Page:Address of the Hon. L.J. Papineau to the electors of the West Ward of Montreal.djvu/10

 to the Colonial Office on the one hand, and the other an active, hateful and mendacious correspondence between a few intriguers in Canada with other of the same character in London, such as Hay, of the Colonial Office, Gould, Gillespie, Logan, and the hon. member of the Imperial Parliament, Robinson, the paid director of the Land Company, a vile sharper (escroc) which has abused a charge so honorable as that of member of the House of Commons to permit himself, aided by his worthy compeer, Stanley, to commit an act so dishonorable as that of smuggling through the House, unknown to our agents and to Mr. Roebuck, the Bill which put a few pounds into his pocket, and which dishonored the British Government, by disregarding the engagement which it made in 1778, relative to the Revenues to be raised in the Colonies. These intriguers have written that the election of Dr. Tracey had been carried by acts of violence so that the correspondents and their friends dared not approach the poll; that the correspondents were the masters of the election of the West Ward; that the House of Assembly knew it well, and that it as in consequence of this certain knowledge of an incontestable fact that the Assembly had suspended the issuing of the Writ of Montreal, under the pretext that no election could be carried on in safety in the then agitated and riotous state of the Ward. Mr. Stanley, instructed and inspired by these honest and disinterested correspondents, repeated that Montreal represents a considerable portion of British commercial capital, and that he did not doubt that such was the reason why the Writ was not issued in a year and a half. He had learned from the same source, and knew with the same exactness, that the population of Montreal was only 20,000, amongst whom 7,000 male adults had signed an address expressing their gratitude for the murders of that mournful day—the 21st May, 1832.

In Canada we know well that only 300 fanatics had participated in this murder, by their approving address. Is the forgery of adding thereto 6,700 supposed signatures the crime of the correspondents in Canada, or of those in London, or of the Castle of St. Lewis in Quebec, or of Downing-street? Time will reveal this iniquitous mystery. But the authorities who were sufficiently depraved to have prepared, or simple enough to allow themselves to be duped, will no longer govern the Canadas.—They have given the Canadas the extension of the elective system. They have rendered it of indispensable necessity by this striking proof either of their stupidity or of their villany.

It is from those premises that the intriguers of London have written to those of Montreal, "if you do not render yourselves masters of the West Ward of Montreal, we can no more present ourselves at Downing-street as your mouth-piece; we shall be driven thence with contempt as having too long been the bearers of your boastings and your lies." We must not therefore be surprised at the crimes which they have committed. It must be evident that noting but the mildness of the habits of the Canadians, joined with the conviction that they were masters of the Election, have enabled them to bear, without crushing their oppressors, the outrages which have been daily heaped upon them.

From the very dawn of the Election, a great number of "open houses" have been established for the use of the partisans of Walker and Donnellan, and a great number of men, who were not Electors, attracted thither from the distant parts of this Province, and even from Upper Canada, by the offer of money, have been permanently stationed at those houses, intoxicated by drink, and maddened by the speeches of Walker and those of our sublime counter-aristocracy, wallowing night and day in the midst of those Bachanalian orgies. The Candidate Walker frequently brought from the scenes to the Poll, a state of excitement, which rendered him an object of pity to his adversaries.

Who is there, in fact, who has not seen him—frequently seen him abandoned to transports of rage—who, that has so seen him that has not feared that he would suddenly stifle and perish! In these attacks, the agitation of his body, the convulsive dislocation of his jaws—the sudden distortion of his features—his livid pallor—the fixity of his besotted stare, the sudden flight or reason, rendering him a prey to delirium, and attaching to a man who, it is true, never possessed any breeding, but which pretended to have received some education, language such as a drunken fish-fag would scarcely have resorted to—these things, I say, frequently created a belief that he was about to fall into an epileptic fit. This forced and unnatural situation generated the remark that if it was a love of the public good that could thus agitate him, and not the regret of a disappointed ambition, he must, indeed, love the public good most furiously.

One circumstance which may tend to raise doubts concerning the pure and disinterested love of the public good, which manifested itself by such violent symptoms is, that ambition was not a stranger to the breast of the distinguished colleague whom Mr. Walker recommended to public favor. A short time before there was any question of Election, this unpolished, unintellectual mass, whose self-love is simple enough to cause him to believe and say also, that the electors have done him and themselves great injustice, in depriving themselves of the eminent service which his capacity for the part of the Legislator rendered him so fit to perform, disclosed that important negociations had been commenced between him, John Donnellan, and the Provincial administration, to detach him from the popular cause. That if he had chosen to betray his