hange the 144 dialects of India into English?
Then there are Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and other places where
French is spoken. And what about South Africa? Here is a colony which a
few years ago was under arms against England, and did everything it
could do to break the British power. When the time came for England to
deal with the Boers she treated them not with her ancient generosity
only, but with a measure overflowing--she treated the Boers in a way in
which we are not treated in the Province of Ontario. To-day in the Boer
States the Boer language and the English language are on an absolute
equality. They do not have to ask a superintendent or any one else for
one hour a day in the school to learn their national language. And are
we, the French-Canadian people, the descendants of the race who
colonized not only this country but a large portion of the North
American continent, who explored it from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of
Mexico and from the St. Lawrence to the Rocky Mountains, to leave behind
us and bury for ever, a history which has never been surpassed anywhere
in the world, for courage, devotion and heroism; are we the descendants
of these men, in this Canada of ours, to be deprived of the use of the
language of our forefathers? Are we to be told that in order to have a
united Canada and a Empire we must forever renounce and deny our origin,
our traditions and our beloved language? I ask you, gentlemen, is there
any man in the city of Quebec, any Protestant or English-speaking man,
who would not despise me if I threw all this to the winds? If I did so I
would richly deserve your supreme contempt and you would not be slow in
extending it to me--and yet this is what we are asked to do.

And was there ever a time, gentlemen, less than the present, when
Frenchmen any where in the world, let alone in Canada, could be asked to
forget their origin and their language? When the France of 1915 and 1916
has compelled the unbounded admiration of the whole world for her
sublime courage and devotion. And yet we are asked, we who speak the
same language as the men, our full brothers who have fought so nobly in
the trenches in Flanders, whose defence of the Verdun forts is the
finest and most glorious event of the present horrible war, to forego
our French language and all that it carries with it, we are told that
our children cannot learn it, and must despise it and allow it to die an
unnatural death in Canada. I as