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LIFE IN MONTREAL. [Chap. VII. 



drugs, dead bodies of pigs and other corrupt food, of rotten 

 vegetable and animal matters, and of corrupting lusts in heart 

 and life, were put far from us, we should have no further 

 need of vile remedies for a hundred-fold viler diseases. We 

 would then gladly pay our doctors, as we do our clergy, to 

 teach us the right way of living : and the festering pollutions, 

 which now baffle our best attempts at cure, would give place to 

 the Spirit of Health, of Power, and of Holy and Useful Life." 



A very different spirit was, however, at work : the following 

 Sunday, August 8, at an open-air meeting, two advocates 

 invited the people to occupy the City Hall next day, and 

 prevent the aldermen from passing the by-law. They obeyed, 

 mustering a mob of about seven thousand French Canadians, 

 who broke windows, stoned the aldermen, and accomplished 

 their purpose. They also gutted the street-floor of Dr. La- 

 rocque, city medical officer. The police succeeded in arresting 

 two lads ! while one of the advocates defiantly wrote to " The 

 Witness," that he knew the names and addresses of about fifty of 

 the ringleaders ; yet none were arrested. The Mayor had gone 

 off to Halifax, N.S., where he announced that the law could 

 not be Carried. Philip wrote a very earnest letter to " The 

 Witness" (August 1 1) : — Who were the authors of Monday's mob 2 

 His remembrance of the Bristol riots, to which he alludes, 

 quickened his denunciation of anarchy and violence. Hence- 

 forth, till his death, he took a much more active interest in 

 public affairs. His " manifold " contains a great number of 

 letters to members of the Government, etc., and he did his 

 utmost to obtain such sanitary measures as should not be 

 dependent for their success on officials elected for other 

 objects. In a long and careful letter which he wrote, by 

 request, to the Chairman of a Parliamentary Committee on 

 Hygiene, he mentions, as a preliminary, the fundamental im- 

 portance of an accurate system of registration. The Act pre- 

 pared by Sir G. Cartier had been laid aside through the hostility 

 of the Catholic Bishop of Montreal. 



Within a month from the Anti-vaccination outrage, there 

 were riots arising out of the refusal of the Catholic priesthood 



