political arena, religion was brought into contempt, and
opportunity presented to our French-Canadian friends to rule us
through our own dissensions." Clergy reserves, sectarian schools, the
use of the public funds for sectarian purposes, were assailed. "On
these and many similar questions, we were met by the French-Canadian
phalanx in hostile array; our whole policy was denounced in language
of the strongest character, and the men who upheld it were assailed as
the basest of mankind. We, on our part, were not slow in returning
blow for blow, and feelings were excited among the Catholics from
Upper Canada that estranged the great bulk of them from our ranks."
The agitation was carried on, however, until the grievances of which
the Reformers complained were removed by the Act of Confederation.
Under that Act the people of Ontario enjoy representation according
to population; they have entire control over their own local affairs;
and the last remnant of the sectarian warfare--the separate school
question--was settled forever by a compromise that was accepted as
final by all parties concerned.

In this letter Mr. Brown said that he was not seeking to cloak over
past feuds or apologize for past occurrences. He gloried in the
justice and soundness of the principles and measures for which he and
his party had contended, and he was proud of the results of the
conflict. He asked Catholics to read calmly the page of history he had
unfolded. "Let them blaze away at George Brown afterwards as
vigorously as they please, but let not their old feuds with him close
their eyes to the interests of their country, and their own interests
as a powerful section of the body politic."

The censure applied to those who wantonly draw sectarian questions
into politics, and set Catholic against Protestant, is just. But it
does not attach to those who attack the privileges of any Church, and
who, when the Church steps into the political arena, strike at it with
political weapons. This was Brown's position. He was the sworn foe of
clericalism. He had no affinity with the demagogues and professional
agitators who make a business of attacking the Roman Catholic Church,
nor with those whose souls are filled with vague alarms of papal
supremacy, and who believe stories of Catholics drilling in churches
to fight their Protestant neighbours. He fought against real tyranny,
for the removal of real grievances. When he believed that he had found
in confe