was especially prosperous, but it experienced the
consequences of the policy so embarrassing at home--of allowing Irish
religious disturbances, and those who create them, to pass without
sufficient reprobation by the government. In Canada the Irish were
numerous. The Protestant Irish there were energetic and zealous for
their creed. The Roman Catholic Irish were full of a fierce fanaticism.
Orangeism and Ribandism flourished in Canada, even as at Belfast, and
used such opportunities as arose to fight as fiercely.

One Gavazzi, an Italian priest, left the church of Rome, and lectured
against his former faith in Great Britain and Ireland. The liberty
enjoyed in Great Britain by all men to discuss publicly their opinions,
was not possessed in Ireland. There, indeed, the government conceded
such a right, but the local magistracy often acted in a spirit adverse
to the British constitution; and the priests and people of the Roman
Catholic religion, although always waging an active controversial
warfare against Protestants, never tolerated a reply; and whenever any
aggressive controversy was set on foot by any sect of Protestants, they
were generally assailed with brutal violence, their places of worship
attacked, and the persons of the preachers or polemists fiercely
assaulted. The Irish Roman Catholic immigrants in Canada carried with
them to their adopted country the same spirit of religious intolerance
and mob violence, so indulgently treated by whig and tory governments in
their own country. Gavazzi was the occasion, in June, 1853, of evoking
this fact in a startling manner in Canada. He visited Quebec, and
lectured against the Romish church in "the Free Church" in that city.
He alluded in his argument to the condition of the Roman Catholics of
Ireland, as influenced by their religion. The statements of the reverend
gentleman were such as the members of any other communion than the
churches of Rome or Greece would have considered matter for reply and
fair argument. The Roman Catholics of Quebec, especially the Irish
of that communion, resorted to their usual mode of opposing a
controversialist: they attacked the preacher with brutal violence,
uttering the fiercest yells and denunciations, and in language horrible,
as proceeding from men on religious grounds. Gavazzi had to fight for
his life, which was with difficulty saved. In Montreal the lectures of
the Italian polemist were attended by disturbances more serious and mo