rk on the railways, were for the most
part hostile to the Protestant population. In face of their undoubted
provocations, an equally narrow and irrational Protestant feeling was
aroused. Late in 1856 this latent bitterness was roused to fury by a
brutal attack by some Irish Catholics upon their fellow-labourers at
Gourley's Shanty, along the line of railway construction. So savage
was the fighting that the military were called out to restore order,
which was not done without {133} bloodshed. Howe saw his chance of
revenge for the unjust treatment he had received at the hands of the
Irish the year before--a chance of forming an almost solid Protestant
party, on the back of which he might ride to power again. Beginning
with justified condemnation of lawlessness and fanaticism, the lust of
conflict and the delirium of the orator soon swept him into a campaign
of attack, and led him to ridicule some of the most sacred tenets of
Catholicism.

It is a sad spectacle. Howe had noble ideas of religious freedom. In
his early struggle against the Oligarchy, when accused of hostility to
the Church of England, he had said, and said with deep sincerity: 'I
wish to see Nova Scotians one happy family worshipping one God, it may
be in different modes at different altars, yet feeling that their
religious belief makes no distinction in their civil privileges, but
that the government and the law are as universal as the atmosphere,
pressing upon yet invigorating all alike.' A few years later, in his
struggle for one undenominational college, he had taken the same
generous stand. In 1849, at a time of great bitterness, he had
supported, before the English of Quebec, the rights of the {134}
French-Canadian Catholics. 'How long will you be making converts of
the compact mass of eight hundred thousand French Canadians, who must
by and by multiply to millions, and who will adhere all the more
closely to their customs and their faith, if their attachment to them
be made the pretext for persecution? In the sunshine, the Frenchman
may cast aside his grey capote; but, depend upon it, when the storm
blows, he will clasp it more closely to his frame. You ask me what is
to be done with these recusants? Just what is done now in Nova Scotia
on a small scale, and by republican America on a large one: know no
distinctions of origin, of race, of creed. Treat all men alike.'

Yet now we find the same Howe shrilling forth the very blasts of
pe