urch 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 {112} 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 Cote 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 {113} 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 Ca