Chapter 23

ACTION OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT.--FIVE OFFICERS SENT TO MEGANTIC.

To the common mind government is something vast, mysterious, and powerful. It is associated with armies and navies, and an unlimited police force. There are a glittering sword, a ponderous mace, and an argus eye, that reaches to the remotest point of territory like a great big electric search light, in it.

No man is a hero to his valet, and the nearer you get to the seat of power, the less does government impose upon the imagination. Those who read, with infinite respect, "that the Government has decided, after a protracted meeting of the Cabinet, to levy a tax upon terrier dogs for purposes of revenue," would be shocked to learn that government meant a small table, a bottle of wine, a few cigars, and two men not a whit above the mental or moral level of the ordinary citizen. Government imposes when you meet it in respectful capitals in the public prints, but when you get a glimpse of it in its shirt sleeves, en famille, or playing harlequin upon the top of a barrel at the hustings, or tickling the yokels with bits of cheap millinery and silk stockings, and reflect that you have paid homage to that, you begin to doubt the saving efficacy of the ballot box.

Now, the Government of Quebec is neither a naval nor a military power. It doesn't want to fight, and if it did it hasn't got either the ships, or the men, or the money. The Sergeant-at-Arms in the Legislative Assembly is the only military person in its pay. It has not even a single policeman to assert the majesty of the law.

The Government of Quebec is the Hon. Honoré Mercier.

Mr. Mercier is like the first Napoleon. He chooses tools to assist, not strong individualities to oppose, him.

Party journalism in the Province of Quebec is peculiarly bitter and mendacious. The Press generally had made the most of the shooting of Warren. A month had elapsed, and no attempt had been made to arrest Morrison, who, it was alleged, swaggered through the country armed to the teeth, and threatening death to the man who should attempt to take him. It was generally agreed that this was a scandal. But the opposition journals made political capital out of the affair.

"What! was this the Mercier Government? Was this the sort of law and order we were promised under his régime? Here was a criminal at large defying the law. Was Mr. Mercier afraid to arrest him, lest he might forfeit the Liberal votes of the county? It looked like it. Could Mr. Mercier not impress, for love or money, a single man in the Province to undertake the task of arresting Morrison? Or was Mr. Mercier so taken up with posing in that Gregory costume that he had no time to devote to the affairs of his country?"

Mr. Mercier's reply to the party Press was to send down five special constables to