Page:Letter from L. J. Papineau and J. Neilson, Esqs., Addressed to His Majesty's Under Secretary of State on the Subject of the Proposed Union of the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.djvu/27

 Bishop, it might have the effect of enabling a Roman Catholic Curate to recover tithes from his Roman Catholic parishioners, after, on their complaint, he had been interdicted by the Bishop, and no longer in a condition to perform fro them those religious services for which the tithe is the consideration. A clause supposed to have such a tendency could hardly fail to excite alarm in Canada; and if ever it were to be acted upon, it would unavoidably give rise to those unhappy feelings between Catholic and Protestant, which have tormented other countries, and from which Canada has been so fortunately exempt under the beneficent and enlightened Government of His Majesty. If the practice hitherto peaceably and beneficially exercised by the Roman Catholic Bishop under His Majesty's Government were pretended to be unfounded in law, it is by the decisions of Courts of Justice that such pretensions ought to be established, and not by parliamentary interference.

Only the last of these clauses requires any remark. The provision which it contains for continuing the salaries of the officers of the Legislatures, to be paid no doubt out of the colonial funds, although it may be just in regard to these officers, ought to have been left to the Colonial Legislature. It has the appearance of an appropriation by the Parliament