The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation. Volume 1Roger, Charles
History
The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation. Volume 1
Roger, Charles
Canada -- History
Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent of the Romish Church! but the
proceeds of which should principally have been applied to the purposes
of public education. And he was deeply mortified that "a company of
French rascals" had momentarily deprived the country of any hope of
such a destiny of these estates. The private and confidential remarks
of the secretary were not altogether without effect. His Grace of
Portland, then His Majesty's Secretary for the Colonies, peremptorily
ordered Governor Milnes to resume and exercise that part of the king's
instructions requiring that no person whatever was to have holy orders
conferred upon him, or to have cure of souls, without license, first
had and obtained from the Governor, and Lord Hobart, the Duke's
successor in the Colonial Department, intimated to Sir Robert Milnes
that it was highly proper that he should signify to the Catholic Bishop
the impropriety of his assuming any new titles or exercising any
additional powers to those which he had as the Vicar of the Holy
Apostolic See. The French Priests were also to be reminded that their
residence in Canada was merely on sufferance, and that it was necessary
for them to behave circumspectly, else even that indulgence would be
withdrawn. Greatly alarmed at these proceedings the Bishop of Rome
respectfully remonstrated. He humbly reminded His Most Excellent
Majesty, the King, that nineteen-twentieths of the population were of
the Roman Catholic religion; that the humble remonstrant was himself
the fourteenth bishop who had managed the church since Canada had
happily passed into the hands of the Crown of Great Britain; that the
extension of the province was prodigious, requiring more than ever that
the superintending bishop should retain all the rights and dignities
which His Majesty had found it convenient to suffer the bishops to have
at the conquest; and that in the Courts of Justice there should be no
room to doubt their powers. It was indeed no wonder that the
superintendent of the Church of Rome was alarmed at the aspect of
affairs. The Attorney-General Sewell reported with regard to the
nomination of Laurent Bertrand to be cure of Saint Leon-le-Grand, by
the titular Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec, in the case of one
Lavergne, who having refused to furnish the _pain beni_, was prosecuted
in the Court of King's Bench, that it was a usurpation in the bishop to
erect parishes and appoint cures. He went farther and said that there
was no such person as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec. The title,
rights, and powers of that office had been destroyed by the conquest.
Nay, there could not, legally, be any such character, as, if he
existed, the King's supremacy would be interfered with, contrary to the
Statutes of Henry the Eighth and of Elizabeth. Not only was there a
quiet but arbitrary denial of the right of the Roman Catholic Bishop to
manage the affairs of his diocese, the possibility of negotiating the
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