The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 472 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12).

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 472 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12).

I voted last session, if a particular vote could be distinguished in unanimity, for an establishment of the Church of England conjointly with the establishment, which was made some years before by act of Parliament, of the Roman Catholic, in the French conquered country of Canada.  At the time of making this English ecclesiastical establishment, we did not think it necessary for its safety to destroy the former Gallican Church settlement.  In our first act we settled a government altogether monarchical, or nearly so.  In that system, the Canadian Catholics were far from being deprived of the advantages or distinctions, of any kind, which they enjoyed under their former monarchy.  It is true that some people, and amongst them one eminent divine, predicted at that time that by this step we should lose our dominions in America.  He foretold that the Pope would send his indulgences hither; that the Canadians would fall in with France, would declare independence, and draw or force our colonies into the same design.  The independence happened according to his prediction; but in directly the reverse order.  All our English Protestant colonies revolted.  They joined themselves to France; and it so happened that Popish Canada was the only place which preserved its fidelity, the only place in which France got no footing, the only peopled colony which now remains to Great Britain.  Vain are all the prognostics taken from ideas and passions, which survive the state of things which gave rise to them.  When last year we gave a popular representation to the same Canada by the choice of the landholders, and an aristocratic representation at the choice of the crown, neither was the choice of the crown nor the election of the landholders limited by a consideration of religion.  We had no dread for the Protestant Church which we settled there, because we permitted the French Catholics, in the utmost latitude of the description, to be free subjects.  They are good subjects, I have no doubt; but I will not allow that any French Canadian Catholics are better men or better citizens than the Irish of the same communion.  Passing from the extremity of the West to the extremity almost of the East, I have been many years (now entering into the twelfth) employed in supporting the rights, privileges, laws, and immunities of a very remote people.  I have not as yet been able to finish my task.  I have struggled through much discouragement and much opposition, much obloquy, much calumny, for a people with whom I have no tie but the common bond of mankind.  In this I have not been left alone.  We did not fly from our undertaking because the people are Mahometans or Pagans, and that a great majority of the Christians amongst them are Papists.  Some gentlemen in Ireland, I dare say, have good reasons for what they may do, which do not occur to me.  I do not presume to condemn them; but, thinking and acting as I have done towards those remote nations, I should not know how to show my face, here or in

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.