tice for his private revenues, naturally did not like the statements, innuendoes and sug gestions of Father O'Meara. So straight way — as the priest would not retract — he issued a writ against his reverence, and in his claim set forth the above facts, and al leged that he (Laflamme) was a Roman Catholic and never had been an infidel or atheist, and that in acting as counsel in the Guibord case he legitimately exercised his profession, and that O'Meara had no right to censure and to expose him to the anim adversion, hatred and contempt of the community, which he had intended to do by his remarks; and that, besides, his legal opinion in the Guibord case had been sanc tioned by the highest judicial opinion in the realm — Her Majesty's Privy Council. He further asserted that the words complained of had injured and were injuring him in his profession and had caused " damages to his honor, his sensibility and his property to a large amount, which he now (to quote the statement) reduces to $5,000." He asked for $5,000 and costs, and that O'Meara to make the payment " be constrained by all legal means and process whatever, even by civil imprisonment." The reverend defendant said that Laflamme's allegations were untrue, that what he had said was uttered in good faith and without malice, and that he had uttered nothing that anyone, but mischievously in clined persons, could construe as an attack upon the learned counsel's private or profes sional conduct. However, the evidence pre ponderated in favor of the lawyer; the priest was worsted, and ordered to pay $100 dam ages to the advocate. A word or two as to this Guibord case, or (as it is properly called) Dame Henrietta Brown v. Les Cure et Marguilliers de I'aeuvre et fabriqne de Notre Dame de Montreal (L. R. 7 P. C. 151). Joseph Guibord was a highly respectable printer of Montreal who died in November, 1869; his wife wished him to be buried in the cemetery of La
Cote des Neiges, of which the defendants, a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical corporation, are the proprietors and managers. The cure, under the direction of the bishop, re fused to inter the body in that part of the cemetery where, Roman Catholics are usually buried with the rites of the church and the graves are consecrated, but offered to do so without any funeral rites in the part where criminals, unbaptized infants and those who died outside the pale of the church had to sleep. The trouble arose in this wise : Guibord had been and had died a member of the Canadian Institute, and the Institute had incurred ecclesiastical censure because at a meeting of its members a resolution had been passed which, as the bishop declared, contained two great errors, first, in asserting that the members themselves were the proper judges of the morality of the books in their library, whereas the Council of Trent had declared (300 years ago) that that duty be longed to the bishops; secondly, in declar ing that the library contained only moral books, whereas it contained books which were in the " Index " at Rome. The Institute did not take the hint and rescind their reso lution, and so later on a pastoral was issued forbidding the faithful to belong to the In stitute, or to publish, retain, keep or read its Annual of 1868; and subsequently another, stating that absolution could not be given, even though he was at the point of death, to anyone who did not resign his member ship in the Institute. The Privy Council decided five years after poor Guibord's death (during which time his body was lying in a Protestant graveyard) that as he never had been excommunicated by name, or adjudged or proved to be a public sinner (within the meaning of the Quebec Ritual), he was not at his death under any such valid ecclesiastical sentence, or censure (accord ing to any law binding on Roman Catholics in Canada), as would justify the denial of ecclesiastical sepulture to his remains; that the defendants were bound to bury him in
