After 1830 signs began to multiply that the racial feud in Lower Canada was growing in intensity. In 1832 a by-election in the west ward of Montreal culminated in a riot. Troops were called out to preserve order. After showing some forbearance under a fusillade of stones, they fired into the rioters, killing three and wounding two men, all of them French Canadians. Immediately thePatriotepress became furious. The newspaperLa Minerveasserted that a 'general massacre' had been planned: the murderers, it said, had approached the corpses with laughter, and had seen with joy Canadian blood running down the street; they had shaken each other by the hand, and had regretted that there were not more dead. The blame for the 'massacre' was laid at the door of Lord Aylmer. Later, on the floor of the Assembly, Papineau remarked that 'Craig merely imprisoned hisvictims, but Aylmer slaughters them.' ThePatriotesadopted the same bitter attitude toward the government when the Asiatic cholera swept the province in 1833. They actually accused Lord Aylmer of having 'enticed the sick immigrants into the country, in order to decimate the ranks of the French Canadians.'
In the House Papineau became more and more violent and domineering. He did not scruple to use his majority either to expel from the House or to imprison those who incurred his wrath. Robert Christie, the member for Gaspé, was four times expelled for having obtained the dismissal of some partisan justices of the peace. The expulsion of Dominique Mondelet has already been mentioned. Ralph Taylor, one of the members for the Eastern Townships, was imprisoned in the common jail for using, in the QuebecMercury, language about Papineau no more offensive than Papineau had used about many others. But perhaps the most striking evidence of Papineau's desire to dominate the Assembly was seen in his attitude toward a bill to secure the independence of judges introduced by F. A. Quesnel, one of the more moderate membersof thePatrioteparty. Quesnel had accepted some amendments suggested by the colonial secretary. This awoke the wrath of Papineau, who assailed the bill in his usual vehement style, and concluded by threatening Quesnel with the loss of his seat. The threat proved not to be idle. Papineau possessed at this time a great ascendancy over the minds of his fellow-countrymen, and in the next elections he secured Quesnel's defeat.
By 1832 Papineau's political views had taken a more revolutionary turn. From being an admirer of the constitution of 1791, he had come to regard it as 'bad; very, very bad.' 'Our constitution,' he said, 'has been manufactured by a Tory influenced by the terrors of the French Revolution.' He had lost faith in the justice of the British government and in its willingness to redress grievances; and his eyes had begun to turn toward the United States. Perhaps he was not yet for annexation to that country; but he had conceived a great admiration for the American constitution. The wide application of the principle of election especially attracted him; and, although he did not relinquish his hope of subordinating the Executive to the Assembly by means of the control of the finances, hebegan to throw his main weight into an agitation to make the Legislative Council elective. Henceforth the plan for an elective Legislative Council became the chief feature of the policy of thePatrioteparty. The existing nominated and reactionary Legislative Council had served the purpose of a buffer between the governor's Executive Council and the Assembly. This buffer, thought Papineau and his friends, should be removed, so as to expose the governor to the full hurricane of the Assembly's wrath.
It was not long before Papineau's domineering behaviour and the revolutionary trend of his views alienated some of his followers. On John Neilson, who had gone to England with him in 1822 and with Cuvillier and Viger in 1828, and who had supported him heartily during the Dalhousie régime, Papineau could no longer count. Under Aylmer a coolness sprang up between the two men. Neilson objected to the expulsion of Mondelet from the House; he opposed the resolutions of Louis Bourdages, Papineau's chief lieutenant, for the abolition of the Legislative Council; and in the debate on Quesnel's bill for the independence of judges, he administered a severe rebuke to Papineau for language hehad used. Augustin Cuvillier followed the lead of his friend Neilson, and so also did Andrew Stuart, one of the ablest lawyers in the province, and Quesnel. All these men were politicians of weight and respectability.
Papineau still had, however, a large and powerful following, especially among the younger members. Nothing is more remarkable at this time than the sway which he exercised over the minds of men who in later life became distinguished for the conservative and moderate character of their opinions. Among his followers in the House were Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine, destined to become, ten years later, the colleague of Robert Baldwin in the LaFontaine-Baldwin administration, and Augustin Norbert Morin, the colleague of Francis Hincks in the Hincks-Morin administration of 1851. Outside the House he counted among his most faithful followers two more future prime ministers of Canada, George É. Cartier and Étienne P. Taché. Nor were his supporters all French Canadians. Some English-speaking members acted with him, among them Wolfred Nelson; and in the country he had the undivided allegiance of men like Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, editor of the MontrealVindicator,and Thomas Storrow Brown, afterwards one of the 'generals' of the rebellion. Although the political struggle in Lower Canada before 1837 was largely racial, it was not exclusively so, for there were some English in the Patriots party and some French who declined to support it.
In 1832 and 1833 Papineau suffered rebuffs in the House that could not have been pleasant to him. In 1833, for instance, his proposal to refuse supply was defeated by a large majority. But the triumphant passage of the famous Ninety-Two Resolutions in 1834 showed that, for most purposes, he still had a majority behind him.
The Ninety-Two Resolutions were introduced by Elzéar Bédard, the son of Pierre Bédard, and are reputed to have been drawn up by A. N. Morin. But there is no doubt that they were inspired by Papineau. The voice was the voice of Jacob, but the hand was the hand of Esau. The Resolutions constituted the political platform of the extreme wing of thePatrioteparty: they were a sort of Declaration of Right. A more extraordinary political document has seldom seen the light. A writer in the QuebecMercury, said by Lord Aylmer to be John Neilson,undertook an analysis of the ninety-two articles: eleven, said this writer, stood true; six contained both truth and falsehood; sixteen stood wholly false; seventeen seemed doubtful and twelve ridiculous; seven were repetitions; fourteen consisted only of abuse; four were both false and seditious; and the remainder were indifferent.
It is not possible here to analyse the Resolutions in detail. They called the attention of the home government to some real abuses. The subservience of the Legislative Council to the Executive Council; the partisanship of some of the judges; the maladministration of the wild lands; grave irregularities in the receiver-general's office; the concentration of a variety of public offices in the same persons; the failure of the governor to issue a writ for the election of a representative for the county of Montreal; and the expenditure of public moneys without the consent of the Assembly—all these, and many others, were enlarged upon. If the framers of the Resolutions had only cared to make out a very strong case they might have done so. But the language which they employed to present their case was almost certainly calculated to injure it seriously in the eyes of the home government.'We are in no wise disposed,' they told the king, 'to admit the excellence of the present constitution of Canada, although the present colonial secretary unseasonably and erroneously asserts that the said constitution has conferred on the two Canadas the institutions of Great Britain.' With an extraordinary lack of tact they assured the king that Toryism was in America 'without any weight or influence except what it derives from its European supporters'; whereas Republicanism 'overspreads all America.' Nor did they stop there. 'This House,' they announced, 'would esteem itself wanting in candour to Your Majesty if it hesitated to call Your Majesty's attention to the fact, that in less than twenty years the population of the United States of America will be greater than that of Great Britain, and that of British America will be greater than that of the former English colonies, when the latter deemed that the time was come to decide that the inappreciable advantage of being self-governed ought to engage them to repudiate a system of colonial government which was, generally speaking, much better than that of British America now is.' This unfortunate reference to the American Revolution, with itshardly veiled threat of rebellion, was scarcely calculated to commend the Ninety-Two Resolutions to the favourable consideration of the British government. And when the Resolutions went on to demand, not merely the removal, but the impeachment of the governor, Lord Aylmer, it must have seemed to unprejudiced bystanders as if the framers of the Resolutions had taken leave of their senses.
The Ninety-Two Resolutions do not rank high as a constructive document. The chief change in the constitution which they proposed was the application of the elective principle to the Legislative Council. Of anything which might be construed into advocacy of a statesmanlike project of responsible government there was not a word, save a vague allusion to 'the vicious composition and irresponsibility of the Executive Council.' Papineau and his friends had evidently no conception of the solution ultimately found for the constitutional problem in Canada—a provincial cabinet chosen from the legislature, sitting in the legislature, and responsible to the legislature, whose advice the governor is bound to accept in regard to provincial affairs. Papineau undoubtedly did much to hasten the day of responsible government in Canada;but in this process he was in reality an unwitting agent.
The Ninety-Two Resolutions secured a majority of fifty-six to twenty-four. But in the minority voted John Neilson, Augustin Cuvillier, F. A. Quesnel, and Andrew Stuart, who now definitely broke away from Papineau's party. There are signs, too, that the considerable number of Catholic clergy who had openly supported Papineau now began to withdraw from the camp of a leader advocating such republican and revolutionary ideas. There is ground also for believing that not a little unrest disturbed those who voted with Papineau in 1834. In the next year Elzéar Bédard, who had moved the Ninety-Two Resolutions, broke with Papineau. Another seceder was Étienne Parent, the editor of the revivedCanadien, and one of the great figures in French-Canadian literature. Both Bédard and Parent were citizens of Quebec, and they carried with them the great body of public opinion in the provincial capital. It will be observed later that during the disturbances of 1837 Quebec remained quiet.
None of the seceders abandoned the demand for the redress of grievances. They merelyrefused to follow Papineau in his extreme course. For this they were assailed with some of the rhetoric which had hitherto been reserved for the 'Bureaucrats.' To them was applied the opprobrious epithet ofChouayens[1]—a name which had been used by Étienne Parent himself in 1828 to describe those French Canadians who took sides with the government party.
[1] The nameChouayenorChouaguenappears to have been first used as a term of reproach at the siege of Oswego in 1756. It is said that after the fall of the forts there to Montcalm's armies a number of Canadian soldiers arrived too late to take part in the fighting. By the soldiers who had borne the brunt of the battle the late-comers were dubbedChouaguens, this being the way the rank and file of the French soldiers pronounced the Indian name of Oswego. Thus the term came to mean one who refuses to follow, or who lets others do the fighting and keeps out of it himself. Perhaps the nearest English, or rather American, equivalent is the name Mugwump.
A general election followed soon after the passing of the Ninety-Two Resolutions and revealed the strength of Papineau's position in the country. All those members of thePatrioteparty who had opposed the Resolutions—Neilson, Cuvillier, Quesnel, Stuart, and two or three others—suffered defeat at the polls. The first division-list in the new Assembly showed seventy members voting for Papineau as speaker, and only six voting against him.
The Resolutions were forwarded to Westminster, both through the Assembly's agent in London and through Lord Aylmer, who received the address embodying the Resolutions, despite the fact that they demanded his own impeachment. The British House of Commons appointed a special committee to inquire into the grievances of which the Resolutions complained; but there followedno immediate action by the government. The years 1834 and 1835 saw much disturbance in British politics: there were no less than four successive ministers at the Colonial Office. It was natural that there should be some delay in dealing with the troubles of Lower Canada. In the spring of 1835, however, the government made up its mind about the course to pursue. It decided to send to Canada a royal commission for the purpose of investigating, and if possible settling, the questions in dispute. It was thought advisable to combine in one person the office of chief royal commissioner and that of governor of Canada. To clear the way for this arrangement Lord Aylmer was recalled. But he was expressly relieved from all censure: it was merely recognized by the authorities that his unfortunate relations with the Assembly made it unlikely that he would be able to offer any assistance in a solution of the problem.
The unenviable position of governor and chief royal commissioner was offered in turn to several English statesmen and declined by all of them. It was eventually accepted by Lord Gosford, an Irish peer without experience in public life. With him were associated as commissioners Sir Charles Grey, afterwardsgovernor of Jamaica, and Sir George Gipps, afterwards governor of New South Wales. These two men were evidently intended to offset each other: Grey was commonly rated as a Tory, while Gipps was a Liberal. Lord Gosford's appointment caused much surprise. He was a stranger in politics and in civil government. There is no doubt that his appointment was a last resource. But his Irish geniality and his facility in being all things to all men were no small recommendations for a governor who was to attempt to set things right in Canada.
The policy of Lord Glenelg, the colonial secretary during Gosford's period of office, was to do everything in his power to conciliate the CanadianPatriotes, short of making any real constitutional concessions. By means of a conciliatory attitude he hoped to induce them to abate some of their demands. There is, indeed, evidence that he was personally willing to go further: he seems to have proposed to William IV that the French Canadians should be granted, as they desired, an elective Legislative Council; but the staunch old Tory king would not hear of the change. 'The king objects on principle,' the ministers were told, 'and upon what heconsiders sound constitutional principle, to the adoption of the elective principle in the constitution of the legislative councils in the colonies.' In 1836 the king had not yet become a negligible factor in determining the policy of the government; and the idea was dropped.
Lord Gosford arrived in Canada at the end of the summer of 1835 to find himself confronted with a discouraging state of affairs. A short session of the Assembly in the earlier part of the year had been marked by unprecedented violence. Papineau had attacked Lord Aylmer in language breathing passion; and had caused Lord Aylmer's reply to the address of the Assembly containing the Ninety-Two Resolutions to be expunged from the journals of the House as 'an insult cast at the whole nation.' Papineau had professed himself hopeless of any amendment of grievances by Great Britain. 'When Reform ministries, who called themselves our friends,' he said, 'have been deaf to our complaints, can we hope that a Tory ministry, the enemy of Reform, will give us a better hearing? We have nothing to expect from the Tories unless we can inspire them with fear or worry them by ceaseless importunity.' Itshould be observed, however, that in 1835 Papineau explicitly disclaimed any intention of stirring up civil war. When Gugy, one of the English members of the Assembly,[1] accused him of such an intention, Papineau replied:
Mr Gugy has talked to us again about an outbreak and civil war—a ridiculous bugbear which is regularly revived every time the House protests against these abuses, as it was under Craig, under Dalhousie, and still more persistently under the present governor. Doubtless the honourable gentleman, having studied military tactics as a lieutenant in the militia—I do not say as a major, for he has been a major only for the purposes of the parade-ground and the ball-room—is quite competent to judge of the results of a civil war and of the forces of the country, but he need not fancy that he can frighten us by hinting to us that he will fight in the ranks of the enemy. All his threats are futile, and his fears but the creatures of imagination.
Papineau did not yet contemplate an appealto arms; and of course he could not foresee that only two years later Conrad Gugy would be one of the first to enter the village of St Eustache after the defeat of thePatrioteforces.
In spite of the inflamed state of public feeling, Lord Gosford tried to put into effect his policy of conciliation. He sought to win the confidence of the French Canadians by presiding at their entertainments, by attending the distribution of prizes at their seminaries, and by giving balls on their feast days. He entertained lavishly, and his manners toward his guests were decidedly convivial. 'Milord,' exclaimed one of them on one occasion, tapping him on the back at a certain stage of the after-dinner conversation, 'milord, vous êtes bien aimable.' 'Pardonnez,' replied Gosford; 'c'est le vin.' Even Papineau was induced to accept the governor's hospitality, though there were not wanting those who warned Gosford that Papineau was irreconcilable. 'By a wrong-headed and melancholy alchemy,' wrote an English officer in Quebec to Gosford, 'he will transmute every public concession into a demand for more, in a ratio equal to its extent; and his disordered moral palate, beneath the blandest smile and thesoftest language, will turn your Burgundy into vinegar.'
The speech with which Lord Gosford opened the session of the legislature in the autumn of 1835 was in line with the rest of his policy. He announced his determination to effect the redress of every grievance. In some cases the action of the executive government would be sufficient to supply the remedy. In others the assistance of the legislature would be necessary. A third class of cases would call for the sanction of the British parliament. He promised that no discrimination against French Canadians should be made in appointments to office. He expressed the opinion that executive councillors should not sit in the legislature. He announced that the French would be guaranteed the use of their native tongue. He made an earnest plea for the settlement of the financial difficulty, and offered some concessions. The legislature should be given control of the hereditary revenues of the Crown, if provision were made for the support of the executive and the judiciary. Finally, he made a plea for the reconciliation of the French and English races in the country, whom he described as 'the offspring of the two foremost nationsof mankind.' Not even the most extreme of thePatriotescould fail to see that Lord Gosford was holding out to them an olive branch.
Great dissatisfaction, of course, arose among the English in the colony at Lord Gosford's policy. 'Constitutional associations,' which had been formed in Quebec and Montreal for the defence of the constitution and the rights and privileges of the English-speaking inhabitants of Canada, expressed gloomy forebodings as to the probable result of the policy. The British in Montreal organized among themselves a volunteer rifle corps, eight hundred strong, 'to protect their persons and property, and to assist in maintaining the rights and principles granted them by the constitution'; and there was much indignation when the rifle corps was forced to disband by order of the governor, who declared that the constitution was in no danger, and that, even if it were, the government would be competent to deal with the situation.
Nor did Gosford find it plain sailing with all the French Canadians. Papineau's followers in the House took up at first a distinctly independent attitude. Gosford was informedthat the appointment of the royal commission was an insult to the Assembly; it threw doubt on the assertions which Papineau and his followers had made in petitions and resolutions. If the report of the commissioners turned out to be in accord with the views of the House, well and good; but if not, that would not influence the attitude of the House. They would not alter their demands.
In spite, however, of the uneasiness of the English official element, and the obduracy of the extremePatriotes, it is barely possible that Gosford, with hisbonhomieand his Burgundy, might have effected a modus vivendi, had there not occurred, about six months after Gosford's arrival in Canada, one of those unfortunate and unforeseen events which upset the best-laid schemes of mice and men. This was the indiscreet action of Sir Francis Bond Head, the newly appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, in communicating to the legislature of Upper Canada theipsissima verbaof his instructions from the Colonial Office. It was immediately seen that a discrepancy existed between the tenor of Sir Francis Bond Head's instructions and the tenor of Lord Gosford's speech at the opening of the legislature of Lower Canada in 1835.Sir Francis Bond Head's instructions showed beyond peradventure that the British government did not contemplate any real constitutional changes in the Canadas; above all, it did not propose to yield to the demand for an elective Legislative Council. This fact was called to the attention of Papineau and his friends by Marshall Spring Bidwell, the speaker of the Assembly of Upper Canada; and immediately the fat was in the fire. Papineau was confirmed in his belief that justice could not be hoped for; those who had been won over by Gosford's blandishments experienced a revulsion of feeling; and Gosford saw the fruit of his efforts vanishing into thin air.
A climax came over the question of supply. Lord Gosford had asked the Assembly to vote a permanent civil list, in view of the fact that the government offered to hand over to the control of the legislature the casual and territorial revenues of the Crown. But the publication of Sir Francis Bond Head's instructions effectually destroyed any hope of this compromise being accepted. In the session of the House which was held in the early part of 1836, Papineau and his friends not only refused to vote a permanent civillist; they declined to grant more than six months' supply in any case; and with this they made the threat that if the demands of thePatrioteswere not met at the end of the six months, no more supplies would be voted. This action was deemed so unsatisfactory that the Legislative Council threw out the bill of supply. The result was widespread distress among the public officials of the colony. This was the fourth year in which no provision had been made for the upkeep of government. In 1833 the bill of supply had been so cumbered with conditions that it had been rejected by the Legislative Council. In 1834, owing to disputes between the Executive and the Assembly, the legislature had separated without a vote on the estimates. In 1835 the Assembly had declined to make any vote of supply. In earlier years the Executive had been able, owing to its control of certain royal and imperial revenues, to carry on the government after a fashion under such circumstances; but since it had transferred a large part of these revenues to the control of the legislature, it was no longer able to meet the situation. Papineau and his friends doubtless recognized that they now had the 'Bureaucrats' at their mercy; andthey seem to have made up their minds to achieve the full measure of their demands, or make government impossible by withholding the supplies, no matter what suffering this course might inflict on the families of the public servants.
In the autumn of 1836 the royal commissioners brought their labours to a close. Lord Gosford, it is true, remained in the colony as governor until the beginning of 1838, and Sir George Gipps remained until the beginning of 1837, but Sir Charles Grey left for England in November 1836 with the last of the commissioners' reports. These reports, which were six in number, exercised little direct influence upon the course of events in Canada. The commissioners pronounced against the introduction of responsible government, in the modern sense of the term, on the ground that it would be incompatible with the status of a colony. They advised against the project of an elective Legislative Council. In the event of a crisis arising, they submitted the question whether the total suspension of the constitution would not be less objectionable than any partial interference with the particular clauses. It is evident from the reports that the commissioners hadbravely survived their earlier view that the discontented Canadians might be won over by unctuous blandishments alone. They could not avoid the conclusion that this policy had failed.
[1] He was really of Swiss extraction.
When the legislature of Lower Canada met in the autumn of 1836, Lord Gosford earnestly called its attention to the estimates of the current year and the accounts showing the arrears unpaid. Six months, however, had passed by, and there was no sign of the redress of grievances. The royal commission, indeed, had not completed its investigations. The Assembly, therefore, refused once more to vote the necessary supplies. 'In reference to the demand for a supply,' they told the governor, 'relying on the salutary maxim, that the correction of abuses and the redress of grievances ought to precede the grant thereof, we have been of opinion that there is nothing to authorize us to alter our resolution of the last session.'
This answer marked the final and indubitable breakdown of the policy of conciliation without concession. This was recognized byGosford, who soon afterwards wrote home asking to be allowed to resign, and recommending the appointment of a governor whose hands were 'not pledged as mine are to a mild and conciliatory line of policy.'
Two alternatives were now open to the British ministers—either to make a complete capitulation to the demands of thePatriotes, or to deal with the situation in a high-handed way. They chose the latter course, though with some hesitation and perhaps with regret. On March 6, 1837, Lord John Russell, chancellor of the Exchequer in the Melbourne administration and one of the most liberal-minded statesmen in England, introduced into the House of Commons ten resolutions dealing with the affairs of Canada. These resolutions recited that since 1832 no provision had been made by the Assembly of Lower Canada for defraying the charges for the administration of justice or for the support of the civil government; that the attention of the Assembly had been called to the arrears due; and that the Assembly had declined to vote a supply until its demands for radical political changes were satisfied. The resolutions declared that though both the bodies in question might be improved in respect of their composition, itwas inadvisable to grant the demand to make the Legislative Council elective, or to subject the Executive Council to the responsibility demanded by the House of Assembly. In regard to the financial question, the resolutions repeated the offer made by Lord Aylmer and Lord Gosford—namely, to hand over to the Assembly the control of the hereditary, territorial, and casual revenues of the Crown, on condition that the Assembly would grant a permanent civil list. But the main feature of the resolutions was the clause empowering the governor to pay out of the public revenues, without authorization of the Assembly, the moneys necessary for defraying the cost of government in the province up to April 10, 1837. This, though not exactly a suspension of the constitution of Lower Canada and a measure quite legally within the competency of the House of Commons, was a flat negative to the claim of the Lower-Canadian Assembly to control over the executive government, through the power of the purse or otherwise.
A long and important debate in Parliament followed on these resolutions. Some of the chief political leaders of the day took part in the discussion. Daniel O'Connell, the greattribune of the Irish people, took up the cudgels for the French Canadians. Doubtless it seemed to him that the French Canadians, like the Irish, were victims of Anglo-Saxon tyranny and bigotry. Sir George Grey, the colleague of Gosford, Lord Stanley, a former colonial secretary, and William Ewart Gladstone, then a vigorous young Tory, spoke in support of the resolutions. The chief opposition came from the Radical wing of the Whig party, headed by Hume and Roebuck; but these members were comparatively few in number, and the resolutions were passed by overwhelming majorities.
Wolfred Nelson. From a print in the Château de Ramezay.Wolfred Nelson.From a print in the Château de Ramezay.
Wolfred Nelson. From a print in the Château de Ramezay.Wolfred Nelson.From a print in the Château de Ramezay.
As soon as the passage of the resolutions became known in Canada, Papineau and his friends began to set the heather on fire. On May 7, 1837, thePatriotesheld a huge open-air meeting at St Ours, eleven miles above Sorel on the river Richelieu. The chief organizer of the meeting was Dr Wolfred Nelson, a member of the Assembly living in the neighbouring village of St Denis, who was destined to be one of the leaders of the revolt at the end of the year. Papineau himself was present at the meeting and he spoke in his usual violent strain. He submitted a resolution declaring that 'we cannot butconsider a government which has recourse to injustice, to force, and to a violation of the social contract, anything else than an oppressive government, a government by force, for which the measure of our submission should henceforth be simply the measure of our numerical strength, in combination with the sympathy we may find elsewhere.' At St Laurent a week later he used language no less dangerous. 'The Russell resolutions,' he cried, 'are a foul stain; the people should not, and will not, submit to them; the people must transmit their just rights to their posterity, even though it cost them their property and their lives to do so.'
These meetings were prototypes of many that followed. All over the province thePatriotesmet together to protest against what they called 'coercion.' As a rule the meetings were held in the country parishes after church on Sunday, when the habitants were gathered together. Most inflammatory language was used, and flags and placards were displayed bearing such devices as 'Papineau et le système électif,' 'Papineau et l'indépendence,' and 'A bas le despotisme.' Alarmed by such language, Lord Gosford issued on June 15 a proclamation calling on all loyalsubjects to discountenance writings of a seditious tendency, and to avoid meetings of a turbulent or political character. But the proclamation produced no abatement in the agitation; it merely offered one more subject for denunciation.
During this period Papineau and his friends continually drew their inspiration from the procedure of the Whigs in the American colonies before 1776. The resolutions of thePatriotesrecalled the language of the Declaration of Independence. One of the first measures of the Americans had been to boycott English goods; one of the first measures of thePatrioteswas a resolution passed at St Ours binding them to forswear the use of imported English goods and to use only the products of Canadian industry. At the short and abortive session of the legislature which took place at the end of the summer of 1837, nearly all the members of the Assembly appeared in clothes made of Canadian frieze. The shifts of some of the members to avoid wearing English imported articles were rather amusing. 'Mr Rodier's dress,' said the QuebecMercury, 'excited the greatest attention, being unique with the exception of a pair of Berlin gloves, viz.: frock coat ofgranite coloredétoffe du pays; inexpressibles and vest of the same material, striped blue and white; straw hat, and beef shoes, with a pair of home-made socks, completed theoutréattire. Mr Rodier, it was remarked, had no shirt on, having doubtless been unable to smuggle or manufacture one.' But Louis LaFontaine and 'Beau' Viger limited their patriotism, it appears, to the wearing of Canadian-made waistcoats. The imitation of the American revolutionists did not end here. If the New England colonies had their 'Sons of Liberty,' Lower Canada had its 'Fils de la Liberté'—an association formed in Montreal in the autumn of 1837. And the Lower Canada Patriotes outstripped the New England patriots in the republican character of their utterances. 'Our only hope,' announcedLa Minerve, 'is to elect our governor ourselves, or, in other words, to cease to belong to the British Empire.' A manifesto of some of the younger spirits of thePatrioteparty, issued on October 1, 1837, spoke of 'proud designs, which in our day must emancipate our beloved country from all human authority except that of the bold democracy residing within its bosom.' To add point to these opinions, there sprang up all over the countryvolunteer companies of armedPatriotes, led and organized by militia officers who had been dismissed for seditious utterances.
Naturally, this situation caused much concern among the loyal people of the country. Loyalist meetings were held in Quebec and Montreal, to offset thePatriotemeetings; and an attempt was made to form a loyalist rifle corps in Montreal. The attempt failed owing to the opposition of the governor, who was afraid that such a step would merely aggravate the situation. Not even Gosford, however, was blind to the seriousness of the situation. He wrote to the colonial secretary on September 2, 1837, that all hope of conciliation had passed. Papineau's aims were now the separation of Canada from England and the establishment of a republican form of government. 'I am disposed to think,' he concluded, 'that you may be under the necessity of suspending the constitution.'
It was at this time that the Church first threw its weight openly against the revolutionary movement. The British government had accorded to Catholics in Canada a measure of liberty at once just and generous; and the bishops and clergy were not slow to see that under a republican form of government,whether as a state in the American Union or as an independentnation canadienne, they might be much worse off, and would not be any better off, than under the dominion of Great Britain. In the summer of 1837 Mgr Lartigue, the bishop of Montreal, addressed a communication to the clergy of his diocese asking them to keep the people within the path of duty. In October he followed this up by a Pastoral Letter, to be read in all the churches, warning the people against the sin of rebellion. He held over those who contemplated rebellion the penalties of the Church: 'The present question amounts to nothing less than this—whether you will choose to maintain, or whether you will choose to abandon, the laws of your religion.'
The ecclesiastical authorities were roused to action by a great meeting held on October 23, at St Charles on the Richelieu, the largest and most imposing of all the meetings thus far. Five or six thousand people attended it, representing all the counties about the Richelieu. The proceedings were admirably staged. Dr Wolfred Nelson was in the chair, but Papineau was the central figure. A company of armed men, headed by two militia officers who had been dismissed for disloyalty, anddrawn up as a guard, saluted every resolution of the meeting with a volley. A wooden pillar, with a cap of liberty on top, was erected, and dedicated to Papineau. At the end of the proceedings Papineau was led up to the column to receive an address. After this all present marched past singing popular airs; and each man placed his hand on the column, swearing to be faithful to the cause of his country, and to conquer or die for her. All this, of course, was comparatively innocent. The resolutions, too, were not more violent than many others which had been passed elsewhere. Nor did Papineau use language more extreme than usual. Many of thePatriotes, indeed, considered his speech too moderate. He deprecated any recourse to arms and advised his hearers merely to boycott English goods, in order to bring the government to righteousness. But some of his lieutenants used language which seemed dangerous. Roused by the eloquence of their leader, they went further than he would venture, and advocated an appeal to the arbitrament of war. 'The time has come,' cried Wolfred Nelson, 'to melt our spoons into bullets.'
The exact attitude of Papineau duringthese months of agitation is difficult to determine. He does not seem to have been quite clear as to what course he should pursue. He had completely lost faith in British justice. He earnestly desired the emancipation of Canada from British rule and the establishment of a republican system of government. But he could not make up his mind to commit himself to armed rebellion. 'I must say, however,' he had announced at St Laurent, 'and it is neither fear nor scruple that makes me do so, that the day has not yet come for us to respond to that appeal.' The same attitude is apparent, in spite of the haughty and defiant language, in the letter which he addressed to the governor's secretary in answer to an inquiry as to what he had said at St Laurent:
SIR,—The pretension of the governor to interrogate me respecting my conduct at St Laurent on the 15th of May last is an impertinence which I repel with contempt and silence.
I, however, take the pen merely to tell the governor that it is false that any of the resolutions adopted at the meeting of the county of Montreal, held at St Laurenton the 15th May last, recommend a violation of the laws, as in his ignorance he may believe, or as he at least asserts.—Your obedient servant,
L. J. PAPINEAU.
At St Charles Papineau was even more precise in repudiating revolution; and there is no evidence that, when rebellion was decided upon, Papineau played any important part in laying the plans. In later years he was always emphatic in denying that the rebellion of 1837 had been primarily his handiwork. 'I was,' he said in 1847, 'neither more nor less guilty, nor more nor less deserving, than a great number of my colleagues.' The truth seems to be that Papineau always balked a little at the idea of armed rebellion, and that he was carried off his feet at the end of 1837 by his younger associates, whose enthusiasm he himself had inspired. He had raised the wind, but he could not ride the whirlwind.
South-Western Lower Canada, 1837.South-Western Lower Canada, 1837.
South-Western Lower Canada, 1837.South-Western Lower Canada, 1837.
As the autumn of 1837 wore on, the situation in Lower Canada began to assume an aspect more and more threatening. In spite of a proclamation from the governor forbidding such meetings, thePatriotescontinued to gather for military drill and musketry exercises. Armed bands went about the countryside, in many places intimidating the loyalists and forcing loyal magistrates and militia officers to send in their resignations to the governor. As early as July some of the Scottish settlers at Côte St Joseph, near St Eustache, had fled from their homes, leaving their property to its fate. Several houses at Côte St Mary had been fired upon or broken into. A letter of Sir John Colborne, the commander of the forces in British North America, written on October 6, shows what the state of affairs was at that time: