Louis-Joseph Papineau

“ And I acknowledge that all these cries of "cheap government", of exclusive sovereignty of the people following the American example, would worry us extremely, if we didn't clearly see, war being one of the unfortunately natural instincts of man, the causes which soon will bring about war in the United States, put the various parts of the confederation against each other, constitute distinct societies, create varied kinds of government, and the need, to protect them, to have stronger armies and institutions. ”

“ Ah well! the example of the United States is a disturbing cause that becomes an obstacle to the execution of these plans. I know well that it is but the enthusiastic ones, strangers to the practise of business, who get impassioned for this American demagogy, manufacture of sand without cement, destined to collapse on the first day, but what can you do, their writings make disciples, they feed bad passions, they enlist worthless men who seek, in the overthrowing of higher orders, rank and fortune. ”

“ I cannot but express my regret, that among the few institutions for the administration of justice through the country which have been adopted in Lower Canada from those of England, should be that of unpaid justices of the peace. [...] The institution has become unpopular among the Canadians, owing to their general belief that the appointments have been made with party and national bias. [...] I a grieved to be obliged to remark, that the British Government has, since its possession of the province, done, or even attempted, nothing for the promotion of general education. ”

“ Of all the men odious to the Canadians, not one who was such with a righter honour than the editor of the newspaper the Montreal Herald. An impetuous Tory, this man, named Adam Thom, had for several years been dragging in the mud the names of all the whig ministers including that of Lord Durham.
But the John Bull, unable to provide enough libellous anecdotes to feed the malignity of Adam Thom, his personal correspondences, real or simulated, made public the turpitudes, true or false, of the majority of the outstanding men in the liberal opinion. ”

“ Now, if England ever went down to the rank of a third order power, it would be a misfortune for Humanity. Because, with institutions as perfect as hers, and a generally recognized primacy, England is on the continent the support of all the oppressed peoples, and often her representations have stopped the absolute governments in their tyrannical projects. ”

“ Fortified by family connection, and the common interest felt by all who held, and all who desired, subordinate offices, that party was thus erected into a solid and permanent power, controlled by no responsibility, subject to no serious change, exercising over the whole government of the province an authority utterly independent of the people and its representatives, and possessing the only means either the government at home, or the colonial representative of the Crown. ”

“ Yes, once again, the executive power puts in the works, against innocent men, for what is wrongfully taken for the metropolitan interest, inhuman plans that it had admitted not having the right to allow itself: it is from the government that the provocation came. ”

“ True when it accuses the power, false when it accuses the people, the report of Lord Durham will also serve to prove that the independence of Canada is an event wanted by the interest of both the old and the new France, and by the interest of the whole of humanity. ”

“ My subsequent experience leaves no doubt in my mind that the views which were contained in my despatch of the 9th of August are perfectly correct; and that an invading American army might rely on the co-operation of almost all the entire French population of Lower Canada.
Every measure of clemency or even justice towards their opponent they regard with jealousy; [...] that they feel that being a minority, any return to the due course of constitutional government would again subject them to a French majority and to this I am persuaded they would not peacefully submit. ”

“ From the Cobhams and the Balls of her early history, to the Russells and Sydneys, or Emmets and Lounts of her modern annals, whose fame will shine in brightness undiminished, when the loathing and wrath of aroused and free opinion shall have prostrated forever the system that destroyed them, because it could not exist in the same age with so much of purity and worth. ”

“ And a few weeks after the pompous disembarkment of the viceroy, and because he had outraged him, Adam Thom became his commensal and his adviser.
This man, who was but an impassioned partisan, of poor talents, daily excited by the abuse of strong liquor, when he treated of English politics, was turning insanely furious, when speaking of the French Canadians. When exalted by the thirst for blood, his hatred was limitless. For several years, insults against the whole nation and reiterated incitations to assassinate the most popular representatives had each day soiled the pages of his newspaper ”

“ England would then be ready to grant the colonies which would have remained faithful to her, and their independence and institutions better than those which are based on the federative pact. Indeed, released from any counterweight, democracy would be impetuous and anarchistic, while it would be the best of possible governments if it were moderated by a hereditary magistrature, whose perpetuity would be ensured, in its glare and its strength, by the means of majorats and substitutions. ”

“ The plan of which I speak today is more odious, more universally rejected than it was it then; yet, Lord Durham, the peer of the people, dominated by the intriguers who misled Lord Bathurst, welcomes it favourably and as it appears will impose it to the Whig government. Not a very difficult thing in the remainder: because this government, allegedly liberal, reformed and reforming, in all its conduct towards the British colonies, has boldly violated the holiest laws of humanity.
A young woman of twenty years old reigns over England. ”

“ We attach no blame to the People of England for these atrocities. Their influence, wherever it has found its way into the legislation of their country, has been - like that of the people in all countries - uniformly beneficial, enlightened and humane. ”

“ A governor, arriving in a colony in which he almost invariably has had no previous acquaintance with the state of parties, or the character of individuals, is compelled to throw himself almost entirely upon whom he finds placed in the positions of his official advisers. [...] Thus, a Governor of Lower Canada has almost always been brought into collision with the Assembly, which his advisers regard as their enemy. ”

“ It is too evident that Lower Canada, or the two Canadas, have not alone exhibited repeated conflicts between the executive and the popular branches of the Legislature. The representative body of Upper Canada was, before the late election, hostile to the policy of the government; the most serious discontents have only recently been calmed in Prince Edward's Island and New Brunswick; the government is still, I believe, in a minority in the lower house in Nova Scotia; and the dissensions of Newfoundland are hardly less violent than those of the Canadas. ”

“ Speaking about the colonies where the population is not mixed but all English, that of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick which are the former French Acadia and Prince Edward's Island, previously the Saint-Jean Island, the report continues:
But their varied and ample resources are turned to little account. Their scanty population exhibit, in most portions of them, an aspect of poverty, backwardness and stagnation; and wherever a better state of things is visible, the improvement is generally to be ascribed to the influx of American settlers or capitalists. ”

“ The inexpressible indignation and disgust which the perpetration of these atrocities in this hemisphere has occasioned throughout the whole length and breadth of this land - where public opinion is so free and healthy, that it may be said to resemble the voice of posterity, may image forth the reaction of that tide of virtuous feeling that ere long will swell up in a strength that will at once atone and avenge the whole. ”

“ We would attract in it the rich families of England which are friends of hereditary institutions, and those rich families of the United States, who are disgusted by the weak influence that the democratic ascendancy leaves them. ”

“ The Executive council, the law officers, and whatever heads of department are known to the administration system of the province, were placed in power, without any regard to the wishes of the people or their representatives; nor indeed are there wanting instances in which a mere hostility of the majority of the Assembly elevated the most incompetent persons to posts of honour and trust. [...] If a law was passed after repeated conflicts, it had to be carried into effect by those who had most strenuously opposed it. ”

“ It appears, therefore, that the opposition of the Assembly to the government was the unavoidable result of a system which stinted the popular branch of the legislature of the necessary privileges of a representative body, and produced thereby a long series of attempts on the part of that body to acquire control over the administration of the province. ”

“ The laws of England, which have been defiled by her monarchs with penalties for every crime, sanguinary as the code of Draco, authorize the penalty of death in unnumbered instances, where the daily practice of her Courts show that it is necessary for justice sake to preserve the life. ”

“ This unanimous complaint, Lord Durham rejected it with the same scorn as the Tories, his predecessors. The British Parliament also pushes it back. "What you ask", says it, "we refuse it. But we are benevolent and we want you to be happy with what we will decide is good for you. The Saxon race is much more suited to govern than you could ever be yourself. In Upper Canada, it is sifted with debts, while you have none. Ah well! we will form a large and beautiful province which will no longer owe anything to anyone, after the mixing of the full and the empty. ”

“ Those Americans know very well, moreover, that their revolution is not yet entirely finished. In the opinion of their statesmen, it will only be so the day the Union will no longer have, as neighbour, a power that, since the Treaty of 1783, has not ceased, even in times of peace, to intrigue in order to bring about the dismemberment of the confederation ”

“ I convene, said to me Lord Bathurst, that, for continental possessions where the populations double in few years, the regime of which you complain can only be a period of stormy transition and morbid evolutions, that must be followed, for the people which are submitted to it, by serene days, and a normal organization of political life and national independence. ”

“ The repeated changes, caused by political events at home, having no connection with colonial affairs, have left to most of the various representatives of the colonial department in parliament, too little time to acquire even an elementary knowledge of the condition of those numerous and heterogeneous communities for which they have had both to administer and to legislate. ”

“ Since that time, and during thirty years, a supposedly constitutional government, based on minorities, has constituted itself as a source of permanent hostility against the majority of the representatives, who, after the last two general elections, were in one of the assemblies, seventy-eight against eight, and eighty against ten in the other. ”

“ Never will the present generation of French Canadians yield a loyal submission to a British government; never again will the British population tolerate the authority of a House of Assembly, in which the French shall possess or even approximate to a majority. [...] The militia, on which the main defense of the province against external enemies, [...] the attempting to arm or employ it would be merely arming the enemies of the government. [...] In 1832, the number of emigrants who landed at the port of Quebec, amounted to 52,000 ”

“ This provisional but complete cessation of their ancient antipathy to the Americans is now admitted even by those who most strongly denied it during the last spring, and who then asserted that an American war would as completely unite the whole of the population against the common enemy, as it did in 1813. ”

“ Insecurity begins to be so strongly felt by the loyal inhabitants of the Seignories gouvernement, that many are compelled, by fear or necessity, to quit their occupations, and seek refuge in the cities. ”

“ I mean the great amount of re-emigration from the British colonies to the border states. This is a notorious fact. [...] What the proportion may be of those emigrants from the United Kingdom who, soon after their arrival, remove to the United States, it would be very difficult to ascertain precisely. [...] making no allowance for their increase by births, the entire population of Upper Canada should now have been 500,000, whereas it is, according to the most reliable estimates, not over 400,000. ”