The rebellion of 1837 now belongs to the dead past. The Patriotes and the 'Bureaucrats' of those days have passed away; and the present generation has forgotten, or should have forgotten, the passions which inspired them. The time has come when Canadians should take an impartial view of the events of that time, and should be willing to recognize the good and the bad on either side. It is absurd to pretend that many of the English in Lower Canada were not arrogant and brutal in their attitude toward the French Canadians, and lawless in their methods of crushing the rebellion; or that many of the Patriote leaders were not hopelessly irreconcilable before the rebellion, and during it criminally careless of the interests of the poor habitants they had misled. On the other hand, no true Canadian can fail to be proud of the spirit of loyalty which in 1837 actuated not only persons of British birth, but many faithful sons and daughters of the French-Canadian Church. Nor can one fail to admire the devotion to liberty, to 'the rights of the people,' which characterized rebels like Robert Bouchette. 'When I speak of the rights of the people,' wrote Bouchette, 'I do not mean those abstract or extravagant rights for which some contend, but which are not generally compatible with an organized state of society, but I mean those cardinal rights which are inherent to British subjects, and which, as such, ought not to be denied to the inhabitants of any section of the empire, however remote.' The people of Canada to-day are able to combine loyalty and liberty as the men of that day were not; and they should never forget that in some measure they owe to the one party the continuance of Canada in the Empire, and to the other party the freedom wherewith they have been made free.
Denis Benjamin Viger.
From a print in M'Gill University Library.
The later history of the Patriotes falls outside the scope of this little book, but a few lines may be added to trace their varying fortunes. Some of them never returned to Canada. Robert Nelson took up his abode in New York, and there practised surgery until his death in 1873. E. B. O'Callaghan went to Albany, and was there employed by the legislature of New York in preparing two series of volumes entitled A Documentary History of New York and Documents relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York, volumes which are edited in so scholarly a manner, and throw such light on Canadian history, that the Canadian historian would fain forgive him for his part in the unhappy rebellion of '37.
Most of the Patriote leaders took advantage, however, of the virtual amnesty offered them in 1842 by the first LaFontaine-Baldwin administration, and returned to Canada. Many of these, as well as many of the Patriote leaders who had not been implicated in the rebellion and who had not fled the country, rose to positions of trust and prominence in the public service of Canada. Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine, after having gone abroad during the winter of 1837-38, and after having been arrested on suspicion in November 1838, entered the parliament of Canada, formed, with Robert Baldwin as his colleague, the administration which ushered in full responsible government, and was knighted by Queen Victoria. Augustin Morin, the reputed author of the Ninety-Two Resolutions, who had spent the winter of 1837-38 in hiding, became the colleague of Francis Hincks in the Hincks-Morin administration. George Étienne Cartier, who had shouldered a musket at St Denis, became the lifelong colleague of Sir John Macdonald and was made a baronet by his sovereign. Dr Wolfred Nelson returned to his practice in Montreal in 1842. In 1844 he was elected member of parliament for the county of Richelieu. In 1851 he was appointed an inspector of prisons. Thomas Storrow Brown, on his return to Montreal, took up again his business in hardware, and is remembered to-day by Canadian numismatists as having been one of the first to issue a halfpenny token, which bore his name and is still sought by collectors. Robert Bouchette recovered from the serious wound he had sustained at Moore's Corners, and later became Her Majesty's commissioner of customs at Ottawa.
Papineau returned to Canada in 1845. The greater part of his period of exile he spent in Paris, where he came in touch with the 'red republicans' who later supported the revolution of 1848. He entered the Canadian parliament in 1847 and sat in it until 1854. But he proved to be completely out of harmony with the new order of things under responsible government. Even with his old lieutenant LaFontaine, who had made possible his return to Canada, he had an open breach. The truth is that Papineau was born to live in opposition. That he himself realized this is clear from a laughing remark which he made when explaining his late arrival at a meeting: 'I waited to take an opposition boat.' His real importance after his return to Canada lay not in the parliamentary sphere, but in the encouragement which he gave to those radical and anti-clerical ideas that found expression in the foundation of the Institut Canadien and the formation of the Parti Rouge. In many respects the Parti Rouge was the continuation of the Patriote party of 1837. Papineau's later days were quiet and dignified. He retired to his seigneury of La Petite Nation at Montebello and devoted himself to his books. With many of his old antagonists he effected a pleasant reconciliation. Only on rare occasions did he break his silence; but on one of these, when he came to Montreal, an old silver-haired man of eighty-one years, to deliver an address before the Institut Canadien, he uttered a sentence which may be taken as the apologia pro vita sua: 'You will believe me, I trust, when I say to you, I love my country.... Opinions outside may differ; but looking into my heart and my mind in all sincerity, I feel I can say that I have loved her as she should be loved.' And charity covereth a multitude of sins.