CHAPTER II. In May, 1787, a committee was appointed to consider the condition of education and to suggest means for the establishment of schools and seminaries. A series of A questions was drawn up for submission to the cures of each parish, and special letters were written to the bishop and his coadjutor. The two bishops gave reports differing in every respect. Bishop Hubert, in a letter dated the 18th of November, 1789, doubted if the province could furnish many students to undergo the higher training, when there was so great an extent of land to be cleared. Farmers desiring to provide for their children would destine them to agricultural life. Of the four towns, William Henry was uninhabited; Three Rivers did not merit the name; and Montreal and Quebec could send but few students. Some twelve of the youth of Montreal attended at the seminary of Quebec, where the greatest charge made was £12 a year. He considered that the period had not arrived for the establishment of such an institution, and gave no encouragement to the principle on which it was proposed to found it, that of freedom from all denominational religious teaching. On the other hand, he described the conventual establishments where youth could be educated. In answer to the question as to the numbers in each parish that could read and write, he estimated them from twenty-four to thirty; the women so instructed exceeded in number the men. He described the seminary of Quebec, its origin and usefulness, and advocated the system of education taught there and in the college at Montreal. He recommended that the jesuits' barracks of Quebec, should be applied to the uses of a college, with the revenues of the estates given for its support; the estates to be under the authority of the bishop, for the propagation of the 1790] MGR. BAILLY. 279 catholic faith, in accordance with the principal motive assigned in the original title deed for the grants. The French Canadians, therefore, as Roman catholics had an incontestable right to those estates. With regard to the common schools, education in the parishes should be consigned to the curés, and theology should always be taught in the seminary. The letter of bishop Bailly, the coadjutor, was dated April the 5th, 1790. Previous to entering upon the views expressed by him, some account of himself is necessary, for his name is seldom mentioned without censure: with what justice the reader will be enabled to judge. Although known simply as bishop Bailly, his name was Bailly de Messein; he was born at Varennes in 1740. His parents possessed wealth, and at an early age he was sent to France, where he studied at the college of Louis-le-grand. He was distinguished equally by his polished manners and his attainments; although possessing many qualifications for public life, he entered the priesthood and was ordained in 1767. The following year, when only twenty-eight, with the title of vicar-general he was sent to Nova Scotia, in charge of all missions east of Kamouraska, including cape Breton and the present Prince Edward island, being the first missionary sent from Canada after the conquest. His letters rendering an account of the missions are yet read, and are described by those who do not write favourably of him as recalling "les admirables relations des jésuites." At the end of three years he returned to Canada, and was appointed a professor of rhetoric at the seminary. During the siege of Quebec, in March, 1776, M. Bailly, *[The Nova Scotia Indians, on making peace, had received a promise that a priest should be sent to them. In consequence of their urgent request for the fulfilment of this engagement, lord William Campbell, the governor of the province, applied to lord Dorchester at Quebec to procure the appointment of an ecclesiastic. Bailly being selected, reached Halifax in July, 1768. His religious duties were principally directed to the Indians and the well affected Acadians. He is mentioned with high commendation, and there is no trace that I can find, as stated in the biography given of him, that he was "fatigué, sans doute gêné par les tracasseries des protestants fanatiques de la Nouvelle Ecosse." In 1772 he obtained leave to visit Quebec, and did not return to Nova Scotia.] being a devoted loyalist, joined M. de Beaujeu in an organization to attack point Levis. The small party of loyalists was surrounded by a force greatly outnumbering them, and defeated. Some of them were killed and wounded, among the latter Bailly, severely, who was made prisoner.* On being set at liberty, he returned to the seminary, and in 1777 was appointed curé at Pointe-aux-Trembles. Bailly's loyal conduct, educated ability and polished manners recommended him to the attention of Sir Guy Carleton, and on the return to England of the governor in 1778 Bailly accompanied him as tutor to his children. He remained in this position during four years, at the close of which he re-assumed his clerical duty as curé at Pointe-aux-Trembles. When Carleton appeared in Canada as lord Dorchester, the former kindly relationship was renewed, and on the occasion of electing a coadjutor to bishop Hubert, Bailly was elected through the influence of the governor-general, his biographers tell us, against the wish both of the old bishop Briand and of his successor. Indeed, from the very commencement he was treated with studied discourtesy. He was not summoned to Quebec to take part in the affairs of the diocese; on the contrary, he was kept at Pointe-auxTrembles to the duties of his cure. We have Bailly's own words, that the bishop wrote him that he was coadjutor only to assure the episcopate, not to assist the bishop, to whom God had given the health and strength to conduct his diocese himself. ‡ In 1788 bishop Hubert published a mandement, in which [Ante., Vol. VI., p. 28.] + "Ce choix disons-le de suite, était loin de sourire à ce dernier, pas plus qu'au vénérable Evêque Briand, mais ils n'osèrent refuser le gouverneur, qui s'était montré si favorable aux interêts Catholiques." [Mandement des Evêques de Québec, Vol. II., p. 346.] "Je sais qu'en qualité d'Evêque titulaire vous ne me devez rien; et vous avez eu la complaisance de me le dire et de me l'écrire, que je n'étais coadjuteur que pour assurer l'Épiscopat, non pour vous aider; que Dieu vous avez donné assez de santé et de force pour conduire par vous-même votre diocese." Lettre de Mgr. Bailly a Mgr. Hubert, 22nd April, 1790. Published in the Quebec Gazette of the 29th of April. 1790] MGR. BAILLY'S PROTEST. 281 he severely arraigned his clergy for their frequent absence from their parishes, and their many irregularities. He described the consequence of this conduct, that many in dying had not received the last sacraments, that the dead often remained without burial for several days, that parishes were complaining justly of the non-residence of the clergy and of their repeated and long absence. He set forth, likewise, that there was much to condemn in the mode followed in receiving confessions, and he laid down stringent regulations on the subject in twelve articles. No curé could hear a confession at a greater distance than three leagues from his ordinary residence; no curé of a country parish could receive a confession in the city. The fêtes in parishes brought no privilege to the curé; no priest could preach without permission in a parish where he could not confess, with much else of this character. The whole consisted of seventeen articles, the sixteenth article is discreetly left blank in the printed narrative, so we do not know to what lapses of conduct it applied. It is exceedingly possible that Mgr. Bailly considered that much of this circular was directed against himself, as curé of Pointe-aux-Trembles; for owing to his recognized ability, his charm of manner, and his good birth, at the same time being a dignitary of the church, he was frequently at Quebec, a welcome visitor at government house; and received by everybody of distinction, for he was generally held in the highest esteem. In any case he felt himself called upon to reply, and he sent a copy of his letter to the Quebec Gazette, in which it appeared on the 29th of April, 1790. It would have been different, he wrote, if the censure had been written in Latin, and sent only in MS. to those to whom it was addressed. But given in French, it had been published, registered and countersigned. He thus felt called upon to protest against the opinions which the bishop had made public on the conduct of the clergy. He declared that the reproach directed against them was without foundation. Powers had been taken from aged ecclesiastics who had always acted with prudence, which their age and local situation rendered necessary, while there was no knowledge that the abuses pointed out were prevalent. The clergy were deprived of the favours accorded them by the jubilee, and was it in Canada that the devoted children of the church should be punished? In 1784 and 1788 many of the clergy entirely renounced the dîme to aid the poorer habitants of the parishes. Modern Roman catholic writers when they mention bishop Bailly's name do so with expressions of censure, that in the first place he should have made a public appeal of this character through the newspaper, and that he should in a matter of church discipline have invoked the opinion of the citizens.* He did so, however, on a point affecting public economy. A request had been repeatedly made to bishop Hubert that he would suppress some of the numerous fêtes d'obligation which impeded the exercise of industry. Bailly described them as a "scandal to our holy religion by the drunkenness and idleness they occasioned. Husbandmen, fishermen, the forges at Three Rivers were all idle on these days through devotion." Although this request had been often made, no answer could be obtained from the bishop on the subject. The bar, however, had ceased to recognize these days. What there was of civil life in these observances had been set aside by the advocates, who acted independently of them. Bishop Bailly sustained his views by the opinion of bishop Talbot, a doctor of the Sorbonne, who, in London, had expressed his surprise that the bishop of Quebec did not suppress some of the fêtes in a country where the season for work is so short. Another law that bishop Hubert had established was that marriage could be performed on a Tuesday only. There would soon be, Bailly remarked, a new dispensation to pay. * "Votre grandeur voudra bien me permettre les reflexions suivantes, elles ne sont pas les miennes seules, mais celles du clergé et des citoyens. . . Les citoyens ont eu l'honneur de s'approcher de votre grandeur pour obtenir la suppression de certaines fêtes." |