The issues raised in Quebec were manifold. Among them were the right of private judgment, the authority of canon law in the province, civil or ecclesiastical control over marriage, clerical immunity from the jurisdiction of civil courts, and the degree of intervention which was permissible to the clergy in elections.
The first question, that of the right of private judgment, concerned the future leader of Canadian Liberalism and became acute in connection with the Institut Canadien of Montreal. This was a literary and scientific society, founded in 1844 by some members of the same group who later organized the Rouge party. It supplied the want of a public library and reading-room in Montreal, and a hundred branches sprang up throughout the province. The Institut soon fell under the suspicion of a section of the clergy. It was declared by Bishop Bourget that immoral or heretical books which had been put on the Index were contained in the library. Rival societies were founded under the auspices of the Church and many of the members of the Institut were induced to secede.
Nevertheless young Laurier joined the Institut shortly after coming to Montreal. In 1863 he was one of a committee of four who endeavoured in vain to induce Bishop Bourget to specify what books were under the ban, and in 1865 and 1866 he was a vice-president of the society. Like his associates, he was placed in a difficult position by the bishop's unyielding attitude, for he did not wish to quarrel with his Church. So far as he was concerned, however, his removal to Arthabaskaville in 1866 ended the episode.
The remaining members of the Institut struggled on until 1868, when they published a Year-Book containing an address by Mr L. A. Dessaules, president of the Institut, commending toleration.[[1]] A nice question of interpretation followed. Mr Dessaules asserted that he meant to urge personal toleration and good-will. Bishop Bourget contended that the address meant dogmatic toleration or indifference, the attitude that one creed was as good as another. In spite of an appeal to Rome by Joseph Doutre the work was placed on the Index, and the announcement followed that members who persisted in adhering to the Institut would be refused the sacraments of the Church. After this blow the Institut dwindled away and in time disappeared entirely.
Meanwhile Mr Laurier's weekly newspaper at Arthabaskaville, Le Défricheur, had come under the ban of Bishop Laflèche of Three Rivers, in whose diocese the little village lay. Subscribers refused to take their copies from the postmaster, or quietly called at the office to announce that, in spite of their personal sympathy, they were too much afraid of the curés—or of their own wives—to continue their subscriptions. The editor warmly protested against the arbitrary action, which threatened at once to throttle his freedom of speech and to wipe out his saved and borrowed capital. But the forces arrayed against him were too strong, and some six months after the first number under his management appeared, Le Défricheur went the way of many other Liberal journals in Quebec. It was not likely that Mr Laurier's growing law practice would have long permitted him to edit the paper, but at the moment the blow was none the less felt.
[[1]] 'Is it not permissible,' Mr Dessaules asked, 'when Protestants and Catholics are placed side by side in a country, in a city, for them to join in the pursuit of knowledge? ... What is toleration? It is reciprocal indulgence, sympathy, Christian charity.... It is fraternity, the spirit, of religion well understood.... It is at bottom humility, the idea that others are not worthless, that others are as good as ourselves.... Intolerance is pride; it is the idea that we are better than others; it is egotism, the idea that we owe others nothing.'