Jesuit Estates Act

Following the Suppression of the Jesuits by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, their lands in the Province of Quebec were seized by the British Crown in 1791,[3] but possession was not taken until 1800, after all of their priests had either died or left Canada.

[5] The province's archbishop, Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau, instead proposed that the estates be sold off and the money divided among existing Catholic schools.

[5] Through the mediation of Pope Leo XIII, a compromise was reached, and resulting Act in 1888 authorized a settlement which consisted of: In the House of Commons of Canada in February 1889, John Augustus Barron asked Minister of Justice John Thompson if the federal government would disallow the Quebec act.

[4] In the subsequent debate, tensions were escalated when Dalton McCarthy declared: We must never forget—I am afraid that some of my friends from Quebec do sometimes forget—that this is a British country, that by the fortunes of war that event was decided and the greater half of North America passed under the British Crown.... ...and yet, Sir, here, 100 years afterwards, we find the Premier of the province of Quebec suing humbly to the Pope of Rome for liberty to sell the Jesuits' estates.

friend who has just spoken in support of the policy of the Government on this occasion to feel very indignant at the reproofs and reproaches thrown across the floor in the course of his speech.

I cannot say of him ... that he is a fledging politician, but he is a young man... We know that public agitation may go on sometimes without reason, and to a great extent, one cannot but deeply regret that the hon.

I cannot sufficiently picture, in my faint language, the misery and the wretchedness which would have been heaped upon Canada if this question, having been agitated as it has been, and would be, had culminated in a series of disallowances of this act.

[4] Their subsequent efforts led to the creation of the Equal Rights Association and the McCarthyites, as well as the rise of French-language schooling conflicts in Manitoba and Ontario.