Since I can type faster than I can think, I thought I’d transcribe a bit of a book I’m reading right now. A little bit of Canadian history. BTW, this is my first submission to BMT; I hope this contribution reflects my esteem for you all.
Now, if you’re the kind of reader who enjoys context, you might prefer to google Louis Riel and the Métis People. Métis are the half-white-half-Indians who formed their own more or less “distinct culture” in Canada, from the earliest days. Riel led them in a failed rebellion against the Canadian government and was hanged. Sir Wilfred Laurier went on to become Prime Minister (i.e. head of our executive and legislative branches). His somewhat funny looking face graces our $5 bill.
Anyway, an excerpt from “Reflections of a Siamese Twin” by John Ralston Saul (Penguin Books, 1997), pp 215-217:
Mercier was a seductive speaker, but it was in the style of the classic nineteenth-century nationalist demagogue – great emotional flourishes, a world divided into good and evil where martyrs struggled against opponents who, by virtue of their opposition, were traitors; where the only solution was solidarity.
…
Laurier, on the other hand, came at the tragedy of the North West [the failed rebellion; the hanging of Riel] as a crisis of the public good – the greater good that everyone could and should share.
…
Had I been on the banks of the Saskatchewan [River], I also would have taken up my rifle. — Si j’avais été sur les bords de la Saskatchewan, j’aurais, moi aussi, epaulé mon fusil…
Laurier was the leading Opposition francophone in Ottawa. He was almost challenging the authorities to charge him with sedition.
The House was recessed. When it reconvened there was a debate on the Rebellion. Laurier waited until the end, then late on the evening of March 16, 1880, he rose to give a speech no one in his own party wanted him to give. He spoke for two hours. It remains, unless something has escaped me, the finest speech given in either French or English in Canada. He built his condemnation of the government’s “judicial murder” on all of the ideas, standards and traditions which responsible governments claim for themselves.
Rebellion is always an evil, it is always an offense against the positive law of a nation; it is not always a moral crime.”
And the paragraph which cannot be repeated enough —
What is hateful is not rebellion but the despotism which induces that rebellion; what is hateful are not rebels but the men who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power; they are the men who, having the power to redress wrongs, refuse to listen to the petitions that are sent to them; they are the men who, when they are asked for a loaf, give a stone.
Then he turned the idea of loyalty on its conventional head by invoking the supremacy of the public good over the interests of the state.
Loyalty must be reciprocal. It is not enough for the subject to be loyal to the Crown; the Crown must also be loyal to the subject.
Have the Government been loyal to these half-breeds? If they had been loyal to the half-breeds no such trouble would have occurred. But the Government has not been loyal to the laws. Had they taken as much pains to do right, as they have taken to punish wrong….
Our prisons are full of men who, despairing ever to get justice by peace, sought to obtain it by war, who despairing of ever being treated like freemen, took their lives into their hands, rather than be treated as slaves.
Toronto’s Orange [i.e. English Protestant boys club, our very own KKK] newspapers dared him to repeat his defence of Riel in Ontario. His party and friends discouraged him. There were threats of violence, but the Young Liberals asked him to come. An enormous crowd turned out in the Agricultural Pavilion on the 10th of December, including a large contingent of those who had dared him to come to Toronto. Perhaps the tension and expectation of this first entry into the eye of the storm set him slightly off balance. The speech was a bit heavy, but it was more than enough —
When we find a government ill-treating a poor people, simply because they are poor and ignorant, we must ourselves feel that injury and injustice…. It is the duty of all citizens to resist this violation and to fight freely with all the means that the constitution places in our hands.
The oppenents scarecly managed a heckle. His triumph was not just that of a successful evening. What he had done was demonstrate that it was possible to draw people together, by rising to the values they hardly seemed to realize they shared, rather than seeking power through the divisions of race or religion. More precisely, he proved himself a possible prime minister by the courage and intelligence with which he defended the Métis before those who opposed him.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this perspective. I thought you might, since it ties in two threads that seem to be gaining momentum south of the border [i.e. in the US, not Mexico]: We hold these truths to be self evident… and the whole Looters non-debate.
