The education of the lower classes is at a very low stage; thirty per cent. of the children of school age in Quebec do not attend school. The English dare not introduce gratuitous and compulsory education. They have an understanding with the Catholic Church, which insists upon exercising entire control over public education. The Quebec schools are little more than branches of the confessional box. The English shut their eyes, for part of the understanding with the Church is that the latter will keep loyalty to the English Crown alive among her submissive flock.
The tyranny exercised by the Catholic Church may easily be imagined from the following newspaper extract:
A well-to-do butcher of Montreal attended the Catholic Church at Ile Perrault last Sunday. He was suffering at the time with acute cramps, and when that part of the service arrived during which the congregation kneel, he found himself unable to do more than assume a reclining devotional position, with one knee on the floor. His action was noticed, and the church-warden, in concert with others, had him brought before the court charged with an act of irreverence, and he was fined $8 and costs.
Such a judgment does not only expose the tyranny of the Catholic Church, but the complicity of the English, who uphold Romanism in the Province of Quebec as they uphold Buddhism in India, so as not to endanger the security of their possessions.
The French Canadians are multiplying so rapidly that in a very few years the Province of Quebec will be as French as the town of Quebec itself. Every day they push their advance from east to west. They generally marry very young. When a lad is seen in the company of a girl, he is asked by the priest if he is courting that girl. In which case he is bidden to go straightway to the altar, and these young couples rear families of twelve and fifteen children, none of whom leave the country. The English have to make room for them.
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRIEST.
The average attendance in Catholic churches on Sundays in Montreal is 111,483; in the sixty churches that belong to the different Protestant denominations, the average attendance is 34,428. The former number has been steadily increasing, the latter steadily decreasing.
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