poor.  Changes in the type of farming may also curtail his income.  Of the products of dairy farming he gets no share, yet it is a creditable fact that many priests have urged their people to adopt this kind of farming.  Fees for weddings which, in Protestant Churches, go usually to the minister, are in the Province of Quebec handed over to the general church fund.  Of course the priest has sources of income other than the tithe.  He receives fees for masses but the sums chargeable for these ceremonies are determined by the bishop; the priest himself has no power of undue exaction.  There is indeed no evidence of a desire for such exaction.  Whatever personal differences may arise, the French Canadian cure is usually one in thought and aim with his people.  Wherever he goes he is always respectfully saluted.  To him the needy turn and there are heavy calls upon his charity.  Few cures have any surplus income.  They keep up a large house and have constant need of one or more horses.  Most cures, it is said, die poor.

It is the complaint in Great Britain and the United States that, rather than enter the Christian ministry, the best intellects are seeking secular pursuits.  This is not the case in the Province of Quebec.  The cures watch the promising boys in the schools.  The Church has many boarding schools where boys are led on step by step to the final one of entering the priesthood.  A promising boy, if he needs it, is given a scholarship.  When the time comes he is sent to complete his education at Rome or elsewhere.  The Church has selected him, trained him in her service, and, for the rest of his life, his best powers are at her call.  Every family is ambitious to have a representative in the priesthood and this becomes the most notable thing not merely in the family but also in the parish.  The Province of Quebec has many parish histories.  These volumes are rather dreary reading, it must be admitted, consisting chiefly of the record of the building or improvement of the church and of the coming and the going of the cures.  But one chief record is always found—­that of the sons of the parish who have entered the priesthood.  They are its glory.  Not merely pride in the success of their offspring leads parents to wish for a son in the priesthood.  He may bring to them more substantial benefits.  He is the interpreter of sacred mysteries, the intercessor in some respects between God and man, and he will plead for them in the court of Heaven.

This ambition to get sons into the priesthood has made it possible now for the Church to rely wholly upon priests Canadian in origin.  Not always was this the case.  After the British conquest it was not easy to get priests.  The British government frowned upon the introduction of priests from France, still Britain’s arch-enemy.  Irish priests were thought of, but they could not speak French and, besides, the Bishop of Quebec did not find in them the submissive obedience of the Canadian priest.