CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 13 



under my jurisdiction to favour the measures which you shall adopt for the suc- 

 cess of your noble and important enterprise. 



Above all, gentlemen, you who know the history of your country, and who have 

 especially studied the most interesting history of our Province of Quebec, you will 

 bear witness, will you not, to us bishops and priests that we have never been back- 

 ward when there was a question of promoting the temporal interests of the people, 

 any more than when there was a question of defending their spiritual interests. 

 Undoubtedly the bishops and the clergy have a religious mission to fulfil; they ought 

 above all to occupy themselves in preserving and propagating the faith and in 

 maintaining everywhere good morals, but at the same time they cannot help being 

 interested in that which produces the riches, the happiness of the families, of the 

 countries and of the cities where they are to exercise their mission. For example, 

 do you not see, gentlemen, what all the bishops and all members of the clergy do 

 in favour of that cause which is just as much national, just as much patriotic as re- 

 ligious, the cause of temperance? When the question of promoting colonization 

 has come up, have we not seen priests specially appointed for this work and have we 

 not seen them become, as they have since been called, the apostles of colonization? 

 For the promotion of agriculture, we have in the country those men who are called 

 agricultural missionaries. Temperance, colonization, agriculture, here are, indeed, 

 gentlemen, sacred causes to which no one can remain indifferent if he loves his 

 country, and when the episcopate and the clergy take any initiative in these 

 questions of which I speak, they fulfil a patriotic and a national duty. 



Well, the preservation of the forests is a question which I place by the side of 

 the questions which I have just named. It is, so to speak, a vital question. We did 

 not think about it. Your Association is telling the country what it ought to think 

 about it. Undoubtedly, as my good friend Mgr. Laflamme has said, our country 

 is rich in forests, but its forests are not inexhaustible; and if we thoughtlessly make 

 war upon them, so to speak, if for reasons which I do not need to explain here our 

 trees disappear one after the other, if immense fields and artificially created deserts 

 take the place of those forests which promised such great riches, what, gentlemen, will 

 become of us? Whither shall we go then to find the wood which we need for fuel, 

 for pulp- wood which is so necessary for us? Will not poverty perhaps take in 

 our country the place of that comfort which we are so happy and so proud to recog- 

 nize everywhere to-day? 



Gentlemen, all honour to you. You have voiced the cry of alarm, and among 

 all the members of your association, gentlemen, I do not believe there is one who 

 has better understood the vital question placed before the country than Mgr. 

 Laflamme, Professor of Laval University. 



And how are we, we bishops and priests, to co-operate? I say that I come to 

 give you my hand; we give you our hands, but it is not enough to make addresses, 



