Protectionist, and that he adopted a certain cry merely because it was popular. This is a false accusation, for he was Premier in the Government of 1858, when Mr. Cayley, then Inspector-General, introduced and carried the first Protectionist tariff in Canada; and he was still virtually the leader of the Government of Sir George E. Cartier, in 1859, when Inspector-General Galt extended and consolidated the Protectionist work of the year before. Had Sir John, in carrying out Protection, actually gone back' on old convictions, he should still be leniently dealt with by those who glorify Sir Robert Peel for having saved his country by turning a political summersault on the question of Free Trade. But this aside, cannot Free Traders see what a fatal admission they make when they admit that Protection is popular?

And cannot they see, further, that the increasing intensity of commercial competition between nations is sure in each and every civilized country to enlist the masses of the people more firmly on the side of Protection, and against the system which would take employment from themselves and hand it over to foreigners? The time is surely coming when to ask the workingmen of any civilized country whether they are in favour of Free Trade, will be deemed as absurd as it would now be deemed to ask an

The

Italian whether he thinks that Venice should be restored to the dominion of Austria, or a Frenchman whether he would be willing to cede the Champagne country to Germany, popular mind is giving a national interpretation to the Scripture precept (implied) that we are first to provide for those of our own household; and, with Patriotism and Democracy both on its side, Protection will surely carry all before it in the world.

We have, at all events, determined to try what it will do for Canada. The other system has been tried, and has proved a very bad failure, though it is still contended that circumstances, and not the system, were to blame. But we do not here enter upon that argument; suffice it to say that a change has been decreed by the authority of last resort the vote of the Canadian people. The prevailing anticipation is that the new policy will attract capital and population into the country, and certainly some cases bearing this out have already occurred. Should more such cases keep coming up, even our Free Traders may take comfort of a a substantial kind in the non-fulfilment of their own prophecies. We may at least bespeak for the new system the best of fair play, and we may feel sure that the vast majority of Canadians hope it may prove successful.

-From APPLE BLOSSOMS.'

THE

HE quiet surface of society and the even course of judicial procedure is occasionally ruffled by attempts to resuscitate old modes of dealing out justice which have little in common with this age in either thought or feeling. Within a year in Toronto the evidence of four persons -a Jew, a Mahommedan, and two others have been challenged as incompetent to testify in a court of justice, on the ground of religious opinion. At a recent trial before Chief Justice Moss the evidence of two witnesses was rejected, on the ground that they had not that degree of theological belief which gave value to their oath. In giving judgment on May 12th ult., in a case before the court, the Chief Justice is reported as saying of one witness: 'I am obliged to reject his evidence; he has not that degree of religious belief which the law renders necessary to competency as a witness.'

The legal doctrine is that no person can be allowed to give evidence in a Court of Justice who does not believe in a God who punishes perjury in this world or the next. As the Mohammedan is permitted to swear on the Koran, the Jew on the Old Testament, we may reasonably infer that the Heathen Chinese, whether Polytheist or Buddhist, would be allowed to testify according to that form most sacred to his conscience.

In Canada, and in every civilized country where the English language is spoken, there is an endless variety of religious belief regarding the supreme power and government of the world, also on the nature and duration of future punishment. The degree of

religious belief' on these two points being that which qualifies or disqualifies a witness. As legal justice and common justice, or in other words, common morality, are practically interchangable terms (the legal being based on the moral) what is the social status of a citizen unable to testify; what are the penalties for the expres sion of obnoxious opinions, socially considered? Are such citizens excluded from civil rights and duties? Can they sit on a jury? Are they excluded from the use of the franchise? If their qualification is challenged, the oath cannot be administered to establish their right to vote. Can they import goods and pass them through the customs, unless they employ some one to swear for them? Can they perform any of the functions of citizens when the oath is administered? If the law will not permit them the privileges of citizenship, is the ordinary citizen expected to be above the sober and solemn wisdom of impartial legal justice? If our behaviour to each other is not superior to the behaviour of the law towards unbelievers, it is equivalent to declaring such persons to be outlaws But this is not all: if twenty men of good standing in society, or any larger number, who did not possess the degree of religious belief' entitling them to give evidence in a court of justice, were eye witnesses to the assassination of the Chief Justice and the proof of the fact depended on their evidence, their oaths would be valueless, and the punishment intended for the unfortunate unbeliever would fall on society.

The grossest outrage may be com

mitted by the greatest rascal, and society may have neither defence nor protection. The late J. S. Mill says: 'the assumption on which this is grounded is that the oath is worthless of a person who does not believe in a future state; a proposition which betokens much ignorance of history in those who assent to it (since it is historically true that a large proportion of infidels, in all ages, have been persons of distinguished integrity and honour); and would be maintained by no one who had the smallest conception how many of the persons in the greatest repute with the world, both for virtue and attainments, are well known, at least to their intimates, to be unbelievers.' A man who does not accept the doctrine of future punishment may be the only witness to rails being torn up which caused the death of many persons and the destruction of much property, or he may be the only witness to a brutal murder which has shocked the moral sense of the whole community. When placed in a witness box to testify to the fact, he candidly admits that he does not possess the 'degree of religious belief' which the law demands, but believes that a respect for truth is the cement which holds society together, and asserts that the penalties for perjury are wise and just. So far, however, from being considered a credible witness, and his evidence taken as to the facts within his knowledge, his mouth is closed, justice is defeated, and the enemies of good society are let loose again to repeat their misdeeds in possibly more aggravated forms.

To

make the matter more absurd, and justice a mockery, an ordinary trustworthy citizen is denied the privilege granted to a criminal. A whiskey informer's oath would pass unchallenged after repeated convictions for perjury, while a well-intentioned heretic, whose word would be taken by all who knew him, notwithstanding his obnoxious opinions, would be put out of court as unqualified to testify. On

this point J. S. Mill says: ' under pretence that atheists must be liars, the law admits the testimony of all who are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. A law thus self-convicted of absurdity, so far as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of persecution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity that the qualification for undergoing it is the being clearly proved not to deserve it.'

The subterfuges which this law permits are of serious moment. Any person, by assuming the position of an unbeliever, may shield a criminal and defeat the ends of justice. There is no means of ascertaining whether belief or unbelief is real or pretended. If there was, there is no law against a change of mind. Hence, a man may give evidence in one case and refuse it in another without risk of punishment, as it is impossible to prove that a man has not altered his opinion on the question of God and a future life.

The difficulties and dangers prophesied as sure to follow any alteration in the administration of the oath in England prevented any amendment worthy of the name for 113 years. After a severe and protracted struggle, quakers were allowed to affirm; after wards other religious bodies who conscientiously objected to swear were permitted the same privilege. When it was found that none of the disastrous results which were so confidently predicted, followed, those outside the pale of Christianity were also permitted to make affirmation; and, as the confidence of man in man widened, individual and collective justice was found to be placed on sounder principles.

Notwithstanding the number of alterations and amendments on the Oath Question which have taken place in England between 1813 and 1875, Canada, a province of that nation, is

still under the intolerant statutes of George 3rd, 1792, excepting in a few cases regarding rectories which were amended when the English Church was disestablished here. Those who doubt this may consult the summing up of the late Chief Justice Harrison in Pringle v. Napanee, at Osgoode Hall, June 29th, 1878. The case will be found in Queen's Bench Reports, No. 6, vol. 43; but particularly on page 294. In citing decisions and opinions of eminent judges, the Chief Justice quoted 9 and 10 Will. III. ch. 32, intituled, 'An Act for the more effectual suppression of blasphemy and profaneness reciting "That if any person or persons, having been educated in, or at any time having made profession of the Christian Religion, shall by writing, printing, teaching or advized speaking, deny any one of the persons of the Holy Trinity to be God, or assert or maintain that there are more Gods than one, or deny the Christian Religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of Divine authority, and shall be thereof convicted by oath of two or more credible witnesses, such person or persons for the first offence shall be adjudged, and incapable, and disabled in law to all intents and purposes whatsoever, &c., &c., and if a second time convicted, shall thenceforth be disabled to sue, prosecute, plead or use any action, &c., and shall suffer imprisonment for the space of three years without bail or mainprize," &c. This Act,

with its penalties, was in force in the mother country till the 21st July, 1813, when the 53 Geo. III., ch. 160, sec. 2, was passed repealing its provisions "so far as the same relate to persons denying as therein mentioned respecting the Holy Trinity." But as the Act was held to be merely an affirmation of the Common Law of England, the effect of its partial repeal has been held to be merely a repeal of its penalties; Rex v. Waddington, &c. It would appear to be in force in this colony with all the penalties, notwithstanding the repeal of the penalties in England." (See report cited.) As every city has many good citizens who neither feel nor believe as their forefathers did in 1792, it is worthy of our consideration, whether it might not be for the general good, that the law, as in England, should be so altered that every sane citizen should be allowed to testify by affirmation, subject of course to all the penalties of perjury for swearing falsely on oath.

The mother country has adopted this with beneficial results. No one there can shirk the responsibilities of a citizen by withholding his evidence where it is important, nor be subject to the insults of Counsel or the derision of the Court, for affirming in preference to swearing. The temptation to rob, or to defraud those who cannot legally prosecute is, in England, a thing of the past, and justice demands the same legal protection for every colonial citizen.

ALL the Court circles and courtly

newspapers of Europe are felicitating the Czar at his 'providential escape' from the hand of the assassin, and execrating the villain who would have slain the father of his people. It may offend some guests at the table round which we sit, but for the life of me I cannot refrain from uttering my feeble disavowal of such sentiments. If ever assassination were permissible or laudable, it is so at Russia in this year of grace. The father of his people keeps his children under his paternal (but not the less iron-shod) heel. If they show signs of the slightest intelligent sympathy with ideas of liberty (God help them! they can hardly so much as dream of such a subject with impunity) presto! they are under surveillance, dogged, trapped, arrested on suspicion, goaded into some trifling overt sign of discontent, thrown into a prison whose only portal opens to the route of Siberia. His fatherly care does not always please these children, who being men in years, and feeling that their nation, too, is no longer in its infancy, consider their Czar a trifle over careful over their well-being. Sometimes they are rash and criminal enough to approach their great father and king with a prayer or petition, begging to be allowed a voice in the disposition of their own affairs. It is only the younger and better educated men who rise to this height of wicked audacity, and they do not as a rule get a chance to repeat the crime. At other times when a knot of these desperate men have been simmering in gaol for several years, guilty of the unpardonable offence of thinking for themselves and bidding others to do likewise, and when they have planned

an escape from their kind father and have undermined his strong walls and are about to be free, the Czar places shepherds at the outlet to stop his straying sheep, grim Corydons with muskets for crooks and bayonets for pipes, and the Imperial father kills those children of his with as little compunction as Corydon feels when he kills his Sunday's mutton. With knout, and sabre, and musket shot, with banishment and proscription, with the fetter, chain, and ball, on body and mind alike, with the forced labour of the unhealthy mine, with the barely-masked mockery of justice dealt out by military tribunals, the Czar murders the flower of his people. Other nations are sorry for it, would gladly see it stopped; will do nothing, say nothing to stop it, nay, feel at heart a selfish pleasure that Russia is thus flinging away her chances in the great race, is thus sinking herself in the depths of a self-inflicted barbarism. But let one of the down-trodden men turn on the oppressor with knife or pistol, and how the Te Deums burst forth if hand or heart fail him!

I fully agree, my humanitarian friend, with your hatred for assassination. It is un-English, you say. Quite true, but it does not become more moral when practised on an extensive scale with a large army of officers and officials for performers and the state prisons of Russia for the theatre. Let assassination and capital punishment be abolished together by all means, but -as was well said-let messieurs les assassins commence the innovation, and above all let their Emperor, Alex ander, set the example.

BARRIE.