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Bedard refused to be set at liberty without having had the opportunity of vindicating his reputation by the verdict of a jury. Conscious of the integrity of his conduct, and of the legality of his expressed political opinions, he solicited trial, but the September session of the Criminal Term of the King's Bench was suffered to elapse without any attention having been paid to him.
In the bill for appointing an agent to Great Britain, Mr. Bedard, the person who had been under confinement on a charge of treasonable practices, had been named as such agent, and a salary of £2,000 per annum assigned him. Mr. Ryland knew that the Council would throw out the bill.
The action of the authorities in this matter is now admitted to have been tyrannical and unconstitutional, and it is certainly an illustration of human frailty that this same M. Bedard, who suffered not a little from the injustice of his political enemies, should have shown such weakness or, shall we say, Christian forbearance in accepting, not long afterwards, a judgeship from the same Government which he had always so violently opposed, and from which he had suffered so much.
But the triumphant passage of the famous Ninety-Two Resolutions in 1834 showed that, for most purposes, he still had a majority behind him. The Ninety-Two Resolutions were introduced by Elzéar Bédard, the son of Pierre Bédard, and are reputed to have been drawn up by A. N. Morin. But there is no doubt that they were inspired by Papineau.
This was the Canadien, which was established in the fall of that year, chiefly through the exertions of Pierre Bedard, who was for a long while the leader of the French party in the Legislature, and at the same time chief editor of the new journal, which at once assumed a strong position as the exponent of the principles with which its French Canadian conductors were so long identified.
In the April term of the Court of King's Bench, the release of Mr. Bedard from gaol, was attempted, by an attempt to obtain a writ of Habeas Corpus. But the Bench was not sufficiently independent of the Crown. The writ was refused.
This action did not, however, curb the temper of the paper; and a year or more later Craig went further. In May 1810 he took the extreme step of suppressing Le Canadien, and arresting the printer and three of the proprietors, Taschereau, Blanchet, and Bédard.
Bedard had been guilty of treason, and that the province was in a state approaching to open rebellion; that Jonathan Sewell had read the wicked proclamation in the Court House, to influence the Grand and Petty Juries; that Jonathan Sewell had abused his powers simply with the view of paving the way for American predominance in Canada; that with the view of annexing Canada to the United States he had entered into a base and wicked conspiracy with one John Henry, an adventurer of suspicious character, for the purpose of sowing dissension among the subjects of the government of the United States, and producing a dismemberment of the Union; and had given artful advice to Sir James Craig, inducing him to send Henry, the adventurer, on a secret mission, which had exposed His Majesty's government to imputations reflecting on its honor, and that he had labored to promote disunion between the legislative Council and Legislative Assembly, and had fomented dissensions in the province to prevent a reliance on the loyalty and bravery of His Majesty's Canadian subjects.
Bedard, and passed as many bills as were required. The "gaols" bill was temporarily continued: the repairs of the Castle of St. Lewis having cost £14,980, instead of £7,000, as contemplated, the additional outlay was voted; £50,000 were voted towards the erection of suitable parliament buildings.
The House resolved that the Government Preserves Act, guaranteed to the said Pierre Bedard, Esquire, the right of sitting in the Assembly.
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