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the Cape, could ever become other than foreign. It was popular and fashionable in some quarters to underrate the historic recollections which were bound up in religion and language; and as for Canadian independence, that was an orchid not yet in vogue. By 1837 he who sat in state in the Château St. Louis (says LeMoine) in the name of majesty had very decided views on that subject. H. M. William IV.’s Attorney-General, Charles Ogden, by virtue of his office “the King’s own Devil,” who was an uncompromising foe to all evil-doers, held it to mean a hempen collar.

      The question of British or French rule grew steadily for a half century, until Melbourne’s cabinet and Sir John Colborne made effort to settle it in one way and forever. “Les sacres Anglais” was, in consequence, the name applied to the followers of the latter; and as to the former, probably the illiterate habitant, who could not read the papers but who had an instinct wherewith to reach conclusions, had his own patois rendering of an English colonial’s opinion that the politicians comprising the cabinet might “talk summat less and do summat more.” All classes, indeed, of all sections, were not backward in giving opinion as to the quality of ministerial despatches; for a titled lady, writing from a far-off land where she did much work for the Home Government, dipped her pen in good strong ink and wrote, “My Lord, if your diplomatic despatches are as obscure as the one which lies before me, it is no wonder that England should cease to have that proud preponderance in her foreign relations which she once could boast of.”

      A humorous naturalist had said that the three blessings conferred upon England by the Hanoverian succession were the suppression of popery, the national debt, and the importation of the brown or Hanoverian rat.

      Strange to say, one of the complexities of the Canadian situation was the position taken by that very popery which in England was still looked upon with distrust and suspicion. In 1794, not a decade’s remove from when the streets of London ran alike with rum and Catholic blood, through Protestant intolerance and the efforts of a mad nobleman, Bishop Plessis had thanked God in his Canadian Catholic Cathedral that the colony was English and free from the horrors enacted in the French colonies of the day. “Thank your stars,” cried another from the pulpit, “that you live here under the British flag.”

      “The Revolution, so deplorable in itself,” wrote Bishop Hubert of Quebec, “ensures at this moment three great advantages to Canada: that of sheltering illustrious exiles; that of procuring for it new colonists; and that of an increase of its orthodox clergy.” “The French emigrants have experienced most consolingly the nature of British generosity. Those of them who shall come to Canada are not likely to expect that great pecuniary aid will be extended; but the two provinces offer them resources on all sides.”

      Many of the French officers whom the fear of the guillotine sent over in numbers to England found their way to that country which the Catholic Canadian priesthood so appreciated. Uncleared land and these fragments of French noblesse came together in this unforeseen way. But there was another view of their position when Burke referred to them as having “taken refuge in the frozen regions and under the despotism of Britain.” Truly has Britain shouldered many sins, made while you wait in the factory of rhetoric; nor is it less true that glorious sunny Canada has suffered equally unjustly as a lesser Siberia from a long line of writers, beginning with Voltaire, ending—let us hope—with Kipling.

      The French Revolution over, and a mimic one threatening in the colony, the clergy did not hesitate to remind one another of the fate of their orders in France, to congratulate themselves they were under a different régime, nor fail to remember that the War Fund to sustain British action against the Republicans of France in 1799 had been subscribed to heavily by many of their brethren and themselves. Le Seminaire stands in that list, in the midst of many historic names, against the sum of fifty pounds “per annum during the war.” One point of great difference between new and old was that the habitants, who were more enlightened and more religious than their brother peasants left behind in France, had, with the noblesse, a common calamity in any prospect which threatened subjugation. The variance ’twixt priest and people could only end in one way where the people were devout; and the Lower Canadian has ever been devout and true to Mother Church. But the “patriot,” who was more apt in diatribe against Tories than in prayers, spared not the priests in their historical leanings. “Who was the first Tory?” cries a patriot from his palpitating pages. “The first Tory was Cain, and the last will be the State-paid priest.”

      But if the British Government had in some things acted so kindly and justly to those of French extraction as to merit such words, in other matters there had been much of harshness increased by ignorance and indifference, and the time had come when all had to suffer for such inconsistencies, and, unfortunately, those most severely who already were the victims of them.

      “C’est la force et le droit qui reglent toutes choses dans le monde.” Said one of their own writers, “la force en attendant le droit.” In both Canadas “la force” was local supremacy. The painful development as to when it should be superseded proved “le droit” and British supremacy identical.

      It was a political struggle prolonged beyond endurance, more than a real wish to shake free from Britain; a political struggle, where the combatants were often greedy and abusive partisans who appealed to the vilest passions of the populace and who were unscrupulous in choosing their instruments of attack. Capital was made out of sentiment most likely to appeal to the suffering: “Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not

       Who would be free themselves must strike the blow——”

       and Papineau, by speech, manifesto and admission, looked toward the seat of vice-royalty and made plain the homely sentiment, “Ote toi de là que moi je m’y mette.” He did not agree with the humble habitant saying, “C’est le bon Dieu qui nous envoya ça, il faut l’endurer.” His opinion leaned more to that of O’Connell, who said the French were the only rightful inhabitants of the country. How much baneful domination had it taken to so change the Papineau of 1820, when on the occasion of the death of George III. he says, “… a great national calamity—the decease of that beloved sovereign who had reigned over the inhabitants of this country since the day they became British subjects; it is impossible not to express the feeling of gratitude for the many benefits received from him, and those of sorrow for his loss so deeply felt in this, as in every other portion of his extensive dominions. And how could it be otherwise, when each year of his long reign has been marked by new favours bestowed upon the country? … Suffice it then at a glance to compare our present happy situation with that of our fathers on the eve of the day when George III. became their legitimate monarch … from that day the reign of the law succeeded to that of violence. … All these advantages have become our birthright, and shall, I hope, be the lasting inheritance of our posterity. To secure them let us only act as British subjects and freemen.”

      About ’31 the Lower Canadian Assembly received a lot of new blood; and very hot, adventurous and zealous blood it was. Young men like Bleury, Lafontaine, and their confreres, were not backward in naming what they considered their rights; and they had somewhat unlimited ideas. The most ardent of the group centred round Papineau and excited him still further. They scouted Lord Goderich (Robinson) and his concessions so long as his countrymen formed a majority in their government. This was a “demarcation insultante” between victor and vanquished. Lord Dalhousie, “glowing with scarlet and gold,” and followed by a numerous staff, had brought a session to a close in a peremptory manner, with words which might have furnished a cue to himself and others. “Many years of continued discussion … have proved unavailing to clear up and set at rest a dispute which moderation and reason might have speedily terminated.”

      To the Loyalist Papineau was the root of all evil. A French loyal ditty attributed every calamity of the era to him, cholera morbus, earthquakes and potato-rot included, each stanza finishing with the refrain, “C’est la faute de Papineau.” “It is certain,” said the latter, “that before long the whole of America will be republicanized. … In the days of the Stuarts those who maintained that the monarchic principle was paramount in Britain lost their heads on the scaffold.” This, surely, was the proverbial word to the wise.

      Naturally, such sentiments made him receive cool treatment in Downing Street, even when his Ninety-Two

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