DESJARDINS: CONTRA WILFRID LAURIER
Alphonse Desjardins (1877)
“It is true, he (Mr. Laurier) continues, that there is in Europe, in France, in Italy, in Germany, a class of men who call themselves liberals, but who are liberals but in name, and who are the most dangerous of men. They are revolutionists; their principles have reached such a pitch of exaltation that they aspire to nothing short of the destruction of modern society. With these men, we have nothing in common.” ¹
Pardon me, Sir, but you have something in common with those liberals, and we shall prove it to you in a few words. They place the authority of parliamentary majorities which make civil laws good or bad, above the authority of the Church, which proclaims immutable truths, and you do the same thing. They pretend that they have the right to say to the Church: Thou wilt go thus far, if thou so chosest, in the exercise of the liberty of preaching, but thou shalt not overstep the limit, which we point out―and you do the same thing. They have invented the criminal spiritual influence, which is visited with prison and exile, and you, you have invented the undue spiritual influence, which is visited with fines and civil degradation, so that between the two there is but one degree of difference. And that degree, you would have lessened it long ago, if your own interest had not forced you hypocritically to uphold it.
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The Church does not forbid to vote in favor of a candidate disposed to approve of the policy of any government, with regard to railroads, canals, tariffs, &c. She simply forbids her children to profess the liberal principles which tend to encroach upon the rights and the liberties of the Church, and to vote for candidates professing those principles, or too cowardly to oppose their introduction into the laws of this country. It is not for instance because Mr. Laurier has approved Mr. Mackenzie’s policy with regard to the [31] tariff or the Pacific Railway, that he shall be accused of being a Catholic liberal. No, it is because, formerly in his paper Le Défricheur, and now in his recent lecture at Quebec, he has endeavored to give to the State the right of defining the limits of Catholic preaching, thereby placing the State above the Church, it is for these reasons, we say, that he is and deserves to be called a Catholic liberal, and to be opposed as such.
ENDNOTES
1. Alphonse Desjardins, “Remarks of the Press: Le Nouveau Monde,” Lecture on Political Liberalism: Delivered By Wilfrid Laurier, Esq., M.P., on the 26th June, 1877, in the Music Hall, Québec, Under the Auspices of “Le Club Canadien,” By Wilfrid Laurier, (Québec: The Morning Chronicle, 1877), 30–31.
