MERCIER, Honore, Canadian lawyer, journalist and politician: b. Iberville, Quebec, 15 Oct. 1840; d. Montreal, 30 Oct. 1894. He was educated at Saint Mary's (Jesuit) College in Montreal and afterward studied law at Saint Hyacinthe, being admitted to the bar in 1865. During his legal studies (1862-64) he was editor of the Courier de Saint Hyacinthe, the Conservative organ of the district; but as a journalist he was among those who opposed Canadian Confederation. This led him to aban don his editorship and to sever his connection with the Conservative party. During the years immediately following the confederation of 1867 Mercier devoted himself to his profession, but in 1871 he reappeared in politics as the leader of the National party (also called the Parti noir), whose leading aim was to curtail the power of the Dominion government in favor of provincial rights. On this platform he was elected to the federal Parliament for Rouville in 1872, but did not stand for re-election to the Parliament of 1873. After some four years devoted to the successful practice of law at Saint Hyacinthe, Mercier was elected (1879) to the legislative assembly of Quebec, being appointed solicitor-general of the province in the ministry of M. Joly. On the defeat of the Joly administration in the same year, Mercier passed into the opposition, of which he pres ently became leader. In 1881 he left Saint Hyacinthe to practise law in Montreal. In 1:.:5 the French Canadian population was thrown into a ferment by the trial and execu tion of Louis Rid, the leader of the North West Rebellion (q.v.). Mercier, heading the
agitation thus occasioned, declared Rid to have been a *victim of the fanaticism of Sir John A. Macdonald.* On the strength of the feeling thus aroused, the Conservative party was de feated in the provincial elections of 1886 and Mercier. found himself at the head of the ad ministration. In this capacity he carried through the legislature the famous Jesuit Es tates Act, a measure intended to compen sate the Jesuits for the property confiscated by the Crown at the time of the papal dissolu tion of the order. In spite of the agitation throughout Canada against the act the Mercier government was upheld in the election of 1890. In the same year grave charges of peculation were brought against the Premier and his col leagues on the ground that a subsidy of $100, 000, intended for the Bate des Chaleurs Railway, had been diverted to political uses. Investiga tion resulted in the dismissal of the ministry (15 Dec. 1891), action which was ratified by the overwhelming defeat of the Mercier party in the election which ensued. The criminal charges brought against Mercier, as a result of this and a second official investigation, ended in a verdict of not guilty. Mercier remained a member of the assembly but with diminished influence and shattered health.