can only tend to prolong our period of provincialism and make the country an undesirable home for those who would otherwise willingly cast in their lot among us. We have acres enough; powers mechanical and powers natural; and sources of credit enough to make out of this province a great nation, and though I wish to commit no one to my opinion, I trust that it will not only be so in itself, but will one day form part of a greater British North American state, existing under the sanction, and in perpetual alliance with the empire, under which it had its rise and growth." When Fenianism began to spread, he was trenchant in his attack. To him it was a disruptive conspiracy which could bring only disaster in its wake. In January, 1865, he was invited to deliver an address before the St. Patrick's society of Montreal, and with bitterness, bold but not discreet, he described the Fenian brotherhood as "a seditious Irish society, originating at New York, whose founders have chosen to go behind the long Christian record of their ancestors, to find in days of Pagan darkness and blindness an appropriate name for themselves". In reply to the journalistic reports that Fenianism was spreading in Upper Canada, he declared emphatically: "I would say to the Catholics of Upper Canada, in each locality, if there is any, the least proof that this foreign disease has seized on any, the least among you, establish at once for your own sakes--for the country's sake--a _cordon sanitaire_ around your people; establish a committee which will purge your ranks of this political leprosy; weed out and cast off these rotten members who, without a single governmental grievance to complain of in Canada, would yet weaken and divide us in these days of danger and anxiety."