The Address of L. J. Papineau to the Electors of St. Maurice and Huntingdon: Difference between revisions

From Independence of Québec
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 5: Line 5:
When a deputation of influential men from the County of Huntingdon - the first in the country as to population, and which is second to none in intelligence, in agricultural and industrial wealth, but especially in patriotic devotion, in sacrifices made, in sufferings endured, in ravages experienced, as much as in any other part of the Province, owing to its patriotic devotion - avails itself of the opportunity of the first election made since my return to the bosom of my country, after eight years of absence in a foreign land, to be of me to become a candidate of the honour of representing them in Parliament, - when, in reply to my objections, they answer not only with arguments, by when they appeal to reminiscences, and sentiments the most touching - and when some of them say to me, "For the holy cause of the country, we have suffered in common; we in our families as you in yours; we have returned from exile, and from transportation to the Penal Colonies, where we have been ill treated; you were able to escape the vengeance of our persecutors, and our knowledge of that fact was a consolation for us in our sufferings; you were able to find a protecting asylum in the time of trouble in the classic land of liberty - the happy country which adjoins us, the the glorious and powerful confederation of the United States -and afterwards in that hospitable, polite, and learned land of our ancestors, 'La Belle France,' - the instructress for years of those European people who desire to follow in her steps in the path of liberty, progress, and the highest civilization. We, in the name of our past trials- as men who have abandoned non of our convictions - who abjure none of our former opinions - who believe you to be as unchanged as ourselves -we beg of you to consent to represent us. We know enough of the country to be able to assure you that we express its unanimous wishes; and that we shall bring joy to it, if we carry with us your acceptance." To give a refusal founded on personal considerations, upon the love of repose after long years of agitation, would be a disgrace and a meanness of which I shall not be guilty. Should I give such a refusal, it will only be after full consideration of the ??? that may result from my election or ???rement. I incline to believe that at the present moment - I do not say always - my retirement will be the most advisable step. I owe it to your kindness - to my former position - not to withdraw without strong reasons for doing so; and I am compelled by your sollicitude to make them public, and to allow you to judge of them.
When a deputation of influential men from the County of Huntingdon - the first in the country as to population, and which is second to none in intelligence, in agricultural and industrial wealth, but especially in patriotic devotion, in sacrifices made, in sufferings endured, in ravages experienced, as much as in any other part of the Province, owing to its patriotic devotion - avails itself of the opportunity of the first election made since my return to the bosom of my country, after eight years of absence in a foreign land, to be of me to become a candidate of the honour of representing them in Parliament, - when, in reply to my objections, they answer not only with arguments, by when they appeal to reminiscences, and sentiments the most touching - and when some of them say to me, "For the holy cause of the country, we have suffered in common; we in our families as you in yours; we have returned from exile, and from transportation to the Penal Colonies, where we have been ill treated; you were able to escape the vengeance of our persecutors, and our knowledge of that fact was a consolation for us in our sufferings; you were able to find a protecting asylum in the time of trouble in the classic land of liberty - the happy country which adjoins us, the the glorious and powerful confederation of the United States -and afterwards in that hospitable, polite, and learned land of our ancestors, 'La Belle France,' - the instructress for years of those European people who desire to follow in her steps in the path of liberty, progress, and the highest civilization. We, in the name of our past trials- as men who have abandoned non of our convictions - who abjure none of our former opinions - who believe you to be as unchanged as ourselves -we beg of you to consent to represent us. We know enough of the country to be able to assure you that we express its unanimous wishes; and that we shall bring joy to it, if we carry with us your acceptance." To give a refusal founded on personal considerations, upon the love of repose after long years of agitation, would be a disgrace and a meanness of which I shall not be guilty. Should I give such a refusal, it will only be after full consideration of the ??? that may result from my election or ???rement. I incline to believe that at the present moment - I do not say always - my retirement will be the most advisable step. I owe it to your kindness - to my former position - not to withdraw without strong reasons for doing so; and I am compelled by your sollicitude to make them public, and to allow you to judge of them.


How has the confidence with which you honour me been inspired? ...
How has the confidence with which you honour me been inspired? It can only have been by your observation of my public life during thirty years - during a struggle almost incessant, energetic, but conscientious, against a bad Government; but much less guilty then than it has become since.


That bad government is not, in my opinion, that of the Murrays, Haldimands, Craigs, Dalhousies, Colbornes, Thomsons, and others, under which we and our associates have successively suffered; - it is that of England, which has selected, approve, recompensed, those men for their acts of tyranny and violence towards the Colonies, from which it is natural to conclude that they have been docile in following their instruction; - it is that of England, which has censured the Prevosts, Sherbrookes, Kempts, and Bagots, who endeavoured slightly to ameliorate the rigour of their instructions, through a desire to be moderately just towards us.


That this Government was a bad one is no longer a disputed question. The problem was first solved by the complaints of the people, and since by the denunciations full of bitterness as of truth which the representatives of royalty have fulminated against the system of which we complain. The report of Lord Durham, the correspondence of Lord Sydenham, in those parts in which they examine the conduct and opposing pretensions of the Executive and of the representative bodies in the two Canadas carry condemnation against all the administrations subsequent to the instruction of the representative system as formal as the most zealous patriots had ever expressed. It was Lord Sydenham who said "When I look at what the government and the administration of the Province has been, my only astonishment is that they should have endured it so long. For my own part, strong as is my antipathy to Yankee domination and rule, I would never have combatted against them as thousands of poor devils have done, whom the Family Compact never cease to call rebels, in order to preserve such a government as they have." The noble writer, partial to the aristocracy which had showered upon him wealth and honors, hostile and prejudiced against the wise institutions of the United States, the most perfect with which, up to this time, humanity has been gifted, says here with more authority than any colonist had ever done, that the government attacked did not deserve to be defended. Is there then a wide difference between the government which being attacked does not deserve that it should be defended by force of arms, and that which deserves that arms should be taken up to overthrow it? The writer in question has not endeavoured to establish such a distinction. Had he made the attempt, it would have been doubtless so fine drawn, that it would have eluded the observation of many clever men.


That we have lived under a wretched regime is abundantly admitted and proved. It is for those who cannot escape from the consequences which flow from their admissions to show that the new order of things is better than the old one - that the reforms which they have indicated were sincere and sufficient - that responsible Government such as has been practiced has not been a word thrown out at random, a vain theory nullified  by the practice, and explanations of Lords Russell, Syndeham, and Metcalfe, that the Act of Union accompanied by this concession, has been given in order that popular influence should be efficiently respected by Governors. For myself I believe nothing of the kind. If I believe in the liberal dispositions of the men who passed the Act of Union of the Canadas, I might be tempted to accede to your wish that I should re-enter public life in spite of the fatigues, the disgusts, the persecutions that all the representatives who have defended with integrity your rights and your interests have experienced, because then I should admit that they would permit to the Provincial Parliament a Legislature in conformity with your wishes, in conformity with the great voice of the majority, and that the prospects of being able to aid in doing good to the dear country of our birth, would outweigh the reluctance which every man must have who has no other ambition than the public good, in assuming the moral responsibility which weighs upon those colonial representatives who, with influence to make their opinions felt, love the country of their birth or adoption and its liberties more than they live a distant metropolis with its monopolies, its privileges, and its partialities.


I am, Gentlemen, with profound respect, Your obediant servant, L. J. Papineau.
Lord Russel, who caused the Union Act to be passed, had no intention of giving us a better Government than that which he suppressed. It was not by a palpable injustice that it was desired to prepare a future of justice, conciliation, and contentment. The official documents placed before the eyes, and loading the tables of Parliament, established that in Lower Canada the proportion of those opposed to that scheme was in nine to one. The Act was nevertheless imposed upon us by coercion. Such a flagrant contempt for the known and expressed feelings of the people is overturning the first principle of all political morality. It declares as null and contemptible the words "rights of colonies" in the days of their weakness. Within and without these Provinces there is not a colonist who, if he respects himself and his own dignity, as a man and a citizen, who does not feel that he is wronged - that his whole social existence is precarious and degrading when it depends on transatlantic legislation, deaf to the almost unanimous representations of interested parties settled in Canada, not one of whom but should stamp himself a malcontent as long as this unjust aggression continues. If he must obey a bad law to avoid punishment, at least let him not love the authority which imposes it, nor keep a disgraceful silence. Everything must be said and done which is legally possible to cause it to be abrogated.
 
Before the Act of Union there was a strong public opinion. General elections caused no uneasiness as to their results. The popular party was assured of coming out of each of those struggles better united and more numerous. The proud attitude that the representative body maintained towards the Executive, and the independence of the Parliamentary debates, prepared the people not only of this but also of the neighboring Provinces, to catch a glimpse, in a future indeterminate but certain, of a day of full liberty which will shine upon each portion of the American Continent.
 
Before the constitutions of these colonies had been destroyed by the power of the bayonet, and the intervention of a Parliament beyond the seas against those of Canadas, the people were strong there, represented latterly in one of the Provinces by eighty-eight representatives, in the other by sixty odd. If it had been honestly intended to concede with the Act of Union true Responsible Government, they would have respected acquired rights, left to each Province its representation too numerous then to be easily intimidated or bought. But the reduction of members - the crafty and artificial arrangement of the representation proves to every one not wishing to shut his eyes to the light, nor his understanding to the evidence, what has been the machiavelism of Ministers who, while conceding in theory, power to the representatives of the people, contrived such resources that the Governors, their agents, had opportunities of corruption at its source part of the representation in the seven little boroughs or towns of Upper Canada, and in many counties of the United Province, where a very small population of newly arrived colonists, debtors to the crown, having as yet no local affection, are quite predisposed to sustain blindly the pretensions of each Governor, whatever he may be, thus exciting among them the desire to govern according to their own personal views or those of secret and irresponsible favorites, - a desired which could not have been excited if the only rational system of proportioning after each census the representation to the population had been established.
 
But if it be objected - Why demand what will be refused? - Why? because the demand is just, - why? because it will be refused, and such prolonged refusal will establish the bad faith with which Responsible Government has been conceded, which means, if it be not a snare and a deception, that England has removed all future interference in our legislation - that it has no predilection, no antipathy for any political system that the majorities may wish to impose on themselves on those if its colonies to which it has made the concession.
 
All that I demanded in the House in 1836, with so large a majority of my colleagues, supported as we were by an equal proportion in the mass of the population, I demand again in 1847, and believe that it is impossible there can be contentment as long as these just demands shall be unsatisfied. By some of them we claimed an absolute controul, by the representatives, over all duties levied in the Provinces. It was, of all the rights appertaining to the Colonies, the mist firmly established by the authority of jurists, as well as by colonial history. ...
 
 
 
 
I am, Gentlemen, with profound respect, Your obedient servant, L. J. Papineau.

Revision as of 19:28, 16 September 2007

To the Electors of the County of Huntingdon

Gentlemen,

When a deputation of influential men from the County of Huntingdon - the first in the country as to population, and which is second to none in intelligence, in agricultural and industrial wealth, but especially in patriotic devotion, in sacrifices made, in sufferings endured, in ravages experienced, as much as in any other part of the Province, owing to its patriotic devotion - avails itself of the opportunity of the first election made since my return to the bosom of my country, after eight years of absence in a foreign land, to be of me to become a candidate of the honour of representing them in Parliament, - when, in reply to my objections, they answer not only with arguments, by when they appeal to reminiscences, and sentiments the most touching - and when some of them say to me, "For the holy cause of the country, we have suffered in common; we in our families as you in yours; we have returned from exile, and from transportation to the Penal Colonies, where we have been ill treated; you were able to escape the vengeance of our persecutors, and our knowledge of that fact was a consolation for us in our sufferings; you were able to find a protecting asylum in the time of trouble in the classic land of liberty - the happy country which adjoins us, the the glorious and powerful confederation of the United States -and afterwards in that hospitable, polite, and learned land of our ancestors, 'La Belle France,' - the instructress for years of those European people who desire to follow in her steps in the path of liberty, progress, and the highest civilization. We, in the name of our past trials- as men who have abandoned non of our convictions - who abjure none of our former opinions - who believe you to be as unchanged as ourselves -we beg of you to consent to represent us. We know enough of the country to be able to assure you that we express its unanimous wishes; and that we shall bring joy to it, if we carry with us your acceptance." To give a refusal founded on personal considerations, upon the love of repose after long years of agitation, would be a disgrace and a meanness of which I shall not be guilty. Should I give such a refusal, it will only be after full consideration of the ??? that may result from my election or ???rement. I incline to believe that at the present moment - I do not say always - my retirement will be the most advisable step. I owe it to your kindness - to my former position - not to withdraw without strong reasons for doing so; and I am compelled by your sollicitude to make them public, and to allow you to judge of them.

How has the confidence with which you honour me been inspired? It can only have been by your observation of my public life during thirty years - during a struggle almost incessant, energetic, but conscientious, against a bad Government; but much less guilty then than it has become since.

That bad government is not, in my opinion, that of the Murrays, Haldimands, Craigs, Dalhousies, Colbornes, Thomsons, and others, under which we and our associates have successively suffered; - it is that of England, which has selected, approve, recompensed, those men for their acts of tyranny and violence towards the Colonies, from which it is natural to conclude that they have been docile in following their instruction; - it is that of England, which has censured the Prevosts, Sherbrookes, Kempts, and Bagots, who endeavoured slightly to ameliorate the rigour of their instructions, through a desire to be moderately just towards us.

That this Government was a bad one is no longer a disputed question. The problem was first solved by the complaints of the people, and since by the denunciations full of bitterness as of truth which the representatives of royalty have fulminated against the system of which we complain. The report of Lord Durham, the correspondence of Lord Sydenham, in those parts in which they examine the conduct and opposing pretensions of the Executive and of the representative bodies in the two Canadas carry condemnation against all the administrations subsequent to the instruction of the representative system as formal as the most zealous patriots had ever expressed. It was Lord Sydenham who said "When I look at what the government and the administration of the Province has been, my only astonishment is that they should have endured it so long. For my own part, strong as is my antipathy to Yankee domination and rule, I would never have combatted against them as thousands of poor devils have done, whom the Family Compact never cease to call rebels, in order to preserve such a government as they have." The noble writer, partial to the aristocracy which had showered upon him wealth and honors, hostile and prejudiced against the wise institutions of the United States, the most perfect with which, up to this time, humanity has been gifted, says here with more authority than any colonist had ever done, that the government attacked did not deserve to be defended. Is there then a wide difference between the government which being attacked does not deserve that it should be defended by force of arms, and that which deserves that arms should be taken up to overthrow it? The writer in question has not endeavoured to establish such a distinction. Had he made the attempt, it would have been doubtless so fine drawn, that it would have eluded the observation of many clever men.

That we have lived under a wretched regime is abundantly admitted and proved. It is for those who cannot escape from the consequences which flow from their admissions to show that the new order of things is better than the old one - that the reforms which they have indicated were sincere and sufficient - that responsible Government such as has been practiced has not been a word thrown out at random, a vain theory nullified by the practice, and explanations of Lords Russell, Syndeham, and Metcalfe, that the Act of Union accompanied by this concession, has been given in order that popular influence should be efficiently respected by Governors. For myself I believe nothing of the kind. If I believe in the liberal dispositions of the men who passed the Act of Union of the Canadas, I might be tempted to accede to your wish that I should re-enter public life in spite of the fatigues, the disgusts, the persecutions that all the representatives who have defended with integrity your rights and your interests have experienced, because then I should admit that they would permit to the Provincial Parliament a Legislature in conformity with your wishes, in conformity with the great voice of the majority, and that the prospects of being able to aid in doing good to the dear country of our birth, would outweigh the reluctance which every man must have who has no other ambition than the public good, in assuming the moral responsibility which weighs upon those colonial representatives who, with influence to make their opinions felt, love the country of their birth or adoption and its liberties more than they live a distant metropolis with its monopolies, its privileges, and its partialities.

Lord Russel, who caused the Union Act to be passed, had no intention of giving us a better Government than that which he suppressed. It was not by a palpable injustice that it was desired to prepare a future of justice, conciliation, and contentment. The official documents placed before the eyes, and loading the tables of Parliament, established that in Lower Canada the proportion of those opposed to that scheme was in nine to one. The Act was nevertheless imposed upon us by coercion. Such a flagrant contempt for the known and expressed feelings of the people is overturning the first principle of all political morality. It declares as null and contemptible the words "rights of colonies" in the days of their weakness. Within and without these Provinces there is not a colonist who, if he respects himself and his own dignity, as a man and a citizen, who does not feel that he is wronged - that his whole social existence is precarious and degrading when it depends on transatlantic legislation, deaf to the almost unanimous representations of interested parties settled in Canada, not one of whom but should stamp himself a malcontent as long as this unjust aggression continues. If he must obey a bad law to avoid punishment, at least let him not love the authority which imposes it, nor keep a disgraceful silence. Everything must be said and done which is legally possible to cause it to be abrogated.

Before the Act of Union there was a strong public opinion. General elections caused no uneasiness as to their results. The popular party was assured of coming out of each of those struggles better united and more numerous. The proud attitude that the representative body maintained towards the Executive, and the independence of the Parliamentary debates, prepared the people not only of this but also of the neighboring Provinces, to catch a glimpse, in a future indeterminate but certain, of a day of full liberty which will shine upon each portion of the American Continent.

Before the constitutions of these colonies had been destroyed by the power of the bayonet, and the intervention of a Parliament beyond the seas against those of Canadas, the people were strong there, represented latterly in one of the Provinces by eighty-eight representatives, in the other by sixty odd. If it had been honestly intended to concede with the Act of Union true Responsible Government, they would have respected acquired rights, left to each Province its representation too numerous then to be easily intimidated or bought. But the reduction of members - the crafty and artificial arrangement of the representation proves to every one not wishing to shut his eyes to the light, nor his understanding to the evidence, what has been the machiavelism of Ministers who, while conceding in theory, power to the representatives of the people, contrived such resources that the Governors, their agents, had opportunities of corruption at its source part of the representation in the seven little boroughs or towns of Upper Canada, and in many counties of the United Province, where a very small population of newly arrived colonists, debtors to the crown, having as yet no local affection, are quite predisposed to sustain blindly the pretensions of each Governor, whatever he may be, thus exciting among them the desire to govern according to their own personal views or those of secret and irresponsible favorites, - a desired which could not have been excited if the only rational system of proportioning after each census the representation to the population had been established.

But if it be objected - Why demand what will be refused? - Why? because the demand is just, - why? because it will be refused, and such prolonged refusal will establish the bad faith with which Responsible Government has been conceded, which means, if it be not a snare and a deception, that England has removed all future interference in our legislation - that it has no predilection, no antipathy for any political system that the majorities may wish to impose on themselves on those if its colonies to which it has made the concession.

All that I demanded in the House in 1836, with so large a majority of my colleagues, supported as we were by an equal proportion in the mass of the population, I demand again in 1847, and believe that it is impossible there can be contentment as long as these just demands shall be unsatisfied. By some of them we claimed an absolute controul, by the representatives, over all duties levied in the Provinces. It was, of all the rights appertaining to the Colonies, the mist firmly established by the authority of jurists, as well as by colonial history. ...



I am, Gentlemen, with profound respect, Your obedient servant, L. J. Papineau.