Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/652

 MANIZALI8

603

MAHV

average width of 30; Lake WinnipegosiSi 150 miles by 18; and Lake Manitoba, 130 miles by about 10. The first named is the only lake entirely within the present limits of the province. These and other more or less considerable sheets of water, by the immense shoals of white fish they contain, give rise to a remunerative industry. The only rivers worth mentioning are the Red, the Assiniboine, and the Winnipeg. But the principal weEtlth of the country consists m its fertile plains, which are yearly covered with endless fields of the famous hard Canadian wheat and other cereals. The area under crop in 1909 was somewhat smaller than in preceding years. We give it here, together with the yields of the various grains and roots :

Crop

Area Tilled in Acres

Average Yield in Bushels

Total Yield in Bushels

Wheat

2.642,111

1,373,683

601.008

25.096

28,265

9.876

1733 311 27-31 15- 192-8 2693

45.774.707

Oatfl

50.983.005

Barley.

16.416.634

Flax, Rye, and Peas Potatoes

330,056 5,450.200

Roots

2,059.928

The climate of Manitoba is bracing and healthy. Its winters are somewhat long and severe; but the con- stant dryness of the atmosphere makes them bearable. The total ^population of the province in Feb., 1910, was computed at 466,368 inhabitants, of whom 8327 were Indians. Among the whites there were in May, 1909, 51,794 Catholics, with, officially, 1734 Indians. Some 25,000 of the Catholics follow the Grseco-Ru- thenian rite. The capital, Winnioeg, contains an estimated population of 142.000. Its chief cities are Brandon, pop. 14,000 inhabitants; St. Boniface (the cathedral town), pop. 6700, and Portage la Prairie, pop. 6500. The region which has become the prov- ince of Manitoba was discovered and settled in a way by the Sieur de Lav^rendrye, between 1732 and 1739. Shortly prior to the cession of Canada to Great Britain, the trading posts he had established were abandoned, and Engush-speakins adventurers from the East for the first time tried their fortunes on the Western plains. These, with their purveyors in Mon- treal, founded the famous North-west Company, which soon became a formidable rival to the long estab- lished Hudson Bay Company^ the representative of the English interests. Then Lord Seltcirk, a Scottish nobleman, and an important shareholder in the latter corporation, who haa secured a vast tract of land at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, planted there (1812) a colony of Scotch and Irish settlers, whose presence excited the hostility of the North-west Company and the numerous French Cana- dians and half-breeds in its employ. This culminated (19 June, 1816) in the Battle of Seven Oaks, wherein Robert Semple, governor for the Hudson Bay Com- pany and twenty of his men fell. The immediate result was the disbanding of the colonists, who, how- ever, were soon after recalled by Lord Selkirk at the head of a strong force of hired soldiers (1817). The following year (16 June, 1818) there arrived in the colony the first two resident Catholic priests (see Pro- vencher), and in the fall of 1820 the first Protestant minister. Rev. John West, similarly reached the Red River Settlement, as the country was long called.

In March, 1821, the two contending companies were united under the name already borne bv the English body. Twelve years later, the increase m the popula- tion led to the formation of a sort of home govern- ment, with a deliberative assembly termed the Council of Assiniboia, the name then assumed by the settle- ment. Meantime the country was seriously dissatis- fied at the severity with which the Hudson Bay Company — still practically the governing body — ^was asserting its monopoly in the fur trade. In the spring of 1849 the Frencn bialf-breeds, or Metis, took advan- tage of the arr€«t of a few of their o\imber,»acQU»9cl of

having infringed on said vested rights, to rise for the

Purpose of forcibly establishing freedom of commerce, en years later whites from Ontario began to arrive in the settlement, established a newspaper, and waged war on the Hudson Bay Company. Immediately on the formation (1867) of the Dominion of Ccuiada steps were taken to acquire the colony and the entire coun- try tributary to Hudson Bay. Without consulting the inhabitants, now numbering 12,000, those im- mense regions were sold to Canada for the sum of £300,000, and, even before their transfer to the new confederation, surveyors and prospective settlers were dispatched who, by their arrogance, greed, and lack of respect for acquired jights, ^ve rise to the Red River Insurrection under Louis Riel. The outcome of this was a list of demands from the federal authorities, prac- tically all of which were granted, the concessions being embodied in the Manitoba Act. This Act created a province with, at first (1870), an area of only 14,340 square miles. In 1881 its limits were enlaiged.

When, however, settlers from Ontario and Ens- hsh-speaking provinces had outnumbered the Cath- olics, who were chiefly of the French race, both rights were ignored by the Provincial Legislature in the spring of 1890, despite the unequivocal declarations (k the Constitution. The Catholics inmiediately protested, especially on behalf of their schools, and had recourse to various tribunals in the dominion and even to the Crown. In 1895 the Privy Council admitted that they had a real grievance and that they were entitled to re- dress at the hands of the Federal Parliament. A sort of compromise was effected which fell short of Cath- olic aspirations, and at present, as a result of a kindly interpretation of the law by the Conservative Gov- ernment of Manitoba, and thanks to a tacit under- standing, which is liable to be ignored by a Liberal administration of the province, the schools in the town of St. Boniface and in the French coimtry dis- tricts enjoy some measure of religious autonomy, due chiefly to the fact that the teachers are mostly French Canadians who are allowed to teach partly in French and who are Catholics. These schoob receive a government grant. But in cities, such as Winni- peg, Brandon, and Portage la Prairie, those Catholics who have made the greatest pecuniary sacrifices for the education of their children have received abso- lutely no redress from the unjust burden of taxation for non-Catholic schools and from the refusal of gov- ernment or municipal grants for the schools which they maintain at great expense.

Ross, The Red River Settlement (London. 1856); Haroravx, Red River (Montreal, 1871): Hamilton, The Prairie Province (Toronto, 1876); Gunn. Htetory of Manitoba (Ottawa, 1880); Brtcs, Manitoba; ite infanei/t growth and preaent condition (London, 1882) ; The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk' a Col- onitUa (Toronto, 1909); Hill. Manitoba (Toronto, 1890); Begg, Hiatory of the North-Weti (Toronto, 1894); Dugas, I/Oueat Canadten (Montreal, 1896); Moricb, Aux Sourcea de VHiatoira Manitobaine (Quebec. 1907) ; DictionrMire hiatorique dea Cana^ diena etdea MHia Fran^aia de VOueat (Quebec, 1908); Hiatory of the Catholic Church in Weatem Canada (Toronto. 1910); Anglin. Catholic EduccUion in Canada in iia Relation to the Civil Authority in The Catholic Educational Aaaociation Bui" letin (Oolumbus. Ohio. August, 1910).

A. G* MORICE.

Manisales, Diocese of. See Medellin, Archdio- cese OF.

Mann, Theodore Augustine, English naturalist and historian y b. in Yorkshire, 22 Jmie, 1735; d. at Pra^e in Bohemia, 23 Feb., 1800. Little is known of his education except that he seems to have imbibed deistic ideas in his youth. He left England about 1754 and went to Paris. Here the study of Bos- suet's "Discours sur Thistoire universelle'' exerted a profound influence upon him, and in 1756 he was re- ceived into the Catholic Church by the Archbishop of Paris. Upon the outbreak of the war between France and England in the same year, he went to Spain, where he enlisted in a teiqg:c&»sQ^ ^ ^sw^y^sos^