Louis-Joseph Papineau

“ Although we are confident that our democratic continent could not remain subjugated for long to a principle so disastrous and contrary to nature, we fear like you that the hereditary veneration towards certain families, the dangerous accumulation of immense fortunes in the hands of a few, and the corrupting practices of a government perverted by the distribution of favours, has so greatly wasted the benefit which the glorious charter of your rights should have given you that, undoubtedly, it will take years before you touch your ancestor's heritage of freedom to enjoy it fully. ”

“ The quite characteristic names of your various trades are more respectable to our eyes than the pompous titles, the oppressive privileges, and the laws against nature based on heredity, all things which were usurped and granted by the sovereigns and recorded at the office of armoury with the futile intention to create two orders of intelligence where nature only made one.
We live in a hemisphere whose destiny is to see democracy being exercised and grow in complete freedom, far from an aristocracy, whose deep roots would exhaust the soil. ”

“ They are themselves the children of a democracy which, in the XIXe century, is linked by a community of feelings throughout the civilized world. They know that they are but the blind instruments of a brutal Master, but as moral beings, responsible for their acts in front of God and humanity. On the day of the test, they will throw down the emblems of their cruel works to enter the midst of an American fraternity, instead of lending their contest to criminal intentions against the generous blood of a people which defend the rights of any man. ”

“ Although some of your acts, filled with the dignity which the conscience of one's own strength confers, were crowned with success, too often we had the sorrow to see some of your more valorous friends left behind in your recent elections, and a portion of the people behave like indifferent spectators, as consenting auxiliaries or servile mercenaries of one or the other of the aristocratic factions which dispute the privilege to hold you under their yoke, completely indifferent to your interests, except insofar as the reform of an abuse tends to strengthen their own power. ”

“ The conscience of baring this heavy responsibility, far from discouraging us, reinvigorates us, because we know that, from one end to another of the Empire, all the energetic and free minds follow our courageous fight with the greatest of interest - send us their wishes and wish to see us successfully defend the rights of all. ”

“ We wish, via our association, to proclaim that, no matter the way which we will be constrained to follow, we hold nothing against the people of England. We only fight against the aggressions of her tyrannical oppressors, who are also our own oppressors. ”

“ In similar circumstances, we can appeal without fear to the judgement of the whole world to legitimate our determination to no longer maintain the vain hope of obtaining reparation from overseas and rather to count on our own energy and on the sympathy of our brothers on the American continent, a sympathy which a cause as just as our own cannot fail to inspire. ”

“ The indigenous Masters of the wild regions of America knew neither lords nor kings; they freely chose the most deserving as chief of the council and chief of war. When, fond of freedom, the pilgrims of England approached for the first time the desolated shores of New England, they brought good seeds to a land which was already prepared to receive them and from where they would be propagated and borne fruit. ”

“ We did not evoke independence from the British Crown, but we do not forget that the destiny of the continental colonies is to separate from the metropolitan State when the unconstitutional action of a legislative power residing in a remote country is no longer bearable. In this eventuality, the community of interests which should exist between the democracy of the Old World and that of New World will not disappear. ”

“ For our part, you can be sure of it, we are determined never to subject to the usurping intentions of the ministry - never to live in being an object of derision for the whole world, as a people, more ignorant than slaves being traded, that would let their birth right be taken away, thus creating a precedent so that a similar aggression is perpetrated against the freedoms of their brothers in all the other colonies of the Empire. ”

“ Whatever the result of your noble patriotism and your generous abnegation, we are sure that your children will be better armed against your dominating oligarchy than you personally were at the time of entering life. ”

“ In the free exercise of the privileges which are recognized to us - to defend the dear rights which are guaranteed to us, we have held public meetings in our various counties, as a preliminary step, in order to solemnly protest against an infamous violation of our fundamental powers. ”

“ And, although Europe undertook to confine its nations in various parts of this sanctuary, the corruptions which came in their wake disappeared under the intense light of these principles recognized, proclaimed and applied by a group of wise and virtuous democrats who faced and overcame the difficulties of their new colony, not for some reason related to wealth or by thirst for spoils, but to establish on more solid principles the science and the economy of government. ”

“ Aristocracy is foreign for us. We do not share any principle in common with it. Thanks to the facility with which our ancestors could obtain fertile lands on an immense territory, thanks to our laws against the accumulation of hereditary fortunes, almost all our population draws its subsistence from manual or intellectual work. We respect men for their good work ”

“ We honour that one who makes two corn shoots germinate where only one grew before; that one who goes forward and makes the forest disappear in front of his steps. We scorn the idler who vegetates on the land and is satisfied to consume what men better than him have produced. ”

“ For a long time united to you as subjects of the same sovereign, we too have felt the drying influence of an aristocracy, which, cherished in the Eastern hemisphere, was authorized, for our misfortune, to obstruct the Western hemisphere. ”

“ See the example of the United States which, in one year, as an independent offspring, contributes more to the honour and the benefit of the motherland that they could have done in centuries of weakness and dependence. ”

“ One makes Lower Canada the theatre of this experience because it is believed that in spite of the constant abuses or the arbitrary exactions of which it is the victim, the majority of the population, being of French ascent, will not wake any sympathy among the English race which surrounds it. ”