THE NINETY-TWO RESOLUTIONS
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 the _Patriote_ press became
furious. The newspaper _La Minerve_ asserted 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 his {34} victims, but Aylmer
slaughters them.' The _Patriotes_ adopted 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 Gaspe, 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 Quebec _Mercury_, 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 members {35} of the
_Patriote_ party. 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, he {36} began 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 the _Patriote_ party. 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 regime, 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 he {37} had 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 E. Cartier and Etienne P. Tache. 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 Montreal _Vindicator_, {38} 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 Elzear Bedard, the son of
Pierre Bedard, 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
the _Patriote_ party: they were a sort of Declaration of Right. A more
extraordinary political document has seldom seen the light. A writer
in the Quebec _Mercury_, said by Lord Aylmer to be John Neilson, {39}
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.
{40} '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 its {41} hardly 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; {42} 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 Elzear Bedard, who had moved the
Ninety-Two Resolutions, broke with Papineau. Another seceder was
Etienne Parent, the editor of the revived _Canadien_, and one of the
great figures in French-Canadian literature. Both Bedard 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 merely {43} refused 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 of _Chouayens_[1]--a name which had been used
by Etienne Parent himself in 1828 to describe those French Canadians
who took sides with the government party.
[1] The name _Chouayen_ or _Chouaguen_ appears 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
dubbed _Chouaguens_, 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.
{44}