Louis-Joseph Papineau

“ The censure of bad men is praise to the good. I cannot but be flattered with a fruitless opposition, which has cost its principal instigators enormous sums, and numberless crimes, which stain and disgrace them. Some of the valiant bankrupt merchants who instigated that opposition, staled with the strongest argumentation of which they were capable, that they were ready to spill the last drop of their blood to achieve the Quixotic adventure of putting down the Reform party, that is, the nineteen-twentieths of the population of Lower Canada, and the nine-tenths of that of Upper Canada. ”

“ It cannot, therefore, be any longer preserved de facto, except by force and violence employed in oppressing the many for the benefit a few hirelings, who administer it for their own profit, and who, for the good of the Metropolitan State and of the Colony, cannot be too soon driven from public life, inasmuch as they are too corrupt to be reformed, and too rotten and too gangrenous to be healed. Their touch is contagious—no honest man ought to act with them, or associate with them, and thereby grant to their calamitous administration a few days' longer existence. ”

“ The time is come when every Canadian must desert the odious cause of the Council, or frankly admit that he requires the intervention of an armed force, to stifle, in the blood of his compatriots, the opposition which they all feel in their heart and soul against the preservation of the Council. That is understood; and there is in the two Canadas an indissoluble union of the majority of the People for the purpose of destroying this nuisance. ”

“ Is it not as odious as it is absurd, to see all those Britons panting with ardour and speed to surpass each other to overthrow all our Civil Laws, centuries old, the alteration of which affects the persons and properties of all the members of the social system, and bitterly reproaching our slowness, because we will not introduce therein the rude changes which the People do not demand; and yet, flying into a rage when in the name of an unanimous people, we demand an amendment in a part of the Act of Parliament ”

“ It bore to the poll, before eight o'clock in the morning, the shaper who was too sick to go there before eleven o'clock on Saturday, although he had endured all the disgraceful fatigue of his triumph. It rolled on, and would have crushed the Returning Officer, the popular candidates and the independent electors, if they had been in the way. It rolled on in order that there should be no election. It would have rolled on, like an avalanche, with constantly increasing destruction, up to the 22d Nov. in order that no return should be made. ”

“ To increase their little list of voters which remained, the latter inscribed thereon the names of men who refused them and sent them away ten times over, and who indignant at the continually increasing risks to which they exposed the lives and properties of citizens, adopted the determination to hasten to register their votes against them, and immediately to place them in a greater minority than that which already made their noble British blood boil with indignation, and which made us burst with laughter at the sight of their grotesque contortions. ”

“ The man who was commissioned by his Sovereign to be the father of all the people has preferred to be the chief of a party—the soul of that fraction, of that faction which has elected that rickety minority, ridiculously styled "His Majesty's opposition in Parliament." ”

“ The Election which you have made, considered in connexion with those simultaneously made in both the Canadas, is a solemn condemnation pronounced by a million of men upon political Institutions which oppress them—upon guilty men whom those Institutions have for too long a time clothed with irresponsible power, which they have so scandalously abused in every department of the state. Those Elections prove that the people are as much disgusted today with the present Constitution, as they were in 1774, with that of 1763, and in 1792 with that of 1774. ”

“ Next to the satisfaction of having united the suffrages of so great a number of my fellow Citizens, whose zeal in the midst of the most violent outrages was supported only by their conscientious conviction that the Candidates whom they supported were devoted to the interests of Canada, the most lively satisfaction that I could have experienced was to be the object of an opposition so immoral and extravagant as that which was excited against me. ”

“ You have, without, declared enemies of the rights and wished of the majority. Mr. Stanley represent them (Mr. Spring Rice is their representative to-day.) You have internal enemies—the minority who makes itself so well known by placarding its antipathies to Reformers. Let the enemies of the people have more to fear and to suffer from the discontents of the people, than to gain by the corruptions of the Government. ”

“ It knows that the Jury law, well understood and well executed by the Sheriffs of Quebec and Three Rivers, has been outrageously violated by the Sheriff of Montreal because it was necessary, at all hazards, to save those against whom they entered a pretended prosecution—a prosecution by which life was at stake if it were serious, and which concluded by compliments because it was a farce. ”

“ The people will have no more of the present system, which has been but an unfortunate experiment, accompanied by forty years' abuses and sufferings under a system different to that of any other English Colony. The people will have no more of it. It ought to be changed at their demand. A Constitution is made for men. Not men for a Constitution. ”

“ Let those who are so presumptuous as to prefer their own opinions and will to that of the public, learn, that whatsoever be their titles to favors from the administration, they have no claim to the confidence of the people. ”

“ The liberal party found in these new circumstances new motives for endurance, because its inexhaustible patience towards its enemies would prove, more and more, that the same men, with the same depravity which caused them to spill Canadian blood in 1832, had the same inextinguishable thirst to spill it afresh, and would furnish a foretaste of the horrors of their regime if their ravings after domination were to be realised. ”

“ The minority of a part of Montreal esteeming itself of superior importance in the country, imagined that a victory which would have given it two Representatives in a House so independent as that of the 15th Provincial Parliament, would have drawn it from that perfect impotence in which it is placed by its foolish opposition to the rest of the population of the Province. ”

“ From the very dawn of the Election, a great number of "open houses" have been established for the use of the partisans of Walker and Donnellan, and a great number of men, who were not Electors, attracted thither from the distant parts of this Province, and even from Upper Canada, by the offer of money, have been permanently stationed at those houses, intoxicated by drink, and maddened by the speeches of Walker and those of our sublime counter-aristocracy, wallowing night and day in the midst of those Bachanalian orgies. ”

“ Days of triumph after an Election gained were formerly days of rejoicing when unarmed Citizens, without fearing or provoking their adversaries, bore on their serene countenance, the expression of happiness without alarm or danger to any person whatsoever. ”

“ If without ruin their profits are diminished, that is only a just punishment which the public has a right to inflict upon them for having made the privileges which were granted them for the advantage of the many, subservient to the advantage of the few. ”

“ In Upper as well as in Lower Canada the complaints have been universal against the scandal with which the directors have divided, disproportionately among themselves, the accommodation of the banks. These complaints have been heard for many years, and no redress has been applied to them as yet. It is a proof that the public has scarcely any influence over the Banks, or if they wish to remedy the evil, they can no longer do so. To make new loads, it is necessary to take up the old ones, and large debtors dictate the law to them, and say, we can only pay the interest on renewing our notes. ”

“ In that Province, as in England, the majority of the British are friends to freedom. In Lower Canada alone, a great number of them are friends of tyranny and domination, because they expect to exercise it against us, and that they shall always be the hammers and we always the anvils. How contemptible are those against whom we are struggling for so many years, and how unlike the British of the Metropolitan State, & of the other colonies. They have, however, allies still more despicable than themselves. ”

“ It was not in the nature of the Liberal party to foresee nor to desire violence. If it were, they would have been prepared to repel them. They were sufficiently strong to revenge themselves, and if they were not sufficiently strong of themselves, a call on the country, and then reprisals would have become, what necessary reprisals always are, ten times more severe than the aggression. The Liberal party were so sure of the result of the Election that it could still oppose three good votes to each good vote remaining with its adversaries. ”

“ Stanley engage the Parliament to appropriate your revenue, interest the British Public to put an end to the usurpation.
Restrict your consumption of British produce as generally as possible. Be proud of clothing yourself with the fleece of your own flocks, and with the products of your own fields. The cloth and linen which you manufacture yourselves, will give you clothes more durable that those brought from abroad, and you will thereby interest those who will perceive a diminution in the consumption of goods to make common cause with you, against the Minister who wishes to oppress you. ”

“ Reformers of Canada of all languages and origins, you are much more than ten against one. Your sentence of death against the present constitution of the Legislative Council is irrevocable on your part. Your enemies are not numerous enough to injure you. You are sufficiently numerous to injure them. Every where in your county that you have a Doctor, a Notary, a Merchant, a Surveyor, &c, who range themselves along side of your enemies, you have ten who make common cause with you. ”

“ The noble title of Reformers, friends to the extension of the Elective principle, comprehends the majority of the European population, together with the whole of the Canadian people, almost without an exception. The extravagance of the declaimers who attribute to French antipathies the hatred which is manifested against the present system, in place of attributing it to its inherent vices, will, after the more extensive reforms which will be required by Upper Canada, have shortly to explain the same phenomenon that they see here, by other more foolish declamations. ”

“ Robertson, not satisfied with the dishonorable notoriety, which attaches itself to the name of a Justice of the Peace, abusing the powers of his trust for the purpose of inventing the most criminal lies, in order to cause the shedding of the innocent blood of unarmed citizens, seeks another means to be notorious, by sending challenges to those who take the liberty of believing that such conduct deserves censure. ”

“ They will say to the producers in England, that it is the comfort and general consumption of produce, better encouraged by popular institutions than by aristocratic salaries, which render the Colonies useful possessions. They will interest the producing classes—the greater number—to oppose the disastrous plan which can be profitable only to the smaller number. ”

“ Upon the whole the greatest number of those who, in the retail line, have demanded banks, are radically cured and disgusted with the old ones. Their directors all belong to that violent minority who have succeeded in choosing the Representatives of 34,000 inhabitants to oppose the Representatives of 477,000, and who invoke, with a loud voice, the preferences and partialities of the British Government in its favor, and against the rights of this overwhelming majority. ”

“ If it entertained the same opinion of the authorities in England, that it entertains of the authorities in the Country, all those obstacles it had overthrown. Hope is not dead in all hearts. Many demand and except justice yet from the English Parliament. This is the clue to the enigma which explains why citizens, too moderate perhaps, have prevented Electors, disposed to do themselves justice, from shewing themselves sufficiently strong to remain at the poll where the law was too weak to protect them. ”

“ It is evident that the blood of a Canadian is of no more value in the estimation of the British Judges of the District of Montreal, that the blood of an Irish Catholic before an Orange Judge and Jury previous to Catholic emancipation. ”

“ It must be evident that noting but the mildness of the habits of the Canadians, joined with the conviction that they were masters of the Election, have enabled them to bear, without crushing their oppressors, the outrages which have been daily heaped upon them. ”

“ It is no disadvantage for society; on the contrary, there is justice for the public and for individuals who have transactions with those speculators, to deprive them of the chance of increasing their debts at the expense of other persons. ”