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

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In the free exercise of the privileges which are recognized to us - to defend the dear rights which are guaranteed to us, we held public meetings in our various counties, as a preliminary step, in order to solemnly protest against an infamous violation of our fundamental powers. Conscious of our strength and our right, we treated with contempt the stupid proclamation emitted by an ignorant governor against such meetings. We hope that this lesson will be understood. We are confident it will prevent in the future, here like elsewhere, any presumptuous attempt against the prerogatives of the people. We are happy that our prompt response to the attack of the British Parliament against our possessions gained your approval. Did you consider how enormous is the responsibility which the people of our province are invested towards all the British Empire? - Never the British cabinet could have had your Parliament adopt a monstrous measure in order to destroy the powers of a democracy, for sole purpose of hastening the payment of some ridiculous civil servants' wages, when this objective could have been achieved by simple and honest ways, if your aristocracy did not weave an impious plot against your own freedoms. 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.
In the free exercise of the privileges which are recognized to us - to defend the dear rights which are guaranteed to us, we held public meetings in our various counties, as a preliminary step, in order to solemnly protest against an infamous violation of our fundamental powers. Conscious of our strength and our right, we treated with contempt the stupid proclamation emitted by an ignorant governor against such meetings. We hope that this lesson will be understood. We are confident it will prevent in the future, here like elsewhere, any presumptuous attempt against the prerogatives of the people. We are happy that our prompt response to the attack of the British Parliament against our possessions gained your approval. Did you consider how enormous is the responsibility which the people of our province are invested towards all the British Empire? - Never the British cabinet could have had your Parliament adopt a monstrous measure in order to destroy the powers of a democracy, for sole purpose of hastening the payment of some ridiculous civil servants' wages, when this objective could have been achieved by simple and honest ways, if your aristocracy did not weave an impious plot against your own freedoms. 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.
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 spirits follow our courageous fight with the greatest interest - send us their wishes and wish to see us successfully defend the rights of all. 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.
Do not believe that, being very few, we fear the consequences of our determination. Nature gave to our country naturally fortified places and to our people of valiant hearts. 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 hard to hear. We do not believe that bands of soldiers from Europe would now deliver a war of extermination against the democracy of America. They are themselves the children of a democracy which, at 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 the criminal intentions against the generous blood of a people which defend the rights of any man.


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La conscience de porter cette lourde responsabilité, loin de nous décourager, nous revigore, car nous savons que, d'un bout à l'autre de l'Empire, tous les esprits énergétiques et libres suivent avec le plus grand intérêt notre lutte courageuse - nous envoient leurs voeux et souhaitent nous voir défendre avec succès les droits de tous. Pour notre part, soyez-en sûrs, nous sommes résolus à ne jamais nous soumettre aux desseins usurpateurs du ministère - à ne jamais vivre en étant pour le monde entier un objet de dérision, tel un peuple qui, plus ignorant que des esclaves dont on fait la traite, s'est laissé arracher le droit qui lui revenait de naissance, créant ainsi un précédent pour qu'une agression semblable soit perpétrée contre les libertés de ses frères dans toutes les autres colonies de l'Empire.
Ne croyez point que, étant peu nombreux, nous craignons les conséquences de notre détermination. La nature a donné à notre pays des places fortes et à notre peuple des cœurs vaillants. Pour l'heure, les arguments de la justice et de la raison sont nos armes. Ils peuvent aisément être remplacés par des armes plus destructrices si les usurpateurs de nos droits continuent d'avoir les yeux trop faibles pour voir et d'être trop durs d'oreille pour entendre. Nous ne croyons pas que des bandes de soldats venus d'Europe livreraient maintenant une guerre d'extermination contre la démocratie de l'Amérique. Ils sont eux-mêmes les enfants d'une démocratie qui, au XIXe siècle, est unie par une communauté de sentiments dans tout le monde civilisé. Ils savent qu'ils ne sont pas les instruments aveugles d'un maître brutal, mais des êtres moraux, responsables de leurs actes devant Dieu et l'humanité. Au jour de l'épreuve, ils jetteront bas les emblèmes de leurs cruelles besognes pour entrer dans le sein d'une fraternité américaine, au lieu de prêter leur concours à des desseins meurtriers contre le sang généreux d'un peuple qui défend les droits de tout homme.


Si nous nous adressons à votre gouvernement sur un ton de défi, c'est que nous y sommes forcés. Nos griefs ne sont ni récents ni d'un caractère nouveau. Ils ont été énoncés publiquement et clairement; le mode et les mesures de redressement ont été bien définis. Depuis des années, nos concitoyens les réitèrent dans des assemblées publiques. Ils ont présenté à ce sujet d'humbles requêtes à votre Parlement, lequel, après avoir fait la sourde oreille, ajoute maintenant l'agression au mépris. En pareilles circonstances, nous pouvons en appeler sans crainte au jugement du monde entier pour légitimer notre détermination à ne plus entretenir le vain espoir d'obtenir réparation d'outre-mer et à compter plutôt sur notre seule énergie ainsi que sur la sympathie de nos frères du continent américain, sympathie qu'une cause aussi juste ne peut manquer d'inspirer.
Si nous nous adressons à votre gouvernement sur un ton de défi, c'est que nous y sommes forcés. Nos griefs ne sont ni récents ni d'un caractère nouveau. Ils ont été énoncés publiquement et clairement; le mode et les mesures de redressement ont été bien définis. Depuis des années, nos concitoyens les réitèrent dans des assemblées publiques. Ils ont présenté à ce sujet d'humbles requêtes à votre Parlement, lequel, après avoir fait la sourde oreille, ajoute maintenant l'agression au mépris. En pareilles circonstances, nous pouvons en appeler sans crainte au jugement du monde entier pour légitimer notre détermination à ne plus entretenir le vain espoir d'obtenir réparation d'outre-mer et à compter plutôt sur notre seule énergie ainsi que sur la sympathie de nos frères du continent américain, sympathie qu'une cause aussi juste ne peut manquer d'inspirer.

Revision as of 08:19, 11 October 2007

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 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.

Your nation has always prided herself of the democracy which allowed her, in the course of long and hard battles, to preserve a freedom and a political power higher than those of her neighbours of Europe. We thus accept with gratitude the sympathy of a democracy animated by feelings so high and so just on the nature 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 scorn them for their misdeeds, no matter the merits of their fathers. 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 produce. 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 exerted and grow in complete freedom, far from an aristocracy whose deep roots would exhaust the soil. The rare exotic elements of this tribe that were transplanted from another world fade and disappear from this land which does not offer any food to their order and on which the words "Equality of rights" were engraved in eternal types as soon as it emerged from chaos.

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. 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.

For a long time united to you as subjects of the same sovereign, we too have felt the desséchante influence of an aristocracy, which, cherished in the Eastern hemisphere, was authorized, for our misfortune, to obstruct the Western hemisphere. 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 accession of a young queen to the throne created an occasion favourable to the renewal of the terms of the social contract and your contract of allegiance. Co-heirs with her of institutions of your country - this country for whose defense you have poured your blood many times -, you have, by the persevering labour of your daily work, brought this country to the ridge of richness; and now, in the middle of this blinding splendour, fruit of your untameable energy, one robs you trough unequal and unjust laws, one overburdens you with taxes, depriving to you of the bare essential in order to insure abundance to an arrogant caste busy to empêtrer in its snares, you who work honestly and conscientiously to create and maintain its immense fortune, which is at the same time its quota and the instrument of your political subjection. 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.

In the free exercise of the privileges which are recognized to us - to defend the dear rights which are guaranteed to us, we held public meetings in our various counties, as a preliminary step, in order to solemnly protest against an infamous violation of our fundamental powers. Conscious of our strength and our right, we treated with contempt the stupid proclamation emitted by an ignorant governor against such meetings. We hope that this lesson will be understood. We are confident it will prevent in the future, here like elsewhere, any presumptuous attempt against the prerogatives of the people. We are happy that our prompt response to the attack of the British Parliament against our possessions gained your approval. Did you consider how enormous is the responsibility which the people of our province are invested towards all the British Empire? - Never the British cabinet could have had your Parliament adopt a monstrous measure in order to destroy the powers of a democracy, for sole purpose of hastening the payment of some ridiculous civil servants' wages, when this objective could have been achieved by simple and honest ways, if your aristocracy did not weave an impious plot against your own freedoms. 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.

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 spirits follow our courageous fight with the greatest interest - send us their wishes and wish to see us successfully defend the rights of all. 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.

Do not believe that, being very few, we fear the consequences of our determination. Nature gave to our country naturally fortified places and to our people of valiant hearts. 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 hard to hear. We do not believe that bands of soldiers from Europe would now deliver a war of extermination against the democracy of America. They are themselves the children of a democracy which, at 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 the criminal intentions against the generous blood of a people which defend the rights of any man.

TO BE TRANSLATED

Si nous nous adressons à votre gouvernement sur un ton de défi, c'est que nous y sommes forcés. Nos griefs ne sont ni récents ni d'un caractère nouveau. Ils ont été énoncés publiquement et clairement; le mode et les mesures de redressement ont été bien définis. Depuis des années, nos concitoyens les réitèrent dans des assemblées publiques. Ils ont présenté à ce sujet d'humbles requêtes à votre Parlement, lequel, après avoir fait la sourde oreille, ajoute maintenant l'agression au mépris. En pareilles circonstances, nous pouvons en appeler sans crainte au jugement du monde entier pour légitimer notre détermination à ne plus entretenir le vain espoir d'obtenir réparation d'outre-mer et à compter plutôt sur notre seule énergie ainsi que sur la sympathie de nos frères du continent américain, sympathie qu'une cause aussi juste ne peut manquer d'inspirer.

Nous n'avons pas évoqué l'indépendance à l'endroit de la Couronne britannique, mais nous n'oublions pas que la destinée des colonies continentales est de se séparer de l'État métropolitain lorsque l'action inconstitutionnelle d'un pouvoir législatif résidant en pays lointain n'est plus supportable. Dans cette éventualité, la communauté d'intérêts qui devrait exister entre la démocratie de l'Ancien Monde et celle du Nouveau ne disparaîtrait point. Si les colonies deviennent l'instrument du favoritisme corrompu qui sert à abriter et à entretenir la portion la plus pauvre de votre aristocratie, une excuse pour maintenir des armées de métier, pour priver le peuple de sa subsistance afin d'empiler pierres et mortier et d'en faire des fortifications, ou encore un prétexte pour restreindre les libre mouvement de votre commerce, alors la séparation de celles qui peuvent se suffire à elles-mêmes ne peut que donner stabilité à vos libertés et favoriser la prospérité de votre nation. Voyez l'exemple des États-Unis qui, en une année, à titre d'enfant indépendant, contribuent davantage à l'honneur et au bénéfice de la mère patrie qu'ils n'auraient pu le faire en des siècles de faiblesse et de dépendance.

Encore une fois, nous vous remercions de la sympathie que vous exprimez envers le peuple canadien. Il est agréable d'en recevoir pareil témoignage de la part de citoyens anglais. Vous avez posé un geste noble: un peuple étant responsable des actes de ses gouvernants, vous avez fait preuve d'une détermination virile et vertueuse en faisant savoir à l'humanité que vous vous dissociez de l'énormité que tentent de commettre ceux sur les actions desquels vous n'avez, hélas pour vous-mêmes et pour nous, aucune prise. Quel que soit le résultat de votre noble patriotisme et de votre généreuse abnégation, nous sommes sûrs que vos enfants seront mieux armés contre votre oligarchie dominatrice que vous ne l'étiez, vous, au moment d'entrer dans la vie.

Nous désirons, par l'entremise de notre association, proclamer que, peu importe la voie que nous serons contraints d'emprunter, nous n'avons rien contre le peuple d'Angleterre. Nous luttons uniquement contre les agressions de ses oppresseurs tyranniques, qui sont aussi les nôtres.

Signé sur l'ordre et au nom du Comité central et permanent,

RAYMOND PLESSIS, Chairman
L.-J. PAPINEAU
C.-H. CÔTÉ
JOSEPH LE TOURNEUX
PIERRE CADIEUX
CHAMILLY DE LORIMIER
ANDRÉ OUIMET
J. PHELAN
C.-O. PERRAULT
E. B. O'CALLAGHAN
ROBERT NELSON
J. BOULANGET
LOUIS PERRAULT
W. GALT
E.-R. FABRE
T. S. BROWN
E.-N. DUCHESNOIS
JOSHUA BELL
CHEVALIER DE LORIMIER, Secretary
GEORGE-ÉTIENNE CARTIER, Secretary

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