Louis-Joseph Papineau

“ All know before setting out (or learn at ounce on arriving) that there is not in this world any society better adapted for liberty and equality than that of Canada, where there are neither oligarchs with excessive fortunes and still more excessive pride and pretension; nor paupers obliged to crawl through their lives, often decimated by hunger, pestilence, and war. All the world here, by honest and moderate labour, maybe become landed proprietors and independent. Thus is Democracy socially constituted. ”

“ There are men of genius and knowledge in great number in a body as numerous as that of the United Kingdom, men whose special education is the science of government. May they give a proof that they are better qualified to govern than those who gave admirably good constitutions to the general government of the Union and those of the thirty-six States of the American confederation! It is not the precipitated adoption of the botched Quebec Act of confederation that can prove the wisdom of the statesmen of England. ”

“ It is for you, Electors, to give the answer.
You have one day in four years, on which your sovereign voice can be heard. To this day you have now come. Let the great voice of the people thunder, let its breath drive away all those men of narrow and retrograde views who look in the history of old Europe to find the future of young Canada; and who seeks to impose upon a society perfectly democratic, the forms, the semblance, the budgets, the taxes, the patronage and the corruption, the centralization and arbitrary power, of a monarchical government. ”

“ When the confederal Parliament assembled, the fact had become obvious that our brothers of Acadia were unanimous to reject the confederation. One rightfully left to illiberal officials the role to scorn their wishes and their rights. It is a repetition of their role of all times. They were saying to them as to us: "you believe yourselves to be oppressed, be it. You are mistaken, we decide for you and against you, like England decided. Good day or bad day, you are chained to us, we love you and we do not want to divorce. We are strong, you are weak, be submissive!" ”

“ The House told the Council to make "choice for their Agent of whom they pleased: that it might enjoy for itself the same privilege which the House claims for the country, to send their memoirs to their Agent. Those who fear nothing from the publication of the truth, wish it to be fully known. We feel confident of the justice of the English Government, go and show yourselves in the best light you can before it, but grant us the same power." That measure which can only draw closer the ties between the mother-country and the colony can not be much longer delayed and daily becomes more urgent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Around the figure of Louis Joseph Papineau there has always been a sort of glamour which has helped to conceal his vanity, his rashness and his want of political sagacity, which would, under any circumstances, have prevented his success as a safe statesman, capable of guiding a people through a trying ordeal. His eloquence was fervid and had much influence over his impulsive countrymen, his sincerity was undoubted, and in all likelihood his very indiscretions made more palpable the defects of the political system against which he so persistently and so often justly declaimed. ”

“ I am thrown in the political life against my inclination. After I frankly explained my dissatisfaction and my scorn for the political order forcibly imposed to my country, with the same hostile aim, by the same perverse means which chains yours, by a fatal and degrading Union for Ireland, as ours is hostile to us and more degrading even for Lower Canada, colony twice subjugated to two metropolises, that of England which oppresses by antipathy, that of Upper Canada which exploits us by cupidity, the county of Saint-Maurice chose me to represent it. ”

“ We are on the contrary convinced, that the just appreciation of this fact by Your Honorable House will prevent those misfortunes which none could deplore more deeply than we should do, and which would be equally fatal to His Majesty's Government, and to the People of this Province; — and it is perhaps here that we ought to represent with the same respect, but at the same time with the same frankness, that the fidelity of the People and the protection of the Government are correlative obligations, of which the one cannot long subsist without the other ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were as rough in Upper Canada, where there was only one nationality, as they were here, where there were two. The majorities of both of them were uninterested friends of the rights, freedoms, and privileges due to all English subjects. They were voluntarily exposing themselves to the lieful slander, dangerous anger, sanguinary revenge sometimes, of egoistic minorities, by themselves weak, but supported by the strength of the bayonnettes paid with the gold of the people, but everywhere directed against the people. ”

“ Without yet passing judgement on the last dissolution, the folly or wisdom of which will be tried by the result of the general election, one cannot dissemble that this Province is the only one in which that violent remedy has been so often resorted to on such frivolous occasions. Against the intended purpose of those who have so blundered, it always has produced the happiest result in advancing the political education of the country. ”

“ There is only among the English and Protestant population that magistrates and juries are taken. This population accounts for 450 men, the majority despicable by their ignorance. They are drunk on the unforeseen importance that has fallen upon them, and hasten the exercise of their new powers with ostentation and rigour. They hate the Canadien nobility, because it is respectable, and the rest of the population and me, because I prevent a little of the wrongs they would like to accomplish. ”

“ As a return for its sacrifices, the Province does not seek the purchase of particular privileges, all she asks is not to be worse treated than Upper Canada is, to have over the revenue raised on her, an effectual controul without which indeed, she has not a free but a despotic Constitution. For whoever aspires to the discretionary distribution of a large portion of the public revenue, aspires by a direct and necessary consequence to the discretionary power of taking the people, or else he understands not himself and argues not consequently. ”

“ All the colonies which had representatives had control over their full revenues, by the vote of their elective houses. This right was refused to the Canadas alone.
The insurrectionist movement, legitimate in theory, imprudent in practise, since it has succumbed, was not proposed by the most influential men in Parliament: on the contrary. But those who wanted to destroy the politicians of Lower Canada; who wanted the union of the two provinces; who wished to see the executive branch be in control and regulate the income and the legislation, pushed for it. ”

“ Of the thousand or twelve hundred Englishmen that there were in all of Canada, the nine-tenth of those who were in Quebec City had the good idea of leaving the day before the siege to go fetch some goods in England, sure that they would resell them for an enormous profit. ”

“ It is because some men, in all other respects, of great merit - the liberals of Upper Canada, with whom those of Lower Canada must act in concert, reduced to despair by the injustice of the Tory faction, and of the family compact, were deceived, and demanded the intervention of the English Parliament in favor of this fatal Union; imagining that they might obtain it on equitable conditions, and that united to the patriots of Lower Canada, they would assure to the united Province a just and liberal Government, such as the divided Provinces had never known. ”

“ All free men who deserve their freedom, owe themselves a mutual support. Therefore, we cannot remain indifferent to the oppression of our brothers of the maritime colonies, and all the truly liberal and independent men of Canada owe them support and sympathy.
This new governmental plan reveals, more than the others, the violent animosity that the aristocracy feels toward elective institutions. ”

“ Fortunately an authority equal to his has told you that your choice was very good. I oppose the judgement of the one Governor by that of the other: because the justice and urbanity with which Sir Francis Burton conducted himself towards your Representatives, prove the consideration and esteem which he had for you, and the consideration and esteem which, in return, we must have for him; while a contrary behaviour deserves your censure, whatever respect you ought to preserve for the high magistracy exercised by our Governors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At first sight, the Act of confederation cannot have the approval of those who believe in the wisdom and the justice of the Parliament and the excellency of the English constitution, since it violates its fundamental principles, by taking control over the sums of money belonging to the colonists alone and not to the metropolis nor to any authority in the metropolis. ”

“ It has cost them more than they would have liked to give, and in concessions of long refused freedoms, and in treasury, to the profit — in the two Canadas — of minorities, which had its support but not its respect. What was obvious in these movements is well known today, what was kept secret will be known later. Both in the United States and the provinces, eminent citizens, tested and sincere patriots, have the evidence and the means of letting the people know more than we do today on the men and the historical events of that time. ”

“ Here is one who is not in the government and who takes part in the secrecies of a government as mysterious as ours! No, you are wrong. It is not an established fact which he reveals you; it is a clever assumption to which he arrived according to a rather plausible calculation of probability, that the quietude of rest and the wisdom of silence are as pleasant to the Canadian ministry as the din of Ireland is annoying to it, and to Lord Russell too. I repeat you, go to the source of all these reports. See your representatives. ”

“ The entire population of Canada was of no more than sixty thousand souls; the three invasion armies had more than sixty thousand soldiers. The one moving toward Québec City counted more than twenty thousand disembarkment soldiers, not counting the power of its fleet. ”

“ The aristocracy weighed even more heavily on the people, and in the most discourteous ways, buying and auctioning it like a merchandise. It remained in control by the venality of elections, tolerating only its juniors and its clerks on the benches of the Commons. Montesquieu hence employed an artifice, like we still use today, to put in better contrast the despotism which then ruled in France. He showed in this more skill than standing. So do his imitators today.
Nobody in France dares to attack the emperor personally. He has too formidable means of repression. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He requests them to listen to the wishes and the prayers of a people they must love, for their peaceful habits inside, for their uninterrupted attachment to the metropolis, for the constant defence of its councils, and he assures them that the expression of repulsion against the measures prepared by some intrigues in Canada, was but the true expression of the feeling of the majority of the voters of Nova Scotia. ”

“ 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. ”