Louis-Joseph Papineau

“ If one contrasts this hard destiny with the liberty, the consent, the ease of obtaining employment and high salaries in the United States, with the certainty that the inhabitants of these counties which neighbour and border the lines will not make obstacle to the soldiers' attempts to emigrate to the neighbouring republic, one will see that it is morally impossible to retain in Her Majesty's province, once they will be dispersed in detachments, men whom we would like to be the vile instruments to our slavery and to their own dishonour. ”

“ We, the delegates of the confederated counties of Richelieu, Saint-Hyacinthe, Rouville, Acadie, Chambly, and Verchères, hereby publicly record the solemn and determined resolution of the people which we represent, to put in practice, as soon as possible, the preceding recommendations, and never to stop our patriotic efforts until the various grievances of which we complain today are rectified; and by these, we invite all our fellow-citizens in all the province to join their efforts to ours in order to get for our common fatherland a system of good government, inexpensive and responsible. ”

“ Our judges depend as a condition attached to their commission, on the sole will and pleasure of the Crown, almost all violent partisans of a corrupt administration, and more absolutely the mercenary instruments of the Executive, in accepting, in violation of every principle of judiciary independence, wages for their servility to a foreign authority, without the consent of the people, which is the sole barer, through the intermediary of their representatives, of the exclusive right to vote the salaries of public servants ”

“ They have been harrassed and annoyed by dismissals from offices of mere honor, held for the benefit and at the request, of their own immediate neighbours, because they vindicated the rights of their country, like American Freemen; and as an index of further intended aggression, armed troops are being scattered in time of profound peace throughout the country, with the presumptious and wicked design of restraining by physical force the expression of public opinion, and of completing by violence and bloodshed our slavery and ruin, already determined upon beyond the seas. ”

“ Such an aggression is more than sufficient to justify, among an outraged people, the recourse to any and all the means to preserve the last one of the insulted privileges, the right to have our complaints be heard. But thanks to the blindness of our aggressors, the wickedness of this measure will find by the care of the providence its antidote in its very folly. The regiments that one proposes to distribute among us are composed of men who come out and were educated in the middle of their country's democracy. ”

“ That God did not create any artificial distinctions between man and man; that the government is just a simple human institution formed by those who must be subject to its action good or bad; and consecrated for the advantage of all those who will consent to come or remain under its protection or under its control, and that consequently its form can be changed as soon as it ceases to accomplish the ends for which this government was established; that the public authorities and the men in power are but the executors of the wishes legitimately expressed by the community ”

“ Thus, our tribunals being soiled by the combined conspirations of a bad Executive, of servile judges, partisan law officers and political sheriffs, the innocent and the patriot are exposed to being sacrificed, while the enemies of the country and the violators of all the laws are protected and patronized depending on whether the administration wishes to crush and destroy or to save and protect. Our trade and our domestic industry are paralysed ”

“ Though we are universally in agreement on the justice of our requests, the wisdom and the prudence that there was to remedy our evils, still today we bare the unbearable burden of an irresponsible Executive under the command of an ignorant and hypocritical chief. ”

“ In the midst of their honest and unwearied efforts to procure a redress of the foregoing grievances, our fellow citizens have been insolently called on to give an account of their public conduct, for which they were responsible to no individual, least of all to the person whom chance or ministerial patronage may place for a season at the head of our Provincial Government. ”

“ The long and heavy chain of abuses and oppressions under which we suffer, and to which every year has only added a more galling link, prove that our history is but a recapitulation of what other Colonies have endured before us. ”

“ Our Young Men, the hope of the country, should everywhere organize themselves, after the plan of their brothers, "The Sons of Liberty" in Montreal, in order that they may be prepared to act with promptitude and effect as circumstances may require; and the brave Militiamen, who by their blood and valour have twice preserved this country for ungrateful rulers, should at once associate together, under officers of their own choice, for the security of good order and the protection of life and property in their respective localities. ”

“ Our municipalities are entirely destroyed; the rural areas of this province, forming a disgracious contrast with the other parts of this continent, are absolutely deprived of any power to regulate, in a municipal capacity, their local affairs, by the means of freely elected parish and township officers ”

“ Ye, whatsoever be your origin, language or religion, to whom Equal Laws and the Rights of Man are dear; whose hearts have throbbed with indignation whilst witnessing the innumerable insults to which your common country has been exposed, and who have often been justly alarmed whilst pondering over the sombre futurity preparing by misgovernment and corruption for this Province and for your posterity ”

“ In conformity with these principles, and on the faith of treaties and capitulations entered into with our ancestors, and guaranteed by the Imperial Parliament, the People of this Province have for a long series of years complained by respectful petitions, of the intolerable abuses which poison their existence and paralyse their industry. ”

“ Fellow-citizens,
When a people find themselves invariably stalled following a succession of systematic oppressions, in spite of their wishes expressed in all manners recognized by constitutional customs, by public meetings and by their representatives in Parliament after a serious deliberation ”

“ Domestic manufactures are springing up amongst us, with a rapidity to cheer us in the contest. The impulse given but a few short months ago by the example of generous and patriotic minds, of wearing domestic cloths, has been generally followed, and will shortly be universally adopted. ”