Enlarging the grounds upon which divorces may be granted, is engag-in its results as a warning. Not only is it proposed to set up divorce courts in the various provinces, but also to lessen consid-crably the cost of the proceedings, so as to remove the reproach that the bar at present is for the rich, and not the poor. Your readers may be as tired as I am of this eternal question of Prohibition, but if an attempt were made to evade it in this letter, it would not succeed as it has cropped up in this matter of divorces. The Roman Catholic Church is a determined foe to them and has always been so, and the Bishop Fatton of that church, one of the cleverest and most broadminded men in Canada, has scored the various organizations favouring Prohibition and other restrictive measures on account of their lukewarmness regarding divorces. He points out in one letter what I have previously drawn attention to in these columns on many occasions that there is too much effort here to make people wood by legislation. He says that for 12 years these neanic have subjected the Province of Ontario to an "orgy of moral uplifting," and this. it may be said. applies to the whole Dominion. He states:—"I would rather have a thousand drunkards than one divorced man. The uplifters tell you you will go to hell if you buy a newspaper on Sunday: but you may have Mrs. X. on Monday and a different Mrs. X. on Thursday. What is the taking of a drink or the smoking of a cigarette, or the attending of a horse-race, to the breaking up of a Christian home?"
Party Ponesics.
The "Christian Guardian," the organ of the Methodists, which body, it may be said without intending to cast reflexions, works most energetically on behalf of Prohibition and the other measures, undertook to reply to the Bishop saying that his charges were false, and incidentally mentioning that anyway the Roman Catholics were answerable for a great proportion of the crime in Canada. This is per: haps not to be wondered at seeing that they form over 40 per cent. of the population while there are over 30 religious denominations: the Methodists are about 17 per cent. The Bishop is very clever in his reply. "This great organ of Canadian Methodism has scriptural warrant for giving public thanks that it is not like the rest of men: it boasts of the number of Methodists who are out of jail the Catholics can do nothing. We are a small minority: many of us are in jail. But you are the very best people in this province. You are the keepers of its conscience. For 10 years your cohorts have stamped up and down this province in organized campaigns against tobacco, beer, betting, and Sunday newspapers. You have succeeded in curtailing our liberty in regard to matters indifferent in themselves, but which may be abused. Are you
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.