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His energy and eloquence were directed towards the establishment of an elective legislative council in which his compatriots would have necessarily the great majority, a supremacy that would enable him and his following to control the whole legislation and government, and promote his dominant idea of a Nation Canadienne in the valley of the St. Lawrence.
The trousseau of Pauline was essentially French in its airiness; its cheap splendours attested to one side of her peculiar character and the sturdier and more sensible attributes of the belle Canadienne were for the time obliterated.
To give his ministers a last fair chance of holding on to office, he dissolved parliament at the end of 1847, recognizing that, in the event of a victory, their credit would be immensely increased. The struggle of December 1847, to January 1848, was decisive. While the French constituencies maintained their former position, even in Upper Canada the discredited ministry found few supporters. The only element in the situation which disturbed Elgin was the news that Papineau, the arch-rebel of 1837, had come back to public life with a flourish of agitating declarations; and that the French people had not condemned with sufficient decisiveness his seditious utterances. Yet he need have had no qualms. La Revue Canadienne in reviewing the situation certainly refused to condemn Papineau's extravagances, but its conclusion took the ground from under the agitator's feet, for it declared that "cette modération de nos chefs politiques a puissamment contribué
He was an enfant terrible; Revolutionist Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the Excommunicate was his literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets made their way by subterranean passages to his appetite; he was the leader of a group who might some day give trouble to the Reverend gentlemen who managed the "nation Canadienne." And yet, "What a declaimer of Cicero and Bossuet!
The British government had accorded to Catholics in Canada a measure of liberty at once just and generous; and the bishops and clergy were not slow to see that under a republican form of government, whether as a state in the American Union or as an independent nation canadienne, they might be much worse off, and would not be any better off, than under the dominion of Great Britain.
This useful publication was followed by the 'Soirees Canadiennes, and 'Le Foyer Canadien, which also gave a new impulse to native talent, and those who wish to study the productions of the early days of French Canadian literature will find much interest and profit in the pages of these characteristic publications, as well as in the 'Revue Canadienne, of these later times.
Visionary notions of la gloire de la nation Canadienne, instilled into him by restless men, who panted for distinction and cared not for distraction, misled the bonnet rouge awhile: but he has superadded the thinking cap since; and, although he may not readily forget the sad lesson he received, yet he has no more idea of being annexed to the United States than I have of being Grand Lama.
He perceived that there was something in the state of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him particularly discordant. Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant, mention of a certain Pointe Canadienne.
Mackenzie was deeply mortified at the result, and determined from that moment to rebel against the government which, in his opinion, had no intention of remedying public grievances. At the same time Papineau, with whom he was in communication, had made up his mind to establish a republic, une nation Canadienne, on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
Vive la Canadienne Et ses jolis yeux doux, then received its consecration, and the light-hearted fellows kept step to c' était un p'tit bonhomme and
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