Reply of the Central and Permanent Committee of the County of Montreal to the Address of the London Working Men's Association: Difference between revisions

Bothers, - We have received ''[[The Address of the London Working Men's Association to the People of Canada]]''. It was read during a sitting of our [[Central and Permanent Committee]], in the midst of lively acclamations, and published in our newspapers. Diffused throughout the American continent, it proves that the intrepid democratic spirit that once shook the yoke of infamous barons and set limits to the despotic prerogatives of sovereigns, still animates a part of the citizens of your country.

Do not believe that, being very few, we fear the consequences of our determination. Nature gave fortified places to our country and valiant hearts to our people. For the hour, the arguments of justice and reason are our weapons. They can easily be replaced by more destructive weapons if the usurpers of our rights continue to have eyes too weak to see and ears too deaf to hear. We do not believe that bands of soldiers from Europe would wage a war of extermination against the democracy of America. 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.

If we address your government on the tone of challenge, it is because we are forced to it. Our objections are neither recent nor new in nature. They were stated publicly and clearly; the mode and measures of redress have been well defined. Since many years, our fellow-citizens reiterate them during public meetings. They presented on this subject humble requests to your Parliament, which, after showing a deaf ear, now adds the aggression to contempt. 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.

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. If the colonies become the instrument of the corrupted favouritism which is used to shelter and maintain the poorest portion your aristocracy, an excuse to maintain professional armies, to deprive the people of their subsistence in order to pile up stones and mortar and to make fortifications out of it, or a pretext to restrict the free movement of your trade, then the separation of those which can be self-sufficient can only give stability to your freedoms and support the prosperity of your nation. 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.