What did he not miss? Within them Papineau was making rounded periods, holding men entranced by his eloquence; Andrew Stuart was defending British rights; yet another Stuart thundered against the tyranny of the oligarchy, the privileged few; and Nielson and other discreet Liberals sought to steer a middle course of justice without rebellion. No wonder that from this concert discords met the ears of the audiences without.
Peculiarities and eccentricities were not confined to the rural populace and members of Parliament. “Go on board, my men, go on board without fear,” was a magistrate’s dismissal to two evil-faced tars who had deserted their ship at sailing time because they thought her unseaworthy; “I tell you you are born to be hanged, so therefore you cannot be drowned.”
“If anyone has a cause,” said one dignified prothonotary, “let him appear, for the Court is about to close.” “But,” said the judge above him, “the law states we must sit to-morrow.” Turning to the public the prothonotary made further announcement: “The judge says he will sit to-morrow, but the prothonotary will not be here.” And in his Louis XIV. costume, cut-away coat with stiff and embroidered collar, knee-breeches of black cloth, black silk stockings, frills on shirt-bosom and cuffs, the silver-buckled shoes of the prothonotary bore their somewhat stubborn wearer away.
At the beginning of the century it was only occasionally that foreign news reached Canada. With time postal matters improved; but news was still only occasional. At the advent of a vessel at Father Point the primitive telegraph of the yard and balls was used, and at night fires were lighted to carry the tidings from cape to cape. The means of intercommunication depended upon the size of the post-bag, the fidelity of the carrier, and on the state of the storm-strewn paths or trackless wastes which had to be crossed. The bag for Gaspé and Baie des Chaleurs was made up once in a winter and sent to Quebec, dark leather with heavy clasps and strapped on an Indian’s back. The man travelled on snowshoes, and when tired would transfer his load to the sled drawn by his faithful Indian dog. There were others whose mode of transit was much the same, but whose beats were shorter and trips more frequent. “Do not forget,” would say a certain old Seigneur, “to have Seguin’s supper prepared for him.” Seguin was postman for that large country-side, and generally arrived during the night at the manor house. The doors, under early Canadian habit, were unlatched; Seguin would quietly enter, sit down, take his supper, and produce from his pockets the letters and papers which made the Seigneur’s mail, leave them on the table, then as quietly let himself out into the night again, to pursue his journey to the next point. Such latitude in trust was possible in a country where law in its beginning was a matter of personal administration aided by keep, and four-post gibbet whose iron collar might bear the family arms.
Nor was other travel in a very advanced state. The palm of beauty was then, as now, accorded the St. Lawrence, but one traveller from abroad wrote, “’Tis a sad waste of life to ascend the St. Lawrence in a bateau.” By 1818 “a first-class steamer” made its exhausted way from Quebec to Montreal; aided by a strong wind it covered seven leagues in nine hours. This exhilarating motion caused the historian Christie, one of the pleased passengers, to open his window and hail his friends, “We are going famously!” By the third day’s voyage they were at the foot of the current below Montreal, and with the united aid of forty-two oxen they reached the haven for which they were bound.
With news so transmitted and the bulk of the population unable to read or write, and with only the comparatively wealthy and the adventurous able or willing to travel, it is not surprising that “the focus of sedition, that asylum for all the demagogic turbulence of the province,” the Assembly rooms at Quebec, had not succeeded in disseminating their beliefs and hopes among the most rural of the population. One thing which made remote villages loath to be disturbed was that they had more than once seen noisy demagogues and blatant liberators side with the alien powers when opportunity for self-aggrandizement came. Also, in many cases their isolated lot precluded feeling governmental pressure. But in the county of Two Mountains, at St. Denis, St. Charles, and also at Berthier, they were alert enough, and the most stirring pages in the coming revolt were to be written in blood in these localities. There secret associations flourished; open resistance only waited opportunity. There the Sons of Liberty drilled and wrote themselves into fervour, with pikes made by local blacksmiths and manifestoes founded on French and Irish models for outward tokens of the inward faith: “The diabolical policy of England towards her Canadian subjects, like to her policy towards Ireland, forever staining her bloody escutcheon.” The history of “my own, my native land,” inspires all words written from this point of view; one patriot, “plethoric with rhethoric,” had many fine lines, such as “the torch, the sword, and the savage,” and pages devoted to the “tyrannical government of palace pets.”
Away back in 1807 many militia officers of fluctuating loyalty had been dismissed, and the precedent established by Governor Craig was continued. Papineau was one of these officers; he had made an insolent reply—“The pretension of the Governor to interrogate me respecting my conduct at St. Laurent is an impertinence which I repel with contempt and silence”—to the Governor’s secretary, and had to suffer for it. The political compact called the Confederation of the Six Counties was governed by some of those so dismissed, and they all grew still more enthusiastic from the sight of such banner legends as “Papineau and the Elective System,” “Our Friends of Upper Canada,” “Independence.” The Legislative Council was pictorially represented by a skull and cross bones, and the declaration of the rights of man was voiced.
In addition to present troubles there was a perpetual harking back at these meetings to old scores, impelling “the people to wrestle with the serried hordes of their oppressors in the bloody struggles which must intervene” before “the injured, oppressed, and enslaved Canadian” could escape from “the diabolical policy of England.” There was a liberty pole, and Papineau, burning, energetic, flowery of speech, promised all things as crown to laudable effort “in the sacred cause of freedom.” It was a Canada “regenerated, disenthralled, and blessed with a liberal government” which the prophetic speech of Papineau had foreshadowed; and the “lives, fortunes, and sacred honour” of his hearers were there and then pledged with his own to aid in that regeneration. That “Frenchified Englishman,” Dr. Wolfred Nelson, also spoke; and Girod,—a Swiss, who taught agriculture in a Quebec school for boys, got up by that true patriot Perrault,—destined shortly for a tragic fate, was there. At this meeting Papineau thought he had set a ball rolling which would not easily be stopped. Already it was careering in an unpleasantly rapid manner. He deprecated the use of arms, and advised as punishment to England that nothing should be bought from her. This reprisal on the nation of shopkeepers Nelson thought a peddling policy; that the time was come for armed action, not pocket inaction. Papineau’s opinion was disappointing to the fiery wing of the Confederation. Again did Bishop Lartigue warn generally against evil counsels, reminding his flock that a cardinal rule of the Church was obedience to the powers that be; and every one of his clergy echoed him.
“Il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte” was once oddly applied by a lady who heard a canon of the Church say that St. Piat, after his head was cut off, walked two leagues with it in his hand. She could not gainsay such an authority, so said, “I can quite believe it. On such occasions the first step is the only difficulty.”