Читать книгу A Critical History of the Red River Insurrection - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 18

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The Catholic clergy have been accused not only of abetting and encouraging, but even of prompting, the Red River Insurrection, apparently because the prejudiced parties who proffered that accusation imagined the people of the Settlement too dull to be able to think for themselves and act accordingly. As they were in duty bound, the pastors sympathized with their flocks in their tribulations, but they contented themselves with guarding them against excesses, and keeping them within the limits of legality as much as was possible under circumstances which called for extraordinary measures.[198]

Nay more, they did all they could to obviate in time the necessity of any extra-legal action on the part of the people, and it was not their fault if the unaccountable supineness of those in power finally rendered such action unavoidable. They endeavoured to awaken the Ottawa Administration to the dangers they were creating by their lack of tact, on the one hand, and their aggressiveness, on the other, as well as by their unwillingness to interfere with the doings of their more or less official representatives in the West, at a time when they were themselves acting as if they had been the masters of a country over which they had not as yet any jurisdiction.

But even Bishop Taché, who was more familiar than anybody with the same, was practically silenced by the Federal politicians when he dared intervene on behalf of peace and justice, under the plea that “he did not understand politics.”

In the summer of 1868, articles by the Rev. Georges Dugas, the French littérateur of the Red River, appeared in the Nouveau-Monde, of Montreal, which described and deprecated the ferment then at work in the Colony, because of the arrogance, presumption and dishonesty of the handful of “Canadians”[199] it contained, and the terrible consequences with which such uncalled for agitation was pregnant. No notice was taken of these articles.

As to his superior, Bishop Taché himself, it is really pathetic to follow him in his efforts to open the eyes of the eastern authorities to the seriousness of the situation in his diocese. And we cannot help prefacing this account of the troubles which were to ensue by fastening a great part of the responsibility therefor on the proper party, a French and Catholic public man, Sir Georges Etienne Cartier, real statesman though he was.[200]

The prelate told him of the repeated defiance of local authorities by Dr. Schultz and friends who, for a number of years,[201] had shown their Orange “loyalty” by jail-breaking. He related the affronts and threats to the Métis on the part of others, and the imminent danger in which the same were of getting evicted from their holdings, inveighed on their extreme discontent, their growing sullenness and the prospect of a general outbreak, if the wrongs done them were not remedied and the intentions of the Government promptly made clear to them.

Courtesy of Rev. J. B. Beaupré, O.M.I.