanced. MR. LAURIER: Procceding from that branch of the subject, his hon. friend had directly attacked him for the speech which he had delivered in Quebec during the month of June last, in which he asserted that they were trying to form a Catholic party. He would not have mentioned that topic, and it was with regret that he approached it; but he had to do it, since the words which he made use of there were challenged on the floor of the House. What he said there he repeated here; and he arraigned the gentlemen here before the House, as he did before his Province in the month of June last, and accused them of attempting to create a Catholic party in this Dominion. It was to be regretted that they had spoken of this subject; he would prefer, under all circumstances, to leave these discussions to his own native Province, to be fought on the soil of that Province. To the gentlemen. opposite belonged the responsibility of introducing the subject on the floor of the House of Commons. But since he ever had been taken to task for the language then made use of, he was justified and bound to assert and prove what he asserted there; and he would prove it by these gentlemen's own language. It had been for ever so many years past the policy of the gentlemen opposite to represent the Liberals from the Province of Quebec as a party of infidels and heretics; and the only battle ground upon which they attacked the Liberals before their constituents had been that ground and no other. tem had always been increasing; and, if Sir George Cartier were tɔ come back, he would not recognize his party, because he was sure such language as was daily uttered by the Conservative members of Lower Canada, could not be uttered if Sir George Cartier were still alive. In the Nou That sys veau Monde of the 2nd of June, 1875, the gentleman stated : "The Bishop of Montreal, in his pastoral letter upon the election, declares without any ambiguity and without any reticence, that those who have forfeited their duty by refusing a complete amnesty, and by refusing to vote a ledress of grievances to the Catholics in New Brunswick, were not worthy of public confidence." Now here were his premises; here it Conservative party that the Bishop of was asserted by the members of the Montreal had asserted certain things. Then he went on again—this was from another paper, the Canadien, of the 4th October, 1875, commenting on the pastoral letter of the Bishop of Montreal :— "The letter of the Bishop is the most energetic condemnation which ever reached the Liberal party of this Province. All the protestations of the Liberals have been denied." Now another paper which was published in the Liberal interest said this, commenting upon this and similar language held by Conservative members from the Province of Quebec : "It is a shame for our nationality that such a political game should be played with impunity; and we feel sure that the Bishops whose teaching they are odiously prostituting will be forced to put a stop to this scandalous abuse." To this language the Canadien answered in the following manner: "Our contemporary undertakes to prove that the pastoral letter of the Bishops of the Province, and that the action of the meminsane war which has been waged during bers and the clergy thereupon, constitute an the local election upon a party which ran only upon political questions. This is as much as to say to the Bishops, 'You have calumniated us, you have declared that we were meu that wanted to mislead the people you have warned them that we wanted to exclude religion from politics; you have told a lie; you have waged upon us an insane Nouveau Monde of the 5th March, 1871, | out to relieve the Province of Quebec, speaking of the election in Charlevoix County, said: Was he right, then, when he said that these gentlemen were endeavouring to create a Catholic party in this Province ? Of course, when these gentlemen were on the floor of this House, they pretended to be Liberal, they pretended to be Constitutional; but, when they were in the back parts of the country, when they were among their abettors, they made game of all this. This was the reason why he said that these gentlemen were attempting create a Catholic party. MR. MASSON: When did I say that? I deny the whole thing. MR. LAURIER said the hon. gentleman of course had said that he did not share in these ideas. He believed him to be above his party in that respect; but the hon. gentleman was like the late King Victor Emmanuel. The late King Victor Emmanuel never pretended to have anything to do with Garibaldi when Garibaldi invaded the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, or any other part of Italy; but he was always there to reap the benefit of it. So the hon. gentleman repudiated this language; he was never there, and never had anything to do with it; but he was always ready to reap the benefit of it. Now, if his hon. friend was alive to his duty, seeing he was the leader of his party, he would tell his people, he would tell those that supported him: "We shall raise no religious questions in this country, we shall have nothing but political questions to discuss." His hon. friend had never yet missed the courage to impose his views upon his followers; and this was why he blamed him. If he had been worthy of the position he occupied he would come not only from this great grievance, but from this calamity, for it was a calamity in their Province, that they should have to discuss such a question as this. Such questions as this never ought to be discussed, because this was a free country; every race was free, and there was not on the face of the earth a more free and more privileged Church than their Church in that Province. If such was the case,--and it was the case,--it was the more to be deplored that his hon. friend had not been encouraged to rise above his party, and to use his influence with his party to make them put down such language as this. MR. MASSON: We all agree. MR. BLANCHET: Mr. Speaker, will my hon friend permit me to ask a question? The hon. gentleman has passed through two elections within a few months; will he tell the House if any religious questions were raised in the Drummond and Arthabaska election at the public meeting when he was elected a Minister? He MR. LAURIER said he could say with great pleasure that the clergy did not interfere in his election, but the laymen had proved themselves to be, as was always the case, much more Catholic than the clergy. had been represented as a Protestant minister; there was not one of the canvassers of the hon. gentleman opposite that did not represent to the people that he was not a Minister of the Crown, but that he was a Protestant minister. He ran to represent a mixed constituency, where a large section of the community was of English origin, and of Protestant origin. These gentlemen on the opposite side did not tell the Protestants that he had become a Protestant minister ; but for them they had another story ready,-the fact that, when he was a boy of twenty, he had become a member of an association which had sworn to crush out the English race from the American continent. He was sorry to have to go into these details, but the responsibility would not rest upon him. This was the kind of warfare which he had to deal with in Drummond and Arthabaska. The hon. gentleman had also brought man was a another accusation | Cauchon into the Administration. The idea that a man who was a supporter of the Government could still retain his independence of mind, and not blindly approve the acts of the Administration, was evidently not a Conservative idea which was that, if a supporter of the Administration was bound to it hand and foot, and, when any question, great or small, in politics was raised, he was bound to approve of its action. A Liberal Government did not require more allegiance from its supporters than their conscience would allow. This was the allegiance which he had given to his leaders, and he was sure that they would never have exacted more from him; but, if they had, they knew it was not in the mind of any Liberal to give such blind allegiance. It was true that MR. MASSON: Here is Mr. Joly's Mr. Cauchon into the Cabinet. he had not approved of the entrance of letter. MR. LAURIER said he did not deny that there had always been amongst the Liberals of the Province of Quebec a strong tendency to protection. It was with them a matter of tradition; their leader had been a Protectionist, and all the young people of the land, all those that venerated his name, had more or less adopted his views and were to a great extent Protectionists. But, to say that these views were to prevail so much as to become one of the planks in the platform of the party, he for one would say to his hon. friend that he was totally in error; and the best evidence of it was the platform of the party itself. They had not opposed the policy of the Government of Quebec in regard to the North Shore Railway, but treated it on the same principle as they had the Grand Trunk Railway, and for the same reasons. The hon. gentleman had said they would be driven to direct taxation; a friend of his, however, of whom he had made a great eulogy, had said that the policy of the Government would lead them either into direct taxation or legislative union. He (Mr. Laurier) would now come to the last part of the speech of the hon. gentleman, a part which was personal to himself. The hon. gentleman had laid great emphasis on the fact that he (Mr. Laurier) had not approved of the entrance of Mr. He had nothing to say against him. His * to say that any stain had attached to his party because the Liberal Governmen had been presided over by a Conservative. If it were a stain or a shame for any body of men to be led by a Conservative, he would rather accept the experience of his hon. friend opposite upon that question. In reference to another statement which had been made, he desired to say that he never could have said that he had refused a seat in the Government because such an offer was never made to him. What he did say at Stanford was that, knowing the terms between himself and the Government, he might perhaps have been a member of the Government before that time; because, before then, his friends from Lower Canada had wanted to press his appointment on the Prime Minister, but he had refused for reasons personal to himself. All these accusations had been made by the hon. gentle man in order to prove that there was a reaction in the Province of Quebec. He was quite ready to admit that the Opposition had won a few seats. MR. MASSON: Oh. MR. LAURIER: Well, many seats; but the last laugh was always the best, and they, the Liberal party, intended to have the laugh at the next general election. He accorded to the hon. gentleman the pleasure of recording his victories, and of celebrating them if he chose. If there was a reaction in the Province of Quebec, in whose favour was that re-action? It could not be in favour of the Conservative party, because they had always held the upper hand in that Province, but there was a reaction from the Liberal ranks. SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD: When? y MR. LAURIER: And then would see who had the best right to laugh. Mr. LANGEVIN said, that if the hon. gentleman opposite had desired. to refer to any controverted elections, he should have alluded to those which had taken place on his own side of the House; to those members who, at the commencement of this Parliament occupied seats in the House, but had since been disqualified. The hon. gentleman had spoken of the amnesty to O'Donoghue. The late Government had always met questions of that kind fairly and squarely. as was showed by the fact of their having retained the support of the Province of Quebec. The press supporting the Liberal party had pretended to call for an amnesty to Riel and Lepine; but when hon. gentlemen opposite got into power they did not meet the questions fairly. When the history of that period was written, it would be seen that the members from the Province of Quebec in the Conservative Government of 1873, with them, called upon their respected chief, himself (Mr. Langevin) at the head of the head of the Government at that period (Sir John A. Macdonald), about this amnesty question. He (Mr. Langevin) told him that their usefulness would be lost and gone should they not obtain an amnesty for these men in the North-West; that they come when thought the time had come out danger to the peace of that the amnesty could be given withDominion of Canada; and Sir John A. country, or to any portion of the Macdonald answered that immediately after the Session he was to go to Some HON. MEMBERS: Hear, England, and would lay the matter hear. MR. LAURIER: He meant from the Conservative ranks. It was evident that hon. gentlemen opposite had nothing much to boast of, as they would even take advantage of a slip of the tongue. He did not generally, as a habit, boast a deux mains, but he would challenge his hon. friend to the next general election. before the British Government, with whom it rested; and that, if then, the matter were not settled, he (Mr. Langevin) would be at liberty to take the course which he had indicated, and that course was that if the amnesty were not granted within a reasonable time by the Government, they, the leaders of the Conservative party of the Province of Quebec, would withdraw from the Government. That was the course amnesty from that Government, because he was an Irishman, and it was so believed, and the hon. gentlemen found that the people believed it. So | much was that the case that, when the election of the hon. the Minister of Inland Revenue took place in Quebec, after his defeat in Drummond and Arthabaska, they came down with an amnesty, proclaimed in the same terms as that to the other two men, and they prided themselves on their generosity in the amnesty which they had granted. History, however, would not give them credit for such an amnesty, and would say that this last amnesty to O'Donoghue, the change of a sentence of exile for all time to come to exile for five years was brought about simply to carry the election in Quebec East--in the same way as the Government had acted in the other matter with regard to the ships. That was brought up at that period expressly to carry the election, as his hon. friend the First Minister had said. they had taken. They were not afraid | MR. MILLS: The First Minister ? MR. LANGEVIN: The First Minister to be. As his hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Sir John A. Macdonald) had just said, it was brought up at that time just to carry that election. The First Minister had said to the deputation that went to him in Quebec, that nothing could be done except through the French Consul, and yet four months afterwards he wrote to Mr. Shehyn, the local member for that constituency, and said: "If you believe, after all, that it can be done, if an interview with the French Consul in Quebec could bring about an arrangement, I am quite willing it should be done." They all knew the object. That letter was published throughout the constituency; all the papers published it; it was read at all the meetings in Quebec East, and the First Minister was just made to canvas the constituency for the hon. the Minister of Inland Revenue. Inland Revenue. The First Minister had stated that he never used the patronage of the Crown in an election, but he did in this case, and if this had been proved before the Supreme Court, the hon. gentleman might have been deprived, to the great sorrow of the |