CANADA.
This province was especially prosperous, but it experienced the consequences of the policy so embarrassing at home—of allowing Irish religious disturbances, and those who create them, to pass without sufficient reprobation by the government. In Canada the Irish were numerous. The Protestant Irish there were energetic and zealous for their creed. The Roman Catholic Irish were full of a fierce fanaticism. Orangeism and Ribandism flourished in Canada, even as at Belfast, and used such opportunities as arose to fight as fiercely.
One Gavazzi, an Italian priest, left the church of Rome, and lectured against his former faith in Great Britain and Ireland. The liberty enjoyed in Great Britain by all men to discuss publicly their opinions, was not possessed in Ireland. There, indeed, the government conceded such a right, but the local magistracy often acted in a spirit adverse to the British constitution; and the priests and people of the Roman Catholic religion, although always waging an active controversial warfare against Protestants, never tolerated a reply; and whenever any aggressive controversy was set on foot by any sect of Protestants, they were generally assailed with brutal violence, their places of worship attacked, and the persons of the preachers or polemists fiercely assaulted. The Irish Roman Catholic immigrants in Canada carried with them to their adopted country the same spirit of religious intolerance and mob violence, so indulgently treated by whig and tory governments in their own country. Gavazzi was the occasion, in June, 1853, of evoking this fact in a startling manner in Canada. He visited Quebec, and lectured against the Romish church in “the Free Church” in that city. He alluded in his argument to the condition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, as influenced by their religion. The statements of the reverend gentleman were such as the members of any other communion than the churches of Rome or Greece would have considered matter for reply and fair argument. The Roman Catholics of Quebec, especially the Irish of that communion, resorted to their usual mode of opposing a controversialist: they attacked the preacher with brutal violence, uttering the fiercest yells and denunciations, and in language horrible, as proceeding from men on religious grounds. Gavazzi had to fight for his life, which was with difficulty saved. In Montreal the lectures of the Italian polemist were attended by disturbances more serious and more general. The police protected him, as they would have protected a Roman Catholic clergyman had he been assailed by intolerant Protestants. The police were nearly overwhelmed by the onslaught of a multitude of Irish Canadian Romanists, anxious to imbrue their hands in the blood of a man who had, as a clergyman, left their church and made a public protest against it. Fire-arms were used on both sides, to the disadvantage of the rioters, some of whom were killed. The military arrived in time to protect the place of worship, in which the Italian doctor lectured, from being demolished. The Romanists collected in greater strength, and fired upon the soldiery, who returned the fire, killing seven, mortally wounding six, otherwise wounding many more, and finally driving the aggressive bigots from the streets. The authorities did not follow up with justice or spirit this disgraceful affair; a fear of the Roman Catholic influence in the English parliament deterring them. When tidings of these events arrived in the United Kingdom, the Roman Catholics in parliament, at public meetings, and by the press, expressed sympathy with the violators of law, and the riotous mobs which had attempted to tread down civil and religious freedom; while denunciations, false, vehement, and intolerant, were directed upon the Reverend Doctor Gavazzi. The principles upon which this course was based, were those so commonly assumed by the party in Ireland, when it was needful to justify violence and bigotry there; namely, that the Roman Catholic Church, being the true church, should have immunity from polemic charges against its doctrines and worship; and that, as all attacks upon it are sure, amidst a Roman Catholic population, to lead to a breach of the peace, Gavazzi ought to have been punished by the authorities, and the authorities who neglected to do that should be regarded as accessories to the riot, and guilty of the murder of the rioters who fell. The leaders of the opposite sections of Whigs and Tories in the English parliament treated such arguments very blandly, and instead of denouncing any party or sect which impeded religious liberty, no matter what its theological opinions, the tone adopted was more in sympathy with the Roman Catholic party in parliament, to gain whose votes each party was after its own mode bidding, each alike willing to sacrifice the liberty of public controversy for the political aid thus sought to be procured.