The Guibord case has produced a riot at Montreal. M.
Guibord, who died in 1860, was a memberof the Institut Canadien, an institu- tion whose library contained books strongly disapproved by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Montreal, who excommunicated all mem- bers of that Institute. M. Guibord died while under this ban, and and as his family possessed a grave in the Catholic cemetery, his widow wished to bury him there. This was not allowed by the priest, on the ground that M. Guibord was an excommuni- cated man. An appeal was made to the Canadian Courts, which declared him to be entitled to Roman Catholic privileges, and ordered his burial, and on an appeal to the Privy Council the order was confirmed. On the 2nd September the burial was about to take place, when a mob of French Canadians appeared and forcibly prevented the burial. The Roman Catholics appear to us to have been entirely false to their own principles in this matter. They maintain the duty of obedi- ence to the civil ruler as one of the first of their duties. In this case there was no conceivable injury to the conscience of any Roman Catholic in permitting M. Guibord's body to lie in a grave which was certainly his property, and which the highest tribunals had declared his family's right to use. If the Roman Catholics had chosen to take the consecrated influence which, on their theory, they im- part to a burial-ground,—whatever that may be,—away again from this special grave, as they constantly do from a sacred building when they turn it to a secular use, no one could have legally objected ; but to make a riot about where a heretic should be buried, and ignore the weightier matters of the law,—order, peace, obedience to lawful authority,—is gross unfaithfulness to the professed principles of the Roman Church.
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