LITMIR.BIZ

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absolute democratic rule would satisfy the irreconcilables. Their act in the House had led to Lord Aylmer being forced to advance the supplies from the Military Chest, and to embody his disapproval in a resolution of censure. They in turn voted his censures should be expunged from the journals of the House. Then Papineau, from the Speaker’s chair, inveighed against the Mother Country. After the presentation of the Resolutions, Lord Aylmer, alluding to them, imprudently said that dissatisfaction was mostly confined to within the walls of the Assembly rooms, that outside of them the country was at peace and contented. The men who framed them lost no time in giving him a practical denial. Resolutions from many parishes approved of the acts of the Assembly, and the newspaper columns teemed with accounts of popular demonstrations. Lord Aylmer, however, supposed himself within his rights. After his recall, at his interview with the King, and supported by Palmerston and Minto on either side, the monarch declared he entirely approved of Aylmer’s official conduct, that he had acted like a true and loyal subject towards a set of traitors and conspirators, and as became a British officer under the circumstances.

      Lord Glenelg sent to the rescue that commission of enquiry, the prelude to the later Durham one, whereof Lord Gosford was chief. This nobleman, who became governor of the province, was Irish, and a Protestant, an opponent of Orangeism, a man of liberal opinions and decisive in speech and action. He tried every means to make friends in the French quarter; visited schools and colleges, enchanted all by his charming politeness of manner, gave a grand ball on the festival day of a favourite saint, and by his marked attentions at it to Madame Bedard showed at once his taste and his ability to play a part. He made a long address to the Chambers, breathing naught but patriotism and justice; so some still had hope. “To the Canadians, both of French and British origin, I would say, consider the blessings you might enjoy but for your dissensions. Offsprings as you are of the two foremost nations of the earth, you hold a vast and beautiful country, having a fertile soil with a healthful climate, whilst the noblest river in the world makes sea-ports of your most remote towns.” He replied to the Assembly first in French, then in English. There is a possibility of doing too much, and the Montreal Gazette censured this little bit of courteous precedence so far as to deny the right of a governor to speak publicly in any language but his own, and construed this innovation by the amiable Earl into one that would lead to the Mother-Country’s degradation. Then what of the Channel Islands, where loyalty was and is above suspicion; where the Legislature declared that members had not the right to use English in debate, and “that only in the event of Jersey having to choose between giving up the French language, or the protection of England, would they consent to accept the first alternative.”

      Matters progressed till rulers were burned in effigy, and bands of armed men, prowling about the most disaffected parts, confirmed M. Lafontaine’s saying, “Every one in the colony is malcontent.” “We have demanded reforms,” said he, “and not obtained them. It is time to be up and doing.” “We are despised!” cried M. Morin, “oppression is in store for us, and even annihilation. … But this state of things need endure no longer than while we are unable to redress it.”

      “It is a second conquest that is wanted in that colony,” said Mr. Willmot in the House of Commons, when he heard the Canadian news via the Montreal Gazette.

      So Lord Gosford asked for his recall, got it, stepped into a canoe after a progress through streets lined with guards of honour composed of regular and irregular troops, amid “some perfunctory cheering,” and was paddled to his ship, the band of the 66th playing “Rule Britannia.” She might rule the waves, but many of those who listened were more than ever determined that she should not rule Canadians.

      The Gosford report was vehemently protested against by Lord Brougham and Mr. Roebuck, who did not mince matters, but predicted the rebellion and outlined a probable war with the neighbouring republic.

      But Lord John Russell, like Sir Francis Bond Head, did not anticipate a rebellion.

      Lord Gosford had found his task more difficult than he expected. His predecessor, Sir James Kempt, had done his best and failed, through no fault of his own but because there was a determination in the majority of his subjects not to be satisfied. Lord Gosford tried the effect of a proclamation as an antidote for revolutions. But the habitants tore it to shreds, crying, “A bas le proclamation! Vive Papineau, vive la liberté, point de despotisme,” and made their enthusiasm sacred by holding their meetings at parish church doors. Papineau was omnipotent; one would imagine ubiquitous, for he seems everywhere. He made the tour of the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, while his supporters, Girouard and Lafontaine, took the southern, making the excited people still more discontented. In after years, as a refugee in Paris, Papineau disclaimed any practical treason at this time: “None of us had prepared, desired, or foreseen armed resistance.” Yet the pikes were further sharpened, and the firelocks looked to; and at St. Thomas (Que.) alone sixty men on horseback, carrying flags and maple boughs, preceded him, and following him were several pieces of artillery and the remainder of the two thousand people who formed his procession. Bishop Lartigue, a relative of Papineau, warned his people to beware of revolt, declaring himself impelled by no external influence, only actuated by motives of conscience. Addressing one hundred and forty priests, he used unmistakable terms as to how they were to resist rebellion in the people; no Roman Catholic was permitted to transgress the laws of the land, nor to set himself up against lawful authority. He even speaks of “the Government under which we have the happiness to live,” while his relative was contending that the yoke on the necks of the Canadians was made in a fashion then obsolete—the Stuart pattern. But he spoke too late; his people were beyond his control, and they in turn condemned clerical interference in politics, and the curé in charge at the combustible Two Mountains had his barns burned in answer to his exhortation. On the first Monday of every month these sons of Liberty, organized by Storrow Brown, met—“Son projet réuissoit à merveille, chaque jours le corps augmentoit en nombre et déjà de pareilles sociétés se formaient dans la campagne.”

      The chronic state of eruption in unhappy Lower Canada had intervals of quiet only when some governor, with manners of oil and policy of peace, made an interregnum. All time was not like that of the little Reign of Terror, full of fear and arbitrary measures, after the suppression of Le Canadien and the arrest of the judges; but the country felt itself to be a plaything of not much more weight than the cushion dandled by Melbourne or the feather blown about by that minister of deceptive manner. The famous Ninety-two Resolutions embodied the Canadian view of what was wrong, and the remedy for it. Papineau, their author, owed much in their construction to his colleague, M. Morin, a gentle, polite man of letters, with the suave manners of a divine, who neither looked nor acted the conspirator, despite his many fiery words—as fervid as those of the idol of the people, the eloquent leader in Canadian debate, who was nightly carried home to his hotel on the shoulders of the enthusiastic crowd.

      “Since the origin and language of the French-Canadians have become a pretext for vituperation, for exclusions, for their meriting the stigma of political inferiority, for deprivation of our rights and ignoring public interests, the Chamber hereby enters its protest against such arrogant assumptions, and appeals against them to the justice of the King and Parliament of Great Britain, likewise to the honourable feeling of the whole British people. The numerical though not dominant majority of this colony are not themselves disposed to esteem lightly the consideration which they inherit from being allied in blood to a nation equal, at least, to Britain in civilization and excelling her in knowledge of the arts and sciences—a nation, too, now the worthy rival of Britain for its institutions.”

      Certain it is, the policy of the British Clique, so called, was moulded more upon old than new country needs and ideas, and was suited to the times of George I. and Louis XIV. more than to the dawn of the Victorian era. But ’tis always darkest the hour before day, and the torch lighted by Papineau was unfortunately to make conflagration as well as illumination. It was the old, old story of theorists and political agitators exciting popular discontent and alarm more than the occasion warranted, by exaggerations retarding instead of speeding a cause, with another story of procrastination and cross-purposes from the Mother Country. Further, history was corroborated in that a demagogue ends as a tyrant. A super-loyal newspaper did not hesitate to say that the only way to calm Canada was to purge the Colonial Office from King Stephen

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