Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics | Page 4

sobriety. The church, however, had them all in her black
books and Bishop Bourget, that incomparable zealot and bigot, was
determined to destroy them politically and spiritually, to whip them
into submission. The struggle raged chiefly in the sixties about
L'Institut Canadien, frowned upon by the church because it had books
in its library which were banned by the Index and because it afforded a
free forum for discussion. When Confederation cut the legislative
connection between Upper and Lower Canada the church felt itself free
to proceed to extremes in the Catholic province of Quebec and
embarked upon that campaign of political proscription which ultimately
reached a point where even the Rome of Pius IX. felt it necessary to
intervene.
In this great battle for political and intellectual freedom the young

Laurier played his part manfully. He boldly joined L'Institut Canadien,
though it lay under the shadow of Bishop Bourget's minatory pastoral;
and became an active member and officer. He was one of a committee
which tried unavailingly to effect an understanding with Bishop
Bourget. When he left Montreal in 1866 he was first vice-president of
the Institute. His native caution and prudence and his natural bent
towards moderation and accommodation enabled him to play a great
and growing, though non-spectacular, part in the struggle against the
church's pretensions. As his authority grew in the party he discouraged
the excesses in theory and speech which invited the Episcopal thunders;
even in his earliest days his radicalism was of a decidedly Whiggish
type and his political color was several shades milder than the fiery red
of Papineau, Dorion and Laflamme. Under his guidance the Rouge
party was to be transformed in outlook, mentality and convictions into
something very different indeed; but this was still far in the future. But
towards the church's pretensions to control the political convictions of
its adherents he presented an unyielding front. On the eve of his
assumption of the leadership of the French Liberals he discussed at
Quebec, June 1877, the question of the political relations between
church and state and the rights of the individual in one of his most
notable addresses. In this he vindicated, with eloquence and courage,
the right of the individual to be both Catholic and Liberal, and
challenged the policy of clerical intimidation which had made the
leaders of the church nothing but the tools and chore-boys of Hector
Langevin, the Tory leader in the province. It may rightly be assumed
that it was something more than a coincidence that not long after the
delivery of this speech, Rome put a bit in the mouth of the champing
Quebec ecclesiastics. This remained Laurier's most solid achievement
up to the time when he was called to the leadership of the Dominion
Liberal party.
DOUBTS AND HESITATIONS
Laurier's accession to leadership caused doubt and heart-burnings
among the leaders of Ontario Liberalism. Still under the influence of
the Geo. Brown tradition of suspicion of Quebec they felt uneasy at the
transfer of the sceptre to Laurier, French by inheritance, Catholic in
religion, with a political experience derived from dealing with the
feelings, ambitions and prejudices of a province which was to them an

unknown world. Part of the doubt arose from misconception of the
qualities of Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn party fighter, with an
experience going back to pre-confederation days, said to the writer:
"Laurier will never make a leader; he has not enough of the devil in
him." This meant, in the brisk terminology of to-day, that he could not
deliver the rough stuff. This doubter and his fellows had yet to learn
that the flashing rapier in the hands of the swordsman makes a
completer and far less messy job than the bludgeon; and that there is in
politics room for the delicate art of jiu-jitsu. Further, the Ontario mind
was under the sway of that singular misconception, so common to
Britishers, that a Frenchman by temperament is gay, romantic,
inconsequent, with few reserves of will and perseverance. Whereas the
good French mind is about the coolest, clearest, least emotional
instrument of the kind that there is. The courtesy, grace, charm, literary
and artistic ability that go with it are merely accessories; they are the
feathers on the arrow that help it in its flight from the twanging
bow-cord to the bull's-eye. Laurier's mind was typically French with
something also Italianate about it, an inheritance perhaps from the
long-dead Savoyard ancestor who brought the name to this continent.
Later when Laurier had proved his quality and held firmly in his hands
the reins of power, the fatuous Ontario Liberal explained him as that
phenomenon, a man of pure French ancestry who was spiritually an
Englishman--this conclusion being drawn from the fact that upon
occasion the names of Charles James Fox and Gladstone