Page:Address of the Hon. L.J. Papineau to the electors of the West Ward of Montreal.djvu/9

, the empty pretensions of the 'Tory'—'Conservative'—status quo—'Scotch'—'Bank'—'Bankrupt'—and 'Government;' party, in so strong a light, that I could not help enjoying every day with delight the tortures and agonies which, in its powerless rage, I saw it felt as it daily received the news of the re-election of my honorable colleagues of the majority, and the rejection of the members of the poor, refuse, emaciated minority, so reduced and battered as not to leave to His Majesty—to George Auldjo—to John Molson, Jun.—and the other precious relics of the British party, but a very insignificant, and pitiable opposition.

The censure of bad men is praise to the good. I cannot but be flattered with a fruitless opposition, which has cost its principal instigators enormous sums, and numberless crimes, which stain and disgrace them. Some of the valiant bankrupt merchants who instigated that opposition, staled with the strongest argumentation of which they were capable, that they were ready to spill the last drop of their blood to achieve the Quixotic adventure of putting down the Reform party, that is, the nineteen-twentieths of the population of Lower Canada, and the nine-tenths of that of Upper Canada. Could they more eloquently announce that they were a fortiori very well disposed to steal their creditors' last shilling for the consummation of so good a work as the achievement of their chivalric adventure? The Scotch party raised in 1834, as in 1832, a large subscription for the purpose of gaining by corruption an Election, wherein, if the electors were left to their free and independent choice, it would not have dared to enter into the struggle. From the outset, that party manifested its contempt for the law, and for the partizans which it wished to find in the market to be bought and sold like kegs of herrings, or of whiskey, which it imported to distribute among them. Corruption was to have been so very extensive that funds which were destined for that purpose not being easily levied upon the considerable portion of British mercantile capital, consuming and dissipated among the party, they had the impudence to present their subscription list to virtuous Canadian citizens. They did not succeed in making the latter as bad subjects as themselves, shameless conspirators as they were, against the existence of the most precise laws, and against the first principles of public morals. Their conspiracy was directed not against laws of which they demanded the correction, but against those which they admit to be salutary. They love the enjoyment of vice, they give themselves up to it with eagerness, but they do not like to be called vicious. They will tell you that corruption and violence ought to be banished from Elections, in presenting you with Subscription Lists to defray the expenses attendant on violence and corruption at an Election.

Certain influential citizens, alarmed and perceiving in these preparations of the party who were the authors of the events of the 21st May, the danger that they would make the 21st of November, more after their own hearts, that is to say, that they should cause a greater number of Canadians to be destroyed—thought they spoke to men whilst they spoke to tigers. From an excessive love of peace, they proposed, by way of compromise, to leave to them the choice of a representative, a step which would render the murderous means they had prepared useless. The one party wished for peace. The mean of the 21st of May desired blood—still more blood—and the applause of my Lord Aylmer. The proposition was rejected, and the subscription continued, and was filled up to a much larger amount than on any former occasion.

Amongst the subscribers to the fund employed in supporting Mr. Bagg, there have been in two years and an half bankruptcies to the amount of £200,000. In two years and a half from this time, who can say to how much larger an amount the subscribers to the Donnellan and Walker funds will have robbed the widow and orphan by similar bankruptcies? The advances of the Banks and the aid of the British capital afforded almost exclusively to the anti-Liberal party, give them on all occasions superior facilities for repeating these immoral subscriptions, followed by more immoral bankruptcies, and these tricks and violences at Elections, which are neither within the means nor in conformity with the manners of the Canadians.

It was under these auspices that the West Ward Election opened. A rabid determination to oppose by unlawful means a man whom they knew they were unable to exclude from the representation, inasmuch as he might have been readily elected in almost every county where he might have been presented—the extent of the sacrifices which they have uselessly made for an useless object, since whether this man were or were not in the representation, the course to be pursued in the approaching Assembly was so certainly marked out by the course pursued in the last Assembly, and approved of by the formal demands of the people—are things which can be little understood by those who are ignorant of the secret motives which force men who are sunken deep into the mire of iniquity and crime, to plunge more and more therein until they are engulphed altogether and disappear for ever.

The several causes which put so many blind puppets in motion at the will of a dozen scoundrels in place, aspirants to and members of the Legislative Council, and of the government, such as they have been, are purely as follow:—Official and lying