Читать книгу A Critical History of the Red River Insurrection - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 12

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Such was the battlefield where was to take place the clash between the interests of the incoming Canadians and those of most of the natives, whites and half-breeds, of the country, the struggle as a result of which the political aspirations of the former were soon to be realized, indeed, but not entirely in their own way, thanks to the action (which we are to expose in the course of these pages) chiefly of the French part of the original population.

After a short period of indifference on that score,[82] the Government of the Canadian Confederation had decided to acquire the immense stretch of land extending from the western confines of Ontario to the Rocky Mountains, and, with that end in view, Sir Georges Etienne Cartier and Hon. William McDougall had been deputed to go to London,[83] to negotiate the annexation to Canada of that territory of which the Red River Settlement was but an infinitesimal part and all of which belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company.

After long parleys and much correspondence, in the course of which the beaver lords had shown themselves very keen bargainers,[84] it had been agreed that Assiniboia and the North-West Territory would be turned over to the new confederation for the consideration of £300,000 sterling and some landed advantages, which would accrue to the fur-trading corporation on the day of the transfer of the country. On the 20th. of August, 1869, this transfer had been fixed for the following 1st. of December, after it had originally been set for the 1st. of October.[85]

So far the politicians and traders. What about the settlers and natives of the country themselves? Their fate had been decided on without their having as much as been told of it, let alone consulted about it. Here is the crucial point, for which we bespeak the greatest attention on the part of the English reader, if he wishes at all to understand what was to follow.

Because of their different social position and prospects in life, while the new-comers, or Canadians, were longing for the prompt realization of these plans, in fact were loudly demanding it, the natives of Assiniboia did not look at them with the same eye. The English-speaking settlers, without being enthusiastic over the matter, wounded as they felt in their pride at having been sold out as a herd of cattle—to use their own expression—were not, as a rule, absolutely averse to trying the new conditions, knowing in advance that, while they could derive some material advantages from them, they were in no danger of losing anything in the line of what is to civilized man more than gold: his language and his religion.

This, let it be proclaimed and ever remembered, was not the case with the French population. At the risk of running counter to the possible self-complacency of some readers, we must distinctly remind them that, through tradition and the testimony of their elders, the French of Assiniboia were well aware of the fact that their race in America had scarcely ever met with fairness at the hands of people of English speech, as far as went the enjoyment of their language and the full practice of their religion, one of the component parts of which is the education of children according to the dictates of conscience.

This will perhaps surprise those who are not quite familiar with the history of, for instance, the province of Quebec, inasmuch as that history is generally put forth as a proof of British forbearance and generosity.[86]

We make bold to assert at the start that if to-day Quebec enjoys religious liberty and the free use of the ancestral idiom, this is simply because the invaders could not alter either, not because they would not. The British authorities and new-comers did all that could humanly speaking be done, short of bloody persecution, to deprive of the one and the other the original population of that country.[87] They failed in their shrewd and persistent attempts because of the steadfastness, if not pugnaciousness, of the French Canadians.

This should be known to every non-partisan historian. Those of our readers who may not be aware of it have only to be referred to the pages not of Garneau or Ferland, but of all veracious English histories of Canada. To mention but one, let us choose one of the latest, F. B. Tracy’s Tercentenary in three volumes. Therein we will see, to commence by the beginning, that, even under the regime of the first British governor, Murray, who certainly was not without his good qualities, throughout the length and breadth of the colony “the judges were Britons” who could not understand the accused or the pleading of their lawyers,[88] and that of the British incomers, “there were only a few hundreds of them at first, but they assumed full authority” to the exclusion of the French.[89]

Yet even then Murray, whose fairness was so resented that he was recalled by the home bureaucrats, was himself singing the praises of those who were so ignominiously ignored in the government of their own country. “I glory,” he wrote after his recall, “of having been accused of warmth and firmness in protecting the king’s Canadian subjects, and of doing my utmost to give to my royal master the affections of that brave, hardy people, whose emigration,[90] if it ever shall happen, will be an irreparable loss to his empire, to prevent which I declare to Your Lordship[91] I would willingly submit to greater calumnies and iniquities, if greater can be devised, than hitherto I have undergone.”[92]

When Carleton came, “he saw that one great source of trouble was the selfishness of the small body of English residents[93]; that the unrest on the part of the French proceeded largely from the aggressions of the English”—which could be said word for word of what was to happen in Assiniboia! Were not those of the same race at Red River warranted in apprehending a repetition of such conditions in their distant domain?

Francis Mazères, one of the principal officers of the Crown in the Canada of the earlier British regime, was a Huguenot, “a very bitter anti-Catholic, and not in favour of allowing the Roman Catholics any share whatever in the government.”[94] The people of the same religious persuasion in the West were threatened with having a Mazères of their own in the person of their forthcoming governor, William McDougall, who passed for being almost as anti-Catholic as one could be.