ould give information to further this end, should do
so. Solemn excommunication was pronounced against offenders; to make the
warning impressive the priest would drop to the ground a lighted candle
and put it out with his foot; so would God extinguish the offenders thus
denounced, and those who abetted their crimes.

Since the Church has aided the state, not unnaturally she expected some
special favours in return. She got them in the days of the early British
governors of Canada. Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester,
secured for the Church the legal power to levy the tithe on Catholics
and practically all the other privileges she had enjoyed under the old
regime. The bishops tended to become more and more active in politics
and this reached a climax in 1896. With great heat the bishops threw
themselves into the attack on the Liberal party, because it would not
support the Church's demands for her own separate schools in Manitoba,
supported by taxes levied on Roman Catholics by the state. Some of the
bishops went too far in denunciation; an appeal against their action was
carried by Catholics to the Pope and the offenders were rebuked. The
incident showed that in politics the habitant knows his own mind, for he
gave an overwhelming support to the party on which the bishops were
warring. Since then many a habitant draws a sharp distinction between
the spiritual and the political claims of the bishops. Their full
spiritual authority he does not doubt; in politics he thinks his own
opinion as good as theirs.

If in spiritual matters the Church led it was intended that in temporal
affairs too the habitants should always have guidance. An old world
flavour seems to pervade the relations between seigneur and vassal in a
French Canadian parish. The seigneur was himself the vassal of the
crown, bound to do humble homage at the capital when he received his
grant. We have a detailed account of the ceremony as performed, perhaps
for the first time under British rule. On December 23rd, 1760, in the
morning one Jacques Noel, a seigneur, accompanied by royal notaries,
proceeded to the government house in Quebec. He knocked at the principal
entrance and, when a servant appeared, Noel asked if His Excellency
James Murray, the Governor, was at home. The servant replied that His
Excellency was within and that he would give him notice. On being
admitted to the presence of the Governor, Noel with head uncovered, and,
to symbolize h