Note 723 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

The aims of partisanship always incite the detraction of rivals, and a story which is current illustrates the passions of rivalry, if it does not record the truth. Faillon’s book is said to have given offence to the members of the Seminary at Quebec, and to have restored some of the old recriminating fervor which so long characterized the relations of the ecclesiastics of Montreal and Quebec. The priests of the Seminary are even credited with an appeal to the Pope to prevent the continuance of its publication. Whether this be true or not, historical scholarship is accounted a gainer in the antidote which the Quebec ecclesiastics applied, when they commissioned the Abbé Laverdière, since deceased, to publish his edition of Champlain.