The Catholic missionaries accomplished that noble task on the banks of the Saskatchewan and Red Rivers, as well as on those of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, and they did this, when, alongside of the crosses they planted, they fondly rested their gaze on the fleur de lis flag. Everyone knows that the same missionaries, while their eyes were yet moist with the tears they naturally shed when they had to sever the ties by which their whole existence had hitherto been bound up, were as faithful to British dominion as they had been to the banner of the land of their origin. It is well known that it is largely due to the fidelity of Canadian Catholic apostles that England owes the quiet possession of the noble colony which France had planted on the St. Lawrence and its tributaries. What then happened among the inhabitants of La Nouvelle France was possible solely because its inhabitants were Catholics and because England had respected their religious convictions. The knowledge of what they allude to renders more incomprehensible to the undersigned the fact that the Catholics of Manitoba and of the North-west are badly treated because they are Catholics.
Catholics believe in the necessity of religious instruction in the schools.
This conviction imposes upon them conscientious obligations, and these obligations give them rights of which they cannot be deprived. Such an argument is neither fair nor just. The undersigned, pastors of souls, are at one with their flocks in insisting on the rights they claim, and they are fully determined to preserve them in their integrity. There is in this a question of justice, of natural equity, of prudence and of social economy, closely connected with the fundamental interests of the country. The Catholics, being under the obligation of educating their children according to their faith and the religious principles they profess, have, in our free country, the right of establishing their separate schools, and that right they must be allowed to exercise without being forced to the burden of double school taxes.