It is a curious example of the workings of the mind and of the phraseology of a deaf mute. It is a sad sort of letter, and I intend to write to Jones to enquire if anything can be done for the poor creature.

Yours faithfully,
EDWARD BLAKE.

Here we get a glimpse of the really kind and generous heart that beat under the chilling exterior of Edward Blake.

In the year 1875 there occurred in Montreal an event which caused a good deal of ill-feeling between the English and French sections of the population throughout the province of Quebec. This was the epilogue of the famous Guibord case. Joseph Guibord was a member of a society known as L'Institut Canadien. In 1858 the Roman Catholic bishop of Montreal issued a pastoral letter exhorting the members of this institute to purge their library of certain works regarded as immoral, and decreeing several penalties, including deprivation of the sacraments and refusal of ecclesiastical burial, in the event of disobedience. The library committee returned a reply to the effect that they were the judges of the morality of their books, and, further, that there were no immoral works in their library. The matter appears to have lain dormant for some years. In 1865 several members of the Institute, including Guibord, appealed to Rome against the action of the bishop, but in vain. Shortly afterwards Guibord died, and as he had adhered to his membership in the Institute despite the bishop's mandement, ecclesiastical burial was refused. His widow had recourse to the law, and ultimately the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ordered the burial of Guibord's remains in the Roman Catholic cemetery. The reasons upon which this judgment is based are that the Church of Rome in the province of Quebec, while lacking some of the features of an established church, differs materially before the law from voluntary religious bodies; that certain privileges, such as the right to collect tithes, secured to it by law, beget corresponding obligations towards the laity. One obligation is to give ecclesiastical sepulchre to its members. The proceedings against Guibord had been legally insufficient to deprive him of this right; he had not been excommunicated personally and by name, but merely lay under a general excommunication.

The first attempts of Guibord's friends to bury the body in accordance with this decision were frustrated by force; but on November 16, 1875, under a strong military escort, the remains of Joseph Guibord were finally laid to rest in the Côte des Neiges cemetery, in the presence of a sullen assemblage. This forcible, albeit legal, proceeding was deeply felt by many who needed not to take lessons in loyalty to the Queen from the members of the Institut Canadien, but who could not see why the Church of Rome should be debarred the right, supposed to appertain to every society, of determining its own conditions of membership, nor understand why the friends of a man should seek on his behalf, after his death, the ministrations of that Church whose teachings, during his lifetime, he had voluntarily despised.

The Liberal Government came to power in 1873 at a time of commercial depression extending over the whole continent. Canada suffered severely; and so did the Ministry. Business was bad, the revenues fell off, employment became scarce. It was during this period that the Conservative Opposition began the advocacy of what was called 'The National Policy'—a system of modified protection which it was hoped would both stimulate the industries of the country and provide a sufficient revenue. Protection was no new policy with Sir John Macdonald. As long before as in 1846 he had advocated it from his place in parliament. In 1850 he belonged to an association which had as one of its aims a 'commercial national policy.' In 1858 he was joint-leader of a Government whose finance minister (Galt) announced protection to native industries as its policy. In 1861 he at various times and places expounded and developed this policy. Lastly, on the eve of the general elections of 1872, he wrote to the present Lord Mount Stephen:

At the hustings in Western Canada [Ontario] and in all the constituencies except Toronto, the battle will be between free trade and a national policy.... It is really astonishing the feeling that has grown up in the West [he is referring to Western Ontario] in favour of encouragement of home manufactures.

In 1876 the time was opportune for promoting this policy. Trade was depressed, manufactures languished, and the Canadian people as producers only of raw material were fast becoming hewers of wood and drawers of water for their more opulent neighbours in the United States. On March 10 of that year Sir John Macdonald propounded to the House of Commons his scheme for improving the commerce of the country. His proposals were contemptuously received by the Government. The prime minister, while admitting the serious character of the depression then prevailing, attributed the cause wholly to circumstances beyond their control, and denied the power of any government to remove it by legislation. They would have nothing to do with protection, which Mackenzie ridiculed as an attempt to relieve distress by imposing additional taxation.

Sir John thought differently. If he had done nothing else, his 'National Policy' campaign would have stamped him as a leader of men. In the words of a political opponent of the time, 'he constructed with consummate skill the engine which destroyed the Mackenzie Administration. From the very first he saw what a tactician would do with Protection, and in so masterly a manner did he cover his troops with that rampart, that it was impossible for the Liberals to turn their flank.'

His political picnics in 1876 and 1877, and the enthusiasm he everywhere aroused, were long remembered, and are not forgotten to this day by older men. Everywhere crowds gathered to his support, and the country impatiently waited the opportunity to restore him to his old position at the head of affairs. At length the fateful day arrived, and on September 17, 1878, the people of Canada declared by an overwhelming majority for 'John A.' and protection. In the preceding July Sir John had ventured a prophecy of the result—something, by the way, he was extremely chary of doing. 'If we do well we shall have a majority of sixty, if badly, thirty.' He had eighty-six.