ase of undue influence as
for an employer to threaten to dismiss a workman if he would not vote
for a certain candidate, and as just a ground for voiding an election.
The matter was pressed to a decision in appeals against candidates
returned in two federal by-elections, in Chambly and Charlevoix, and
{47} in one provincial election, in Bonaventure. In these instances
the proof of open partisanship and open use of ecclesiastical pressure
was overwhelming. 'The candidate who spoke last Sunday,' declared one
priest in Chambly, 'called himself a moderate Liberal. As Catholics
you cannot vote for him; you cannot vote for a Liberal, nor for a
moderate Liberal, for moderate is only another term for liar.' 'The
Church has condemned Liberalism, and to vote against the direction of
the bishops would be sin,' declared another. 'The sky of heaven is
_bleu_, the fire of hell is _rouge_,' another more pointedly urged. 'I
was afraid,' one witness testified, 'that if I voted for Tremblay I
should be damned.' In defence it was urged that, in the first place,
the civil courts had no authority over ecclesiastics, at least for acts
done in their spiritual capacity, and, in the second place, that the
Church had a right to defend its interests against attack, and that in
using to this end all the powers at its disposal it was employing no
undue influence. Judge Routhier, the author of the _Catholic
Programme_, upheld these contentions in the first trial of the
Charlevoix case, but the Supreme Court, in judgments delivered by Mr
Justice Taschereau, brother of {48} the Archbishop, and by Mr Justice
Ritchie, denied the existence of any clerical immunity from civil
jurisdiction, and found that the threats which had been made from the
pulpit constituted undue influence of the clearest kind. Accordingly
they voided the election. Their action met with violent protests from
some of the bishops, who, when Judge Casault in the Bonaventure case
followed this precedent, sought, but in vain, to have him removed by
the Sacred Congregation from his chair in the law faculty of Laval.
But in spite of protests the lesson had been learned, and the sturdy
fight of the Liberals of Quebec for the most elementary rights of a
free people had its effect.

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[Illustration: GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF THE DOMINION

1. VISCOUNT MONCK, 1867-68
2. LORD LISGAR, 1868-72
3. EARL OF DUFFER