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. Honore 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 _regime_? 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 Megantic.