ed to make peace with liberalism, to set up a Catholic liberalism,
frankly accepting the new order, the right of the people to rule
themselves, and seeking to show that by liberty of thought and
discussion the true interests of {27} the Church would be advanced and
its power be broadest based. Now one wing, now the other won, but in
the main the current flowed strongly towards ultramontanism. Pius IX,
liberal in sympathies up to 1848, completely reversed his position
after that date. In the Syllabus which he issued in 1864 he gave no
quarter to modern tendencies. The doctrines that 'every man is free to
embrace the religion which his reason assures him to be true,' that 'in
certain Catholic countries immigrant non-Catholics should have the free
exercise of their religion,' and that 'the Roman Pontiff can and ought
to be reconciled with progress, liberalism, and modern civism,' he
explicitly condemned as false and heretical.

In Canada these successive conflicts had found many echoes. During the
French regime Gallican principles of the power of the king over the
Church had been frequently asserted; governor or intendant had, in a
few notable instances, endeavoured to bridle the Church authorities.
When the English came, the Church lost its place as the state church,
but it consolidated its power, and soon was freer from intervention
than it had been under the Most Christian King of France. During the
French Revolution Canada was kept {28} isolated from contact with
France, but after the Restoration, with ultramontanism in the
ascendant, intercourse was favoured; and the most thoroughgoing
principles of clerical supremacy, with the most militant methods of
controversy, found lodgment here. In both private and public life,
among clergy as well as laity, each of the opposing tendencies was
stoutly championed.

When Wilfrid Laurier went to Montreal in 1861, the leaders of the
Liberal or _Rouge_ party had sobered down from the fiery radicalism of
their youth, and were content to leave the authorities of the Church
alone. But leading authorities of the Church remained suspicious of
that party. Bishop Bourget of Montreal, one of the most pious and
energetic of ecclesiastics, firm to the point of obstinacy, seemed
determined to crush it out. And though many eminent churchmen held out
for a broader and more tolerant policy, the ultramontanes, by reason of
their crusading zeal, steadily gained the ascendancy.

The iss