death became the penalty.

Such was the wild state of the country and the power vested in the
priests that abuses were tolerated which, even in Rome, had not been
dreamed of. The priests, as anxious for spiritual conquest as the
rest were for physical, joined hands with the heathenism of the
Indians, accepted their gods of wood and stone as saints, set up the
crucifix side by side with the images of the sun and moon, formerly
worshipped; and while in Europe the sun of the Reformation arose and
dispelled the terrible night of religious error and superstition,
South America sank from bad to worse. Thus the anomaly presented
itself of the old, effete lands throwing off the yoke of religious
domination while the younger ones were for centuries to be content
with sinking lower and lower. [Footnote: History is repeating itself,
for here in Canada we see Quebec more Catholic and intolerant than
Italy. The Mayor of Rome dared to criticize the Pope in 1910, but in
the same year at the Eucharistic Congress at Montreal his emissaries
receive reverent "homage" from those in authority. No wonder,
therefore, that, while the Romans are being more enlightened every
year, a Quebec young man, who is now a theological student in
McMaster University, Toronto, declared, while staying in the writer's
home, that, as a child he was always taught that Protestants grew
horns on their heads, and that he attained the age of 15 before ever
he discovered that such was not the case. Even backward Portugal has
had its eyes opened to see that Rome and progress cannot walk
together, but the President of Brazil is so "faithful" that the Pope,
in 1910, made him a "Knight of the Golden Spur."]

If the religious emancipation of the old world did not find its echo
in South America, ideas of freedom from kingly oppression began to