ARTICLE II DU SUJET DE LA SAINTE COMMUNION

L*admission des enfants à la sainte communion a fait récemment l'objet de règles précises, déjà publiées dans une Circulaire, et qui sont exprimées avec une grande clarté dans le Nouveau Code, au Canon 854, dont je cite le dernier paragraphe:

C'est le devoir du curé de veiller, même par un examen, s'il le juge prudemment opportun, à ce que les enfants ne soient point admis à la Sainte Communion avant d'avoir atteint l'usage de la raison, et sans être suffisamment bien disposés ; de même, à ce qu'ils soient munis au plus tôt de cette nourriture divine, quand ils ont atteint l'usage de là raison et qu'ils ont les dispositions suffisantes. (C. 854).

C'est donc en définitive, au curé, agissant par luimême ou par ceux qui le représentent, que revient la responsabilité d'admettre les enfants à la première communion, eu égard à leur raison et à leurs dispositions. Il semble bien conforme à l'esprit du décret Quam singulari, de s'en tenir pratiquement et d'une manière générale à la règle de sept ans commencés. Les cas exceptionnels d'enfants précoces et pouvant communier avec fruit avant cet âge sont peu nombreux et doivent être l'objet d'une attention spéciale.

Doivent être repoussés de la sainte Eucharistie, ceux qui en sont publiquement indignes, comme les excommuniés, les interdits frappés d'infamie manifeste, à moins que l'on ne constate leur repentir et leur amen-, dément, et qu'ils aient fait réparation suffisante du scandale public. Quant aux péc1 eurs occultes, s'ils demandent la communion d'une manière occulte et qu'il

Charles Morse

TRADITION has it that Preacher George Whitefield could move his hearers to ecstacies of bliss by simply uttering the word 'Mesopotamia'. But one could hardly conceive of his tongue with ail its wizardry doing the like with the word 'colonial'. True, this word came into our speech infused with ail the dignity of its Latin original — for there were Roman provinces (such as Cisalpine Gaul) whose citizens were politically equated to those of Rome, and there are Roman writers who use the term colonia as an équivalent of the Greek apoikia denoting an independent or self-governing settlement of apoikoi ('people from home'). But in Whitefield's time and on to the latter part of the nineteenth century 'colonial' implied a status of political subjection and social inferiority to the lords of the world who dwelt in London. Even if we can say that in thèse days nous avons change tout cela, (1) and that Downing Street — confronted by the inéluctable spirit of equality that has emerged from the alembic of war — is well content to 'suffer a sea change' in its policy towards the autonomous units of our so-called Empire (2) that lie beyond the King's Chambers, yet we must recognize that the taie of England's unhandsome treatment of her American colonies in the eighteenth century is an ineffaceable chapter in history. Nor is our racial pride exalted when we find vestiges of the policy that led to the Révolution of 1776 persisting long afterwards in the relations between Downing Street and the loyal British communities in America. Despotism in its retreat from England found its last ditch in colonial administration, and died hard there. The quest for responsible government in thèse communities was a long and painful one, and when the boon was granted it had been paid for to the uttermost farthing by the travail of soûl of such 'colonials' as Howe, Baldwin and La Fontaine. If the scroll of our tutelage was not greatly charged with punishments, it did not lack humiliations; and it was a strait gâte indeed through which émancipation came. Nor

(1) "There has been a complète change in conditions since 1856 The sole control of Britain

over foreign policy is now vested in the Empire as a whole". Mr. Lloyd George in addressing the House of Gommons, December 14th 1921.

(2) "There are many mansions in the British empire, and no one wants to build them ail alike or fill them with a homogeneous population. For that and for other reasons, 'empire' is not a happy term; it implies an unconstitutional authority, military domination, and rigid uniformity. The essence of the British realms is government by consent, liberty and heterogeneity." Prof. A. F. Pollard's Evolution of Parliament, p. 364.

was the Orbilian rod flourished only in the weightier matters of the law; its suasion was found more convenient than argument in minor things. No great while before 1867 — the epochal year for British North America — Gladstone felt himself free to treat with supercilious disregard Thomas Chandler Haliburton's plea in the House of Commons for considération of the interests of the New Brunswick timbermerchants in the English market as against those of foreign competitors. The situation was rendered more acute by Gladstone's use of the following language in his reply to a letter from a citizen of the province of New Brunswick protesting against any law being passed whichwould injure the colonial timber trade: — "I could not admit your right," déclares Gladstone, "even individually, to protest against any législation which Parliament may think fit to adopt on this matter." Disraeli, too, was du même acabit in his early days. By putting his eye to the wrong end of the télescope in viewing England's 'place in the sun' he was misled into exclaiming against "those wretched colonies which hang like a mill-stone round our neck ..." Before he died, however, he had put this inept notion of England's Weltstellung so far behind him that he did not look askance upon Canada's ambition to be ranked as a kingdom. At ail events it was not his fault that 'Dominion' was substituted for 'Kingdom' in the draft of the British North America Act, 1867.(3) Indeed, the governing class in England as a whole had become so purblind to the value of the overseas empire that the workingmen of London in 1869 were constrained to présent an address to Queen Victoria protesting against the suggestion that the colonies should be invited to assume their independence. The address bore over one hundred thousand signatures, and used thèse spirited words: —

We hâve heard with regret and alarm that Your Majesty has been advised to consent to give up the colonies, containing millions of acres of unoccupied land which might be employée! prqfitabfy both to the colonies and to ourselves as a field for émigration. We respectfully submit that Your Majesty's colonial possessions were won for Your Majesty, and settled by the valour and enterprise and the treasure of the English people; and that, having thus become part of the national freehold and inheritance of your Majesty's subjects, they are held in trust by Your Majesty, and ought not to be surrendered, but transmitted to Your Majesty's successors, as they were received by Your Majesty.

Shall we not, then, justify the poet when he sings —

Oh, was it wise when, for the love of gain, England forgot her sons beyond the main?

(3) See Pope's Correspondance of Sir John Macdonald, p. 451.

And yet Dr. Berriedale Keith, in his Responsible Government in the Dominions naively remarks that the dislike of the term 'colony' by the peoples of the self-governing British Dominions "is not very intelligible to Englishmen." But it may be that Dr. Keith is not speaking for himself in this instance ; he was born north of the Tweed. Now ail this is by way of foreword to the subject in hand; and while I hâve some misgiving as to its palpable relation to that subject I trust it does not demand quite so violent an évocation of affinity as that which led Mrs. Nickleby to associate the warmth of a fine summer day with roast pig and onion sauce.

In dipping into a récent article by Mr. T. Baty, of the Inner Temple, on the British colonies (4) my attention was arrested by the following observation of the learned writer: —

'Dominion' is a misleading and ambiguous word, the sole object of which is to gratify the amour propre of large colonies. It is constantly being confused with 'dominion' in the wide and proper sensé of territorial possessions. Its use dates from a very récent period. As a proper noun it is the spécial title of Canada — of course, it goes back to 1870 [sic] at least — but as a common noun, meaning 'large self-governing colonies', it would be surprising if an instance could be found of it antedating the twentieth century. Its officiai use is very récent indeed.

Taking thought in the matter, one is haunted by the conviction that as 'dominion' is no upstart word in its gênerai signification it may well be that its use to designate a species of body-politic is not so new as Mr. Baty seems to imagine. Starting practically at the threshold of English political history, and considering the first sentence of our most famous constitutional document — "Johannes Dei gratia rex Anglie, dominas Hibernie, dux Normannie et Aquitannie et cornes Andegavie, etc.," — must we not regard the word dominas as quite as distinctive in its intendment as the word rex? Did not the draftsman of the Great Charter (5) advisedly differentiate the constitutional position of John in England and John in Ireland? It would seem so. Henry II had obtained the suzerainty of Ireland by the consent and proffered allegiance of its native rulers rather than by conquest in the twelfth century, and it passed to John on his coronation.

Now dominas in the terminology of English feudal law found its complément in dominium directum — the estate of the King in ail lands held either mediately or immediately of him as lord paramount. (6.)

(4) Sorereign Colonies, 34 Haivard Law Review, p. 837.

(5) Probably Archbishop Langton, one of the chief scholars of his titne — and médiéval scholarship included a knowledge of constitutionalism. Cf. Figgis: Front Gerson loGroiius, Lect. I p. 11.

(6) Co.Litt. Ib.; 2 Bl. Corn. 105.

So it is reasonably clear that Magna Charta, in declaring John to be 'lord' of Ireland and not 'king', had in view the manner in which the royal title to Ireland had been acquired, and regarded it as a feudal domain (dominion) of the Crown of England. The kings of England were lords of Ireland for more than three centuries. (7) Indeed, the title was not changed until Henry VIII, in the year 1541, was presented with the office of 'king of Ireland' by an Act passed by the Anglo-Irish Parliament in Dublin.

Then again, we hâve the case of Wales. After that country was finally reduced by Edward I and annexed as a fief to the crown of England, we find it repeatedly designated in the statutes as the 'Dominion of Wales'. Sometimes, it is true, we find 'dominion' used convertibly with the term 'principality' ; for instance, in 34-35 Henry VIII,c. 26 we hâve 'The King's Majesty's Dominion, Principality and Country of Wales', as well as 'Dominion of Wales' alone. It is a 'dominion' pure and simple in 12 Charles II,c.34, and many other statutes in the seventeenth century. So that it would appear from thèse somewhat ancient examples that Mr. Baty's dictum that 'dominion' is "a misleading and ambiguous word, the sole object of which is to gratify the amour propre of large colonies", and that "its officiai use is very récent indeed" requires some revision. But more than ail this, there is quite satisfactory évidence that the term was used in connection with the American colonies so early as the reign of Charles II. The name 'Old Dominion' has long been associated with Virginia in song and story; and it appears that it originated from the fact that the royalist governor, Sir William Berkeley, had sent word to Charles, while exiled in Holland, that he would raise his flag in Virginia, making it a royal dominion, if there was any prospect of success. Charles declined the ofifer, but always remembered it with gratitude (8). However that may be, it appears that the term 'dominion' was in fact applied to the colony under the sanction of law. Brewer says (9) :"Every Act of Parliament to the Déclaration of Independence designated Virginia 'the Colony and Dominion of Virginia.' " I hâve not been able to verify this statement, so far as the législation of the British Parliament is concerned, but I hâve found high constitutional authority for the use of the désignation in question in the patent of Charles II appointing Lord Culpepper as Governor of Virginia in the year 1677. That

(7) Hence, by the treaty of 1921 history merely repeats itself and Ireland once more becomes a 'Dominion'.

(8) See J. E. Cooke's Virginia.Pt. II, c. 10.

(9) Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 911.

document speaks of the "Colony and Dominion of Virginia in America" (10).

And when we turn to the législation of the Virginia Assembly prior to the Révolution we find the term 'dominion' commonly used, either by itself or in conjunction with 'colony', to describe the political character of this pioneer English settlement in America. Thus in 34 Charles II, Act VIII, we read of "His Majesty's Dominion of Virginia," and in Act XII of the same year "His Majesty's Colony and Dominion of Virginia" (11). Clearly, then, Virginia affords an instance "antedating the twentieth century" of the use of the word 'Dominion' to dénote a "large self-governing colony".

But the most surprising — and surely the most interesting to Canadians — of ail instances of the application of the term in question to a colony is found in the early history of Nova Scotia. On the news of the death of King George I reaching Annapolis Royal, Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong convened a meeting of his Council on Thursday, the 7th of September 1727, wherein it was resolved, first, "that as the day was far Spent, the remainder of it Should be employed to solemnize the death of that Most Excellent and Glorious prince in the most décent manner"; and, secondly, "that a proclamation should be prepared declaring the accession of the High and Mighty prince George, prince of Wales, to the Impérial Crown of Great Britain, France and Ireland, and Suprême dominion of Nova Scotia, etc." (12). Now, bearing in mind that in ail Nova Scotia at this time there were probably fewer than five hundred Englishspeaking people, indifferently organized for government and surrounded by at least five times the number of French inhabitants more or less hostile to British rule, the déclaration that the colony was a 'Suprême Dominion' of the British Crown is a remarkable one. Admitting that Armstrong may hâve had the example of Virginia in his mind, and admitting, further, that the application of the term 'dominion' was technically correct in view of the cession of the country to Great Britain in 1713, why the proud adjective 'Suprême'? The scanty records of the time afford us no positive answer to this question. I am inclined to think that Armstrong's purpose in giving this ambitious title to the infant colony whose government he administered may be explained by his knowiedge of the matter I hâve stressed in my foreword, namely, the stigma of inferiority to the people of the home-land that galled the colonists in America, and a

(10) See Hening's Statutes ai Large of Virginia, vol. II, p. 566

(11) Thèse Acts may be found in Hening, op. cit., vol. I.

(12) The italics are mine. I do not think this language should be regarded as loose-lipped hyperbole, with no technical meaning. The resolution is to be found in N. S. Arch. vol. iii p. 156.

laudable désire on his part to sow the seeds of pride of country in the hearts of settlers coming into thèse new parts. This, of course, is no more than a guess at truth, but it finds support in the fact that Armstrong was the first to suggest a House of Assembly to assist in making laws for the peace and progress of the colony. This was a rare thing for a military proconsul to do in those days. In fact throughout his tenure of office, beginning in 1725 and ending with his sad death by his own hand in 1739, he busied himself in the endeavour to make it an attractive place for settlers. He did not hesitate to insert advertisements in New England newspapers offering grants of land "to ail Protestant settlers who might corne from those colonies" (13). At ail events I offer this as a not unreasonable explanation of Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong's apparent intention to lead Nova Scotia into world politics as a 'Suprême Dominion' of the Impérial Crown of Great Britain. Nova Scotians hâve ever been celebrated for the fervour of their amour du pays, and it may well be that the splendid flowers that blossomed in Joseph Howe's garden of patriotism in the nineteenth century sprang from the seed thus sown by Armstrong a hundred years before. I know that in thèse days it is the fashion to pour contempt on the sentiment of patriotism. Dr. Johnson's famous apophthegm — infamous, rather, when not qualified by Boswell's explanation — is quoted against it. We are warned that it feeds and fosters the cuit of war, that it poisons the springs of international brotherhood, that it cramps the play of the spiritual forces that would cover the earth with peace as the waters cover the sea. But surely the love of country is no more than an extension of the affectionate tie that binds us to our family and our home, and filial sentiment has never yet subverted the interests of good citizenship. Are there many of us in this day so unregenerate as to seek to ravage our neighbour's house because his fair famé shines on our obscurity, or because he has a goodlier store of oil and wine and the fat of bullocks and of rams than we possess? "Thèse émotions of loyalty and dévotion", says the Dean of St. Paul's (14) "are by no means to be checked or despised. They

hâve an infinité potency for good He who loves not

his home and country which he has seen, how shall be love humanity in gênerai which he has not seen?"

(13) See Calnek's Hist. Annapolis (by Savary) p. 78. Cf. N. S. Arch. vol iii pp. 91, 109. In a lttter written to the Secretary of State in 1725 Armstrong speaks of "this almost forgotten province" as one which "will soon be equal to (if not excell) any of the Colonys in North America." N. S. A. vol. xvi, pp. 128-133.

(14) Outspoken Essays, p. 58.