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[[Image:Fantasque.jpg|thumb|''Le Fantasque'', first issue, August 1837]]<font color="blue">''Mr. Papineau''</font>: You are right, my friends, to want to organize a meeting similar to that of Quebec City. To this end, my voice and my heart are all yours. But you are not right to want me to chair it. There are life and honour in Quebec City. There was some when, under the reign of terror and under the inspiration of freedom, in the presence of Lord [[Wikipedia:John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham|Durham]], people faded the tyranny he exerted against the [[exiled of the Bermudas]]; withered the exuberance of his insanity when he published that by returning to the country the absent defendants would commit high treason, for which they would suffer death, without any lawsuit; when ''[http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/fantasque/ Le Fantasque]'' edified its readers, on the daily follies of the dictatorship's actions of the time (the current one could very well resuscitate it in all its liveliness); when people protested and petitioned against the | [[Image:Fantasque.jpg|thumb|''Le Fantasque'', first issue, August 1837]]<font color="blue">''Mr. Papineau''</font>: You are right, my friends, to want to organize a meeting similar to that of Quebec City. To this end, my voice and my heart are all yours. But you are not right to want me to chair it. There are life and honour in Quebec City. There was some when, under the reign of terror and under the inspiration of freedom, in the presence of Lord [[Wikipedia:John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham|Durham]], people faded the tyranny he exerted against the [[exiled of the Bermudas]]; withered the exuberance of his insanity when he published that by returning to the country the absent defendants would commit high treason, for which they would suffer death, without any lawsuit; when ''[http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/fantasque/ Le Fantasque]'' edified its readers, on the daily follies of the dictatorship's actions of the time (the current one could very well resuscitate it in all its liveliness); when people protested and petitioned against the Act of Union; when last summer they organized themselves in a committee of reform and progress; when finally, in a recent meeting, some gathered for the exaltation of French heroism, the execration of English despotism, the commiseration for the groans of agonizing Ireland. Yes, in Quebec City there is life and honour. In Montreal, that is another story. We have the seat of the [[Wikipedia:Responsible government|responsible government]] there. We have statesmen, politicians as deep as the abyss and men as mute as grave stones, who choke all measures which were born in Quebec City. Why do they do it? They did not tell me their secrets. I do not have enough perspicacity to guess them. It is necessary that you know if they like it that you have the public meeting you are planning. | ||
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Tyranny has been so exorbitant against your deplorable fatherland, made as joyful and beautiful by the good doings of the Providence as it has been obscured by the misdeeds of your governors, that it generally developed among you natives virtues, and defects which the foreign dominator gave birth to. You have been living in a more frequent state of conspiracy than any other people, against iniquities more atrocious than any other nation had to suffered. From there your more enthusiastic love for the cult of the fatherland; for your cherished dignity, [[Wikipedia:Erin|Erin]] the beautiful, Erin dispossessed by the despoiler insulting it. This love of the country, is the first of virtues for the English who give orders; it is in his eyes the most hateful of feelings that the people can nourish in his colonies of Ireland and Canada. It is the virtue which he most generally and most pitilessly punished. You give with a burst of generosity without limits your confidence to whoever is devoted to your cause. You know that I am one of these men; you want to testify your recognition to me in a manner which exceeds the limits of discretion, of national pride, of the feeling of esteem that you must nourish and display for yourselves, for your nationality and your nationals. The associations we create must tighten the bonds of confidence and mutual dependence between the associates. Do not do anything which can slacken the bonds of complete confidence between you all, in an Irish association, created for an Irish interest: the repeal of your harmful | Tyranny has been so exorbitant against your deplorable fatherland, made as joyful and beautiful by the good doings of the Providence as it has been obscured by the misdeeds of your governors, that it generally developed among you natives virtues, and defects which the foreign dominator gave birth to. You have been living in a more frequent state of conspiracy than any other people, against iniquities more atrocious than any other nation had to suffered. From there your more enthusiastic love for the cult of the fatherland; for your cherished dignity, [[Wikipedia:Erin|Erin]] the beautiful, Erin dispossessed by the despoiler insulting it. This love of the country, is the first of virtues for the English who give orders; it is in his eyes the most hateful of feelings that the people can nourish in his colonies of Ireland and Canada. It is the virtue which he most generally and most pitilessly punished. You give with a burst of generosity without limits your confidence to whoever is devoted to your cause. You know that I am one of these men; you want to testify your recognition to me in a manner which exceeds the limits of discretion, of national pride, of the feeling of esteem that you must nourish and display for yourselves, for your nationality and your nationals. The associations we create must tighten the bonds of confidence and mutual dependence between the associates. Do not do anything which can slacken the bonds of complete confidence between you all, in an Irish association, created for an Irish interest: the repeal of your harmful Act of Union.</blockquote> | ||
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Often decimated in punishment of your strong love for the country, you have too often organized in [[secret societies]], in which the English gold, the English spies pushed you to revenge; and, on the day before its explosion, betrayed you. This made you suspicious. It is the vice which to which the foreign dominator gave birth in natures which the Providence made to be the most trustful that there ever was on Earth. Ireland has currently more chances of salute than ever, because it does not have secret societies. Its hatred is as highly avowed as it is justly organized. | |||
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Don't you feel that eventually one will murmur in the ears of one another among you: "Eh what, you are twenty thousand Irish people here, and you considered that not one among you deserved the honour to chair your meeting; you have ruled that a foreigner should be installed above you all, when the question is not of a social interest as important for all our mixed populations, but of a special national interest for you." No. You must keep the direction and the presidency to yourselves. Others have a better right to it than me. | |||
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You have on other men more control and a better right to require than they answer your call, than you have on me. It is the first time, Messrs, that we meet. Are there not some other public men with whom you had a more frequent relationship than me; who sought you when they needed you; to whom you rendered services that they requested from you; with whom it was pleasant to receive your votes and who, in return of your votes in their election, promised soft words, respect and civility to you; who said to you that you had the right to their advice, their energetic encouragements, on any occasion you would ask them; the right to their cordial support everywhere you needed it? The time and the occasion have come when you should appreciate to their right value the sincerity and the importance of their promises. Go towards your representatives, go ahead with frankness and the same declarations that I advised you to bring to Mr. Drummond. It is your right to require, it is their duty to give you their support, if the objects which you seek are as to me they appears to be, useful and honourable to your fatherland, to mine, to you and all those who will second you. If they undeceive you, we will be obliged to them for it. Skilful operators, they will have given light to unhappy ones who groped in thick darkness. They can disillusion us, we can reveal truths to them which they are unaware of. It is only by comparing our doctrines that we can determine which one is the just and true ''[[doxy]]'', ours or theirs.</blockquote> | |||
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[[Image:Charles-metcalfe.jpg|thumb|Charles T. Metcalfe, | [[Image:Charles-metcalfe.jpg|thumb|Charles T. Metcalfe, Baron Metcalfe, Governor General of the United Province of Canada from 1843 to 1845]]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 tu 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. If this county meets to deliberate on the general interests on the country, its local interests, or questions related to the cause of the justice, exerted by generous vanquishers against oppressing kings; or to that of the rights, freedoms, and happiness of our Co-Subjects in any part of the Empire, this county has the right, if I keep the mandate it gave, to order my assistance and my participation in its discussions. In Montreal, I am but one citizen who timidly takes part to the deliberations, when its representatives disdain to do it. One so often said to my fellow-citizens, in voice as in writing, that I was a changed man, that I have become a [[paragon]] of devotion to the government against which I had fought all my life; that I applauded to the determination which Misters [[Viger]] and [[Papineau]] had taken to give their support to the administration of Lord [[Metcalfe]], since they remained in power, longer than those who burned of envy and desire to replace them; that, without the benevolent welcoming which 7,000 of these same fellow-citizens gave me in their recent meeting, I would have believed myself pushed back by the majority of them, with as much solicitude than I was it by their new leaders. Before my return and since my return, one so high proclaimed to my country that one should be careful not to elect a man whose principles were so unknown, floating and changeable that mine, unless one made him do his political profession of faith; and when I wanted to formulate it, one had so many intrigues done to prevent me from publishing it that I had to look at those as the charitable care of men who said to me:</blockquote> | ||
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