Mr. Martin Archer Shee, in a letter to the Times
of Friday, asserts that it is only the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Lower Canada which made this question a question for the Courts. We venture to say that he is totally mistaken, and that the very same question may arise inEngland, whenever any fanatical feeling happens to be aroused about the burial of an excommuni- cated Catholic. There is, for instance, we believe, a Roman Catholic section of the great cemetery at Kensal Green. Suppose any Roman Catholic official should refuse to receive the body of some great man whom Catholics regard as an apostate, but who had accounted himself a Catholic up to the moment of his death, and decline to place it in the vault he had purchased there. We venture to say the English Courts would im- mediately take cognisance of the nature of the right he had ac- quired by his purchase, and if they found it free from any condi- tion invalidating his claim, they would see that his body was there interred by the civil power, though, of course, they could neither compel the reading of a Burial service nor prevent the reading of a service intended to take away the imaginary consecration, over the grave.
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