The 'Patriotes' of '37 Part 1

The 'Patriotes' of '37.

by Alfred D. Decelles.

PREFATORY NOTE

The ma.n.u.script for this little book, written by me in French, was handed over for translation to Mr Stewart Wallace. The result as here presented is therefore a joint product. Mr Wallace, himself a writer of ability and a student of Canadian history, naturally made a very free translation of my work and introduced some ideas of his own. He insists, however, that the work is mine; and, with this acknowledgment of his part in it, I can do no less than acquiesce, at the same time expressing my pleasure at having had as collaborator a young writer of such good insight. And it is surely appropriate that an English Canadian and a French Canadian should join in a narrative of the political war between the two races which forms the subject of this book.

A. D. DECELLES.

OTTAWA, 1915.

CHAPTER I

CANADIANS, OLD AND NEW

The conquest of Canada by British arms in the Seven Years' War gave rise to a situation in the colony which was fraught with tragic possibilities. It placed the French inhabitants under the sway of an alien race--a race of another language, of another religion, of other laws, and which differed from them profoundly in temperament and political outlook. Elsewhere--in Ireland, in Poland, and in the Balkans--such conquests have been followed by centuries of bitter racial warfare. In Canada, however, for a hundred and fifty years French Canadians and English Canadians have, on the whole, dwelt together in peace and amity. Only on the one occasion, of which the story is to be told in these pages, has there been anything resembling civil war between the two races; and this unhappy outbreak was neither widespread nor prolonged. The record {2} is one which Canadians, whether they be English or French, have reason to view with satisfaction.

It does not appear that the Canadians of 1760 felt any profound regret at the change from French to British rule. So corrupt and oppressive had been the administration of Bigot, in the last days of the Old Regime, that the rough-and-ready rule of the British army officers doubtless seemed benignant in comparison. Comparatively few Canadians left the country, although they were afforded facilities for so doing.

One evidence of good feeling between the victors and the vanquished is found in the marriages which were celebrated between Canadian women and some of the disbanded Highland soldiers. Traces of these unions are found at the present day, in the province of Quebec, in a few Scottish names of habitants who cannot speak English.

When the American colonies broke out in revolution in 1775, the Continental Congress thought to induce the French Canadians to join hands with them. But the conciliatory policy of the successive governors Murray and Carleton, and the concessions granted by the Quebec Act of the year before, had borne {3} fruit; and when the American leaders Arnold and Montgomery invaded Canada, the great majority of the habitants remained at least pa.s.sively loyal. A few hundred of them may have joined the invaders, but a much larger number enlisted under Carleton. The clergy, the seigneurs, and the professional cla.s.ses--lawyers and physicians and notaries--remained firm in their allegiance to Great Britain; while the ma.s.s of the people resisted the eloquent appeals of Congress, represented by its emissaries Franklin, Chase, and Carroll, and even those of the distinguished Frenchmen, Lafayette and Count d'Estaing, who strongly urged them to join the rebels. Nor should it be forgotten that at the siege of Quebec by Arnold the Canadian officers Colonel Dupre and Captains Dambourges, Dumas, and Marcoux, with many others, were among Carleton's most trusted and efficient aides in driving back the invading Americans. True, in 1781, Sir Frederick Haldimand, then governor of Canada, wrote that although the clergy had been firmly loyal in 1775 and had exerted their powerful influence in favour of Great Britain, they had since then changed their opinions and were no longer to be relied upon. But it must be {4} borne in mind that Haldimand ruled the province in the manner of a soldier. His high-handed orders caused dissatisfaction, which he probably mistook for a want of loyalty among the clergy. No more devoted subject of Great Britain lived at the time in Lower Canada than Mgr Briand, the bishop of Quebec; and the priests shaped their conduct after that of their superior. At any rate, the danger which Haldimand feared did not take form; and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 made it more unlikely than ever.

The French Revolution profoundly affected the att.i.tude of the French Canadians toward France. Canada was the child of the _ancien regime_.

Within her borders the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau had found no shelter. Canada had nothing in common with the anti-clerical and republican tendencies of the Revolution. That movement created a gap between France and Canada which has not been bridged to this day. In the Napoleonic wars the sympathies of Canada were almost wholly with Great Britain. When news arrived of the defeat of the French fleet at Trafalgar, a _Te Deum_ was sung in the Catholic cathedral at Quebec; and, in a sermon {5} preached on that occasion, a future bishop of the French-Canadian Church enunciated the principle that 'all events which tend to broaden the gap separating us from France should be welcome.'

It was during the War of 1812-14, however, that the most striking manifestation of French-Canadian loyalty to the British crown appeared.

In that war, in which Canada was repeatedly invaded by American armies, French-Canadian militiamen under French-Canadian officers fought shoulder to shoulder with their English-speaking fellow-countrymen on several stricken fields of battle; and in one engagement, fought at Chateauguay in the French province of Lower Canada, the day was won for British arms by the heroic prowess of Major de Salaberry and his French-Canadian soldiers. The history of the war with the United States provides indelible testimony to the loyalty of French Canada.

A quarter of a century pa.s.sed. Once again the crack of muskets was heard on Canadian soil. This time, however, there was no foreign invader to repel. The two races which had fought side by side in 1812 were now arrayed against each other. French-Canadian veterans of Chateauguay were on {6} one side, and English-Canadian veterans of Chrystler's Farm on the other. Some real fighting took place. Before peace was restored, the fowling-pieces of the French-Canadian rebels had repulsed a force of British regulars at the village of St Denis, and brisk skirmishes had taken place at the villages of St Charles and St Eustache. How this unhappy interlude came to pa.s.s, in a century and a half of British rule in Canada, it is the object of this book to explain.

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CHAPTER II

THE RIGHTS OF THE DEFEATED

The British did not treat the French inhabitants of Canada as a conquered people; not as other countries won by conquest have been treated by their victorious invaders. The terms of the Capitulation of Montreal in 1760 a.s.sured the Canadians of their property and civil rights, and guaranteed to them 'the free exercise of their religion.'

The Quebec Act of 1774 granted them the whole of the French civil law, to the almost complete exclusion of the English common law, and virtually established in Canada the Church of the vanquished through legal enforcement of the obligation resting upon Catholics to pay t.i.thes. And when it became necessary in 1791 to divide Canada into two provinces, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, one predominantly English and the other predominantly French, the two provinces were granted precisely equal political rights. Out of this {8} arose an odd situation. All French Canadians were Roman Catholics, and Roman Catholics were at this time debarred from sitting in the House of Commons at Westminster. Yet they were given the right of sitting as members in the Canadian representative a.s.semblies created by the Act of 1791. The Catholics of Canada thus received privileges denied to their co-religionists in Great Britain.

There can be no doubt that it was the conciliatory policy of the British government which kept the clergy, the seigneurs, and the great body of French Canadians loyal to the British crown during the war in 1775 and in 1812. It is certain, too, that these generous measures strengthened the position of the French race in Canada, made Canadians more jealous of their national ident.i.ty, and led them to press for still wider liberties. It is an axiom of human nature that the more one gets, the more one wants. And so the concessions granted merely whetted the Canadian appet.i.te for more.

This disposition became immediately apparent with the calling of the first parliament of Lower Canada in 1792. Before this there had been no specific definition of the exact status of the French language in {9} Canada, and the question arose as to its use in the a.s.sembly as a medium of debate. As the Quebec Act of 1774 had restored the French laws, it was inferred that the use of the French language had been authorized, since otherwise these laws would have no natural medium of interpretation. That this was the inference to be drawn from the const.i.tution became evident, for the British government had made no objection to the use of French in the law-courts. It should be borne in mind that at this period the English in Canada were few in number, and that all of them lived in the cities. The French members in the a.s.sembly, representing, as they did, nearly the whole population, did not hesitate to press for the official recognition of their language on a parity with English.

The question first came up in connection with the election of a speaker. The French-Canadian members, being in a majority of thirty-four to sixteen, proposed Jean Antoine Panet. This motion was opposed by the English members, together with a few of the French members, who nominated an Englishman. They pointed out that the transactions between the speaker and the king's {10} representative in the colony should be 'in the language of the empire to which we have the happiness to belong.' 'I think it is but decent,' said Louis Panet, brother of Jean Antoine, 'that the speaker on whom we fix our choice, be one who can express himself in English when he addresses himself to the representative of our sovereign.' Yet the majority of the French members stuck to their motion and elected their speaker.

When he was sworn into office, he declared to the governor that 'he could only express himself in the primitive language of his native country.' Nevertheless, he understood English well enough to conduct the business of the House. And it should not be forgotten that all the sixteen English members, out of the fifty composing the a.s.sembly, owed their election to French-Canadian voters.

Almost immediately the question came up again in the debate on the use of the French language in the publication of official doc.u.ments. The English members pointed out that English was the language of the sovereign, and they contended that the exclusive official use of the English language would more quickly a.s.similate the French Canadians--would render them more loyal. To these {11} arguments the French Canadians replied with ringing eloquence.

'Remember,' said Chartier de Lotbiniere, 'the year 1775. Those Canadians, who spoke nothing but French, showed their attachment to their sovereign in a manner not at all equivocal. They helped to defend this province. This city, these walls, this chamber in which I have the honour to speak, were saved partly through their zeal and their courage. You saw them join with faithful subjects of His Majesty and repulse attacks which people who spoke very good English made on this city. It is not, you see, uniformity of language which makes peoples more faithful or more united.'

'Is it not ridiculous,' exclaimed Pierre Bedard, whose name will appear later in these pages, 'to wish to make a people's loyalty consist in its tongue?'

The outcome of the debate, as might have been expected, was to place the French language on a level with the English language in the records and publications of the a.s.sembly, and French became, to all intents and purposes, the language of debate. The number of English-speaking members steadily decreased. In the year 1800 Sir Robert Milnes {12} wrote home that there were 'but one or two English members in the House of a.s.sembly who venture to speak in the language of the mother country, from the certainty of not being understood by a great majority of the House.'

It must not be imagined, however, that in these early debates there was any of that rancour and animosity which later characterized the proceedings of the a.s.sembly of Lower Canada. 'The remains of the old French politeness, and a laudable deference to their fellow subjects, kept up decorum in the proceedings of the majority,' testified a political annalist of that time. Even as late as 1807, it appears that 'party spirit had not yet extended its effects to destroy social intercourse and good neighbourhood.' It was not until the regime of Sir James Craig that racial bitterness really began.

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CHAPTER III

'THE REIGN OF TERROR'

During the session of 1805 the a.s.sembly was confronted with the apparently innocent problem of building prisons. Yet out of the debate on this subject sprang the most serious racial conflict which had yet occurred in the province. There were two ways proposed for raising the necessary money. One, advocated by the English members, was to levy a direct tax on land; the other, proposed by the French members, was to impose extra customs duties. The English proposal was opposed by the French, for the simple reason that the interests of the French were in the main agrarian; and the French proposal was opposed by the English, because the interests of the English were on the whole commercial. The English pointed out that, as merchants, they had borne the brunt of such taxation as had already been imposed, and that it was the turn of the French farmers to bear their {14} share. The French, on the other hand, pointed out, with some justice, that indirect taxation was borne, not only by the importer, but also partly by the consumer, and that indirect taxation was therefore more equitable than a tax on the land-owners alone. There was, moreover, another consideration. 'The _Habitants_,' writes the political annalist already quoted, 'consider themselves sufficiently taxed by the French law of the land, in being obliged to pay rents and other feudal burthens to the Seigneur, and tythes to the Priest; and if you were to ask any of them to contribute two bushels of Wheat, or two Dollars, for the support of Government, he would give you the equivocal French sign of inability or unwillingness, by shrugging up his shoulders.'

As usual, the French-Canadian majority carried their point. Thereupon, the indignation of the English minority flared forth in a very emphatic manner. They accused the French Canadians of foisting upon them the whole burden of taxation, and they declared that an end must be put to French-Canadian domination over English Canadians. 'This province,'

a.s.serted the Quebec _Mercury_, 'is already too French for a British colony.... Whether we be in peace or at war, it is essential {15} that we should make every effort, by every means available, to oppose the growth of the French and their influence.'

The answer of the French Canadians to this language was the establishment in 1806 of a newspaper, _Le Canadien_, in which the point of view of the majority in the House might be presented. The official editor of the paper was Jean Antoine Bouthillier, but the conspicuous figure on the staff was Pierre Bedard, one of the members of the House of a.s.sembly. The tone of the paper was generally moderate, though militant. Its policy was essentially to defend the French against the ceaseless aspersions of the _Mercury_ and other enemies. It never attacked the British government, but only the provincial authorities.

Its motto, '_Notre langue, nos inst.i.tutions et nos lois_,' went far to explain its views and objects.

No serious trouble resulted, however, from the policy of _Le Canadien_ until after the arrival of Sir James Craig in Canada, and the inauguration of what some historians have named 'the Reign of Terror.'

Sir James Craig, who became governor of Canada in 1807, was a distinguished soldier. He had seen service in the American Revolutionary {16} War, in South Africa, and in India. He was, however, inexperienced in civil government and apt to carry his ideas of military discipline into the conduct of civil affairs. Moreover, he was prejudiced against the inhabitants and had doubts of their loyalty.

In Canada he surrounded himself with such men as Herman W. Ryland, the governor's secretary, and John Sewell, the attorney-general, men who were actually in favour of repressing the French Canadians and of crushing the power of their Church. 'I have long since laid it down as a principle (which in my judgment no Governor of this Province ought to lose sight of for a moment),' wrote Ryland in 1804, 'by every possible means which prudence can suggest, gradually to undermine the authority and influence of the Roman Catholic Priest.' 'The Province must be converted into an English Colony,' declared Sewell, 'or it will ultimately be lost to England.' The opinion these men held of the French Canadians was most uncomplimentary. 'In the ministerial dictionary,' complained _Le Canadien_, 'a bad fellow, anti-ministerialist, democrat, _sans culotte_, and d.a.m.ned Canadian, mean the same thing.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir James Craig. From a portrait in the Dominion Archives.]

Surrounded by such advisers, it is not {17} surprising that Sir James Craig soon took umbrage at the language and policy of _Le Canadien_.

At first he made his displeasure felt in a somewhat roundabout way. In the summer of 1808 he dismissed from the militia five officers who were reputed to have a connection with that newspaper, on the ground that they were helping a 'seditious and defamatory journal.' One of these officers was Colonel Panet, who had fought in the defence of Quebec in 1775 and had been speaker of the House of a.s.sembly since 1792; another was Pierre Bedard. This action did not, however, curb the temper of the paper; and a year or more later Craig went further. In May 1810 he took the extreme step of suppressing _Le Canadien_, and arresting the printer and three of the proprietors, Taschereau, Blanchet, and Bedard.

The ostensible pretext for this measure was the publication in the paper of some notes of a somewhat academic character with regard to the conflict which had arisen between the governor and the House of a.s.sembly in Jamaica; the real reason, of course, went deeper.

Craig afterwards a.s.serted that the arrest of Bedard and his a.s.sociates was 'a measure of precaution, not of punishment.' There is no {18} doubt that he actually feared a rising of the French Canadians. To his mind a rebellion was imminent. The event showed that his suspicions were ill-founded; but in justice to him it must be remembered that he was governor of Canada at a dangerous time, when Napoleon was at the zenith of his power and when agents of this arch-enemy of England were supposed to be active in Canada. Moreover, the blame for Craig's action during this period must be partly borne by the 'Bureaucrats' who surrounded him. There is no absolute proof, but there is at least a presumption, that some of these men actually wished to precipitate a disturbance, in order that the const.i.tution of Lower Canada might be suspended and a new order of things inaugurated.

Soon after Bedard's arrest his friends applied for a writ of habeas corpus; but, owing to the opposition of Craig, this was refused. In July two of Bedard's companions were released, on the ground of ill health. They both, however, expressed regret at the tone which _Le Canadien_ had adopted. In August the printer was discharged. Bedard himself declined to accept his release until he had been brought to trial and acquitted {19} of the charge preferred against him. Craig, however, did not dare to bring him to trial, for no jury would have convicted him. Ultimately, since Bedard refused to leave the prison, he was ejected at the point of the bayonet. The situation was full of humour. Bedard was an excellent mathematician, and was in the habit of whiling away the hours of his imprisonment by solving mathematical problems. When the guard came to turn him out, he was in the midst of a geometrical problem. 'At least,' he begged, 'let me finish my problem.' The request was granted; an hour later the problem was solved, and Bedard was thrust forth from the jail.

Sir James Craig was a man of good heart and of the best intentions; but his course throughout this episode was most unfortunate. Not only did he fail to suppress the opposition to his government, but he did much to embitter the relations between the two races. Craig himself seems to have realized, even before he left Canada, that his policy had been a mistake; for he is reported on good authority to have said 'that he had been basely deceived, and that if it had been given to him to begin his administration over again, he would have acted differently.' It is {20} significant, too, that Craig's successor, Sir George Prevost, completely reversed his policy. He laid himself out to conciliate the French Canadians in every way possible; and he made amends to Bedard for the injustice which he had suffered by restoring him to his rank in the militia and by making him a judge. As a result, the bitterness of racial feeling abated; and when the War of 1812 broke out, there proved to be less disloyalty in Lower Canada than in Upper Canada. But, as the events of Craig's administration had clearly shown, a good deal of combustible and dangerous material lay about.