THE Prophetic anti-gallic letters

François Deschamps

Description

The Anti-Gallic Letters by Adam Thom were published in book form in 1836. They are based on Thom’s editorials in the Montreal Herald written under the nom de plume “Camillus” between September 1835 and January 1836. They were never reprinted despite the importance of the people for whom Adam Thom was the public voice. These people comprised the Executive Committee of the powerful Constitutional Association of Montreal, including the president George Moffatt and Peter McGill. Adam Thom was also co-author of the Durham Report that laid the foundations for the Act of Union and the BNA Act of 1867 creating The Dominion of Canada.Anti-gallic Letters Addressed to His Excellency, the Earl of Gos
More than an anti-French, anti-Republican tract, The Anti-Gallic Letters, though largely ignored by historians, are crucial to understanding how British North America mutated into The Dominion of Canada in 1867. The Anti-Gallic Letters have been erroneously characterized as representative of a minor discord between the Melbourne cabinet in London and a select group of Montreal merchants, bankers, and gentlemen in the Tory oligarchy. In fact, they reveal the total disagreement among people of British culture and background on how to exercise power in the colonies of Canada and to protect the interests of the British Empire.
Westminster was inspired by the 1832 Reform Bill. The Melbourne cabinet believed in a gradual and harmonious transfer of British parliamentary values and institutions to a majority group who had a different culture and background and another widely-used international language. This majority was what Governor Gosford described as “the great body of people” in his 1835 Throne speech read in French. Yet the Montreal Tory Oligarchy, stirred by fear and bravado, anticiapted the worst, even though they defended the same British imperial world mission. For them, Montreal was to be the hub of the British North America that was developing, a competitor of New York. They brandished the spectre of the British Empire being dismembered, either by a French Republic arising in the St. Lawrence Valley or the annexation of Upper and Lower Canada by the powerful American Republic. This threat justified in turn their own threats to take up arms to make Downing Street change its course.
François Deschamps shows that they succeeded across the board. First in 1837 came the brutal repression of the Patriotes in Lower Canada and the Reformers in Upper Canada, then the Durham Report and the Act of Union of 1840, and finally the 1867 BNA Act creating the Dominion of Canada. Thence the word Prophetic in the title of this new edition of The Anti-Gallic Letters.
Now reprinted with Deschamps’s fascinating presentation and notes, the Anti-Gallic Letters provide new insight to Canadian—and North American—history as Canada prepares to mark the 150th anniversary of the Dominion of Canada in 2017.

Sujets

• Pre-Confederation
• Histoire
• Quebec
• List of defunct newspapers of Quebec
• The Montreal Herald
• Adam Thom
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Baraka Biblio
• Date de parution: 26 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781771860956
• Langue: English

Extrait

François Deschamps
THE PROPHETIC ANTI-GALLIC LETTERS
Adam Thom and the Hidden Roots of the Dominion of Canada
Translation and Editing by Robin Philpot
Baraka Biblio
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Baraka Biblio is an imprint of Baraka Books © Baraka Books ISBN 978-1-77186-091-8 pbk; 978-1-77186-095-6 epub; 978-1-77186-096-3 pdf; 978-1-77186-097-0 mobi/pocket Book Design and Cover by Folio infographie Translation/adaptation of Chapters 1-3 and notes by Robin Philpot Legal Deposit, 4th quarter 2016 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec Library and Archives Canada Published by Baraka Books of Montreal 6977, rue Lacroix Montréal, Québec H4E 2V4 Telephone: [phone] [e-mail] www.barakabooks.com Printed and bound in Quebec


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1
THE HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT 1
The historical and political context, both locally and internationally, in which Adam Thom wrote the Anti-Gallic Letters is crucial to understanding the letters and their importance.
The fifty years that preceded their publication were characterized by revolution and war in Europe and in North and South America. These earth-shaking events left their marks in the hearts and minds of people everywhere.
When, for example, France and Great Britain went to war early in February 1793, British authorities in Lower Canada feared the arrival of French spies, especially because revolutionaries in Paris were petitioning for the recovery of lands that the monarchy had abandoned. Citizen Edmond-Charles Genêt, delegated by the government of France to the Philadelphia Congress, wrote to the Canadiens on behalf of the “Free French” with a clear invitation to rise up. “Today we are free, we have reclaimed our rights, our oppressors have been punished, all parts of our administration have regenerated, and, strengthened by the justice of our cause, by our courage and by the immense means with which we are preparing to defeat all tyrants in the world, it is finally within our power to avenge you and to render you as free as we are, as independent as your neighbours the Americans of the United States. Canadians, follow their example and ours, the route has been cleared, and magnanimous determination can make you leave the state of abjection in which you have been plunged.” Putting those words to action, a small French fleet weighed anchor in Chesapeake Bay and set out to “liberate” Quebec. It was already late in the year and stories of the harsh Canadian winter prompted the commander to change course and set sail for Bordeaux.
The French threat gave rise to a hunt for spies, foreigners, and French sympathizers in Lower Canada. A new law was passed to reorganize the militia, a reform that upset many Canadiens and resulted in loud demonstrations of disapproval.
Many English leaders proposed that Quebec become English. The columns of the weekly Quebec Mercury ran attacks on the Canadiens . In the edition published on October 27, 1806, a certain “Anglicanus” bluntly stated that, “This province is already too much a French province for an English colony. To unfrenchify it, as much as possible, if I may be allowed the phrase, should be a primary object, […] My complaint, is against the unavoidable result of an unnecessary cultivation of the french language, in a country, where common policy requires its diminution, rather than its further dissemination. […] After forty seven years possession of Quebec it is time the Province should be english.” In answer to these attacks, the Canadien leaders launched the first newspaper published in French only, Le Canadien .
James Craig was a military officer appointed Governor in 1807. He held the demands of French-speaking members in deep contempt. Craig saw conspiracies everywhere. Some in his entourage proposed to adopt measures to assimilate the French-speaking population as quickly as possible, such as uniting Upper and Lower Canada with weighted representation favouring the British minority so that they would hold a majority in the House of Assembly.
Fear of—sometimes hate for—France and the French was widespread. Isaac Brock, who Canada has made into the hero of the War of 1812, expressed his motivation for fighting that war in his proclamation of July 12, 1812:
[I]t is but too obvious that, once estranged from the powerful protection of the United Kingdom, you must be re annexed to the dominion of France, from which the provinces of Canada were wrested by the arms of Great Britain, at a vast expense of blood and treasure (…). This restitution of Canada to the empire of France, was the stipulated reward for the aid afforded to the revolted colonies, now the United States; the debt is still due, and there can be no doubt but the pledge has been renewed as a consideration for commercial advantages, or rather for an expected relaxation in the tyranny of France over the commercial world. Are you prepared inhabitants of Canada to become willing subjects or rather slaves to the despot who rules the nations of continental Europe with a rod of iron? If not, arise in a body, exert your energies, co-operate cordially with the king’s regular forces to repel the invader, and do not give cause to your children when groaning under the oppression of a foreign master, to reproach you with having so easily parted with the richest inheritance of this earth—a participation in the name, character, and freedom of Britons! (Tupper, 1847, 210)
In Lower Canada’s House of Assembly, the majority of French-speaking members joined the Parti Canadien founded early in the nineteenth century. Louis-Joseph Papineau was elected Speaker of the Assembly in 1815 and soon became leader of the Parti Canadien, renamed the Parti Patriote in 1826.
The Parti Canadien feared that London would propose to unite Upper and Lower Canada to the detriment of the Canadiens . The leaders also were convinced that people who were opposed to the Canadiens would misinform Westminster. Alexis de Tocqueville later echoed this fear in a letter to a friend, who was clerk of the Privy Council in London. Replying to a request for advice on how the Crown should respond to the 1837 rebellion, Tocqueville wrote: “In short, my dear friend, do not trust what the English who have settled in Canada nor the Americans from the United States have to say about the Canadien population. Their views are coloured by incredible prejudice and any government that would take those views only would be courting disaster.”
The idea of uniting Upper and Lower Canada was hotly contested. When Papineau and John Neilson went to London to explain why the two colonies should not be united, they saw that the unionist representative, Andrew Stuart, was applying tremendous pressure push through the union bill tabled in 1822. Stuart claimed that Lower Canada was mainly inhabited by a population that still could be considered foreign more than sixty years after the Conquest. In his opinion this population had made no progress towards assimilation with their fellow citizens of British stock.
Two events occurred in 1832 to aggravate matters. A by-election in Montreal pitted Patriote Daniel Tracey, an Irish doctor who ran the newspaper The Vindicator , against Loyalist Stanley Bagg. On Monday May 21, the magistrate and ultra-Tory George Moffatt, pretexting a riot, called in the military. The soldiers commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Macintosh shot and killed three innocent passers-by, all Canadiens . The French-language newspaper, La Minerve , denounced the killing saying that Canadiens should “Never forget the massacre of our brothers.” Adam Thom lauded the commander Macintosh and the soldiers who opened fire in the Anti-Gallic Letters, while Governor Aylmer congratulated the officers who gave orders to fire on the crowd
Tensions escalated the following year when the Parti Patriote led by Louis-Joseph Papineau published its list of demands. Among their “Ninety-two Resolutions,” the members of the House of Assembly demanded an elected legislative council, expulsion of magistrates from the Executive Council, control of the civil list, and much more. Their denunciations also targeted the stacking or plurality of responsibilities, army intervention during elections, increased government spending, and poor management of Crown lands. The general elections held in fall 1834 bore witness to the widespread discontent among the Canadiens . The Parti Patriote won 77 of the 88 seats in the House of Assembly.
Archibald Acheson, Count of Gosford, to whom Adam Thom addressed the Anti-Gallic Letters, was appointed Governor of Upper and Lower Canada and head of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the situation in the two colonies. Troubles were not confined to Lower Canada as agitation was also spreading to Upper Canada. To curry favour among Canadiens who backed Papineau, the King’s new representative invited a majority of French-speaking people to celebrate St. Catherine’s Day on November 25, 1835. Ultra-Tory English Montrealers saw this as pandering and loudly expressed their disapproval of this policy of conciliation. This in fact reflected changes occurring in the Imperial Parliament in the wake of the 1832 Reform Bill.
In the Montreal Herald, Adam Thom called on English people to prepare for an uprising by the Canadiens . “The French faction’s rashness and your lordship’s weakness have rendered the struggl