The 'Patriotes' of '37: A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion

by Alfred D. DeCelles

CHAPTER IV

THE RISE OF PAPINEAU

In the year 1812 a young man took his seat in the House of Assembly for Lower Canada who was destined to play a conspicuous part in the history of the province during the next quarter of a century. His name was Louis Joseph Papineau. He was at that time only twenty-six years of age, but already his tall, well-built form, his fine features and commanding presence, marked him out as a born leader of men. He possessed an eloquence which, commonplace as it now appears on the printed page, apparently exerted a profound influence upon his contemporaries. 'Never within the memory of teacher or student,' wrote his college friend Aubert de Gaspé, 'had a voice so eloquent filled the halls of the seminary of Quebec.' In the Assembly his rise to prominence was meteoric; only three years after his entrance he was elected speaker on the resignation of the veteran J. A. Panet, who had held the office at different times since 1792. Papineau retained the speakership, with but one brief period of intermission, until the outbreak of rebellion twenty-two years later; and it was from the speaker's chair that he guided throughout this period the counsels of the Patriote party.

Louis Joseph Papineau.
After a lithograph by Maurin, Paris.

When Papineau entered public life the political situation in Lower Canada was beginning to be complicated. The French-Canadian members of the Assembly, having taken great pains to acquaint themselves with the law and custom of the British constitution, had awakened to the fact that they were not enjoying the position or the power which the members of the House of Commons in England were enjoying. In the first place, the measures which they passed were being continually thrown out by the upper chamber, the Legislative Council, and they were powerless to prevent it; and in the second place, they had no control of the government, for the governor and his Executive Council were appointed by and responsible to the Colonial Office alone. The members of the two councils were in the main of English birth, and they constituted a local oligarchy—known as the 'Bureaucrats' or the 'Château Clique'—which held the reins of government. They were as a rule able to snap their fingers at the majority in the Assembly.

In England the remedy for a similar state of affairs had been found to lie in the control of the purse exercised by the House of Commons. In order to bring the Executive to its will, it was only necessary for that House to threaten the withholding of supplies. In Lower Canada, however, such a remedy was at first impossible, for the simple reason that the House of Assembly did not vote all the supplies necessary for carrying on the government. In other words, the expenditure far exceeded the revenue; and the deficiency had to be met out of the Imperial exchequer. Under these circumstances it was impossible for the Lower Canada Assembly to attempt to exercise the full power of the purse. In 1810, it is true, the Assembly had passed a resolution avowing its ability and willingness to vote 'the necessary sums for defraying the Civil Expenses of the Government of the Province.' But Sir James Craig had declined on a technicality to forward the resolution to the Houses of Parliament at Westminster, realizing fully that if the offer were accepted, the Assembly would be able to exert complete power over the Executive. 'The new Trojan horse' was not to gain admission to the walls through him.

Later, however, in 1818, during the administration of Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, the offer of the Assembly was accepted by the Imperial government. Sherbrooke was an apostle of conciliation. It was he who gave the Catholic bishop of Quebec a seat in the Executive Council; and he also recommended that the speaker of the House of Assembly should be included in the Council—a recommendation which was a preliminary move in the direction of responsible government. Through Sherbrooke's instrumentality the British government now decided to allow the Lower-Canadian legislature to vote the entire revenue of the province, apart from the casual and territorial dues of the Crown and certain duties levied by Act of the Imperial parliament. Sherbrooke's intention was that the legislature should vote out of this revenue a permanent civil list to be continued during the lifetime of the sovereign. Unfortunately, however, the Assembly did not fall in with this view. It insisted, instead, on treating the civil list as an annual affair, and voting the salaries of the officials, from the governor downwards, for only one year. Since this would have made every government officer completely dependent upon the pleasure of the House of Assembly, the Legislative Council promptly threw out the budget. Thus commenced a struggle which was destined to last for many years. The Assembly refused to see that its action was really an encroachment upon the sphere of the Executive; and the Executive refused to place itself at the mercy of the Assembly. The result was deadlock. During session after session the supplies were not voted. The Executive, with its control of the royal revenue, was able by one means or another to carry on the government; but the relations between the 'Bureaucrats' and the Patriotes became rapidly more bitter.

Papineau's attitude toward the government during this period was in harmony with that of his compatriots. It was indeed one of his characteristics, as the historian Christie has pointed out, that he seemed always 'to move with the masses rather than to lead them.' In 1812 he fought side by side with the British. As late as 1820 he publicly expressed his great admiration for the constitution of 1791 and the blessings of British rule. But in the struggles over the budget he took up ground strongly opposed to the government; and, when the question became acute, he threw restraint to the winds, and played the part of a dangerous agitator.