In the latest issue of National Action, André Larocque places the democratic concern in René Lévesque before the national project, if not in equal measure. In this respect, and with good reason, he compares Lévesque to Louis-Joseph Papineau (1786-1871). One could even say that the two men’s underestimation of their democratic and republican component is the source of an erroneous understanding of their thought and their politics.
For those who are not afraid to frame the two men in a perspective of criticism of colonialism and colonial emancipation, it is possible to see a strong filiation even if the contexts differ.
It is moreover on this condition that one can speak of a colonial condition and of a project of decolonization, even if this was sometimes, it must be recognized, dotted.
From Old World England to New World United States
Member of Parliament (1808) and leader (1817) of the Canadian then Patriot “party”, Papineau slowly but lastingly adhered to republicanism. His option resulted from his disappointment after 1823 with an England that not only saw the wealth gap between the aristocracy and the general population widen, but constantly postponed the implementation of promises of reform. .
Papineau, who traveled to the United States in 1817 and who knew the country’s history and constitutional figures well, sought and found in this republican experience the axes of a future for Lower Canada in America.
It should be noted that it is the American and not the French republican experience that inspires it, the experience of the New World and not that of the Old World. The political model makes all the more sense in that the institutions there are fashioned from a geography, an economy, and endogenous mores. He wrote in 1834: “It is only a question of knowing that we live in America and of knowing how we lived there. »
Republican means of a policy
Republicanism generally provided him with the means to criticize the constitutional monarchy of England. Above all, the application of its principles (the government of the people, by the people and for the people) is singularly strategic for the politician. […]
However, the key institution in British colonial governance that controls the elected House is the Legislative Council, whose appointed members are English-speaking and loyal and can at any time block laws passed by the House. Clearly, here, with regard to the central claim of the Parti patriote, Papineau makes original use of a republican principle, as do certain states in New England where senators are elected.
At the same time, the Parti patriote legislated in matters of the fabrique by making accountable the churchwardens responsible for the material administration of the Catholic parishes. Such is the responsible government of Papineau: republican.
Papineau’s American republicanism was at the center of his anti-colonialism, which aimed in the medium term for the independence of Lower Canada. But already, in his spirit and in his policy, he claimed control by the elected Chamber of the income and expenditure of the colony, just as he intended to block the discretionary policy of the governor, who dispensed pensions and privileges to reward the friends of the regime.
His republicanism also nourished a vigorous denunciation of the colonial and metropolitan aristocracy. […] The action of the Patriotic Party is carried out in a democratic dynamic; in 1834, the group had 77 deputies elected out of 84: they were all representatives who supported the 92 resolutions.
In this sense, the election was a referendum. In 1837, when the governor put an end to the session of the Chamber of Assembly, the Patriote Party decided to carry out its action in about fifty popular assemblies; its positions there are renewed in as many constituencies.
Challenges of one, challenges of another
René Lévesque faced his own challenges in his democratic advocacy. America may well be “the continent of republics”, but Papineau must explain some apparent contradictions: his status as a republican lord, his position on slavery at the time of the civil war and the fate of the French language in America.
On the first two points, historian Olivier Guimond has shed decisive light. An admirer of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Papineau conceived of the New World as an egalitarian social universe and land ownership in America as a specific reality. For him, “seigneuralism” could be a form of inexpensive land distribution and ultimately a means of integration into continental republicanism.
The Civil War (1860-1865) undermined republicanism as Papineau admired it. It was less “abolitionist fatalism” or “negrophilism” which risked misleading his son Amédée which worried him than a cause external to this civil war: the encouragement of loyalist elements in the South by the former British metropolis and the interests of Europe to divide the United States. By delaying in finding a solution to the political crisis, the democratic deliberation proper to republicanism came up against the “unquenchable hatred” between victors and vanquished so characteristic of Europe. […]
At the beginning of the Union, when he did not yet distinguish the form that the destiny of Lower Canada would take, but recognized that language was “the first cause of nationality”, he drew a decisive consequence from his bias in favor of the annexation of Lower Canada to the United States: “Our French education is a misfortune for us because our situation destines us to assimilation with the United States. »
This French-style education may well help the emancipation of European nations, “it makes us run after the unknown, when the positive, the best political state that has ever existed, is at our doorstep”. This is what the editor of CanadianÉtienne Parent, called the risk of another Louisiana.
It has long been thought — and I am one — that annexation was for Papineau the result of a logic of despair. It is clear that, by placing Lower Canada under the American flag, Papineau was renouncing the sovereignty of the country. He opted for this scenario because US federalism left the states with more significant sovereignty than the British system in Canada could grant. […]
As early as 1854, he believed that “to preach the small neo-Canadian nationality is to reject annexation, which is as certain as it is desirable”, and where not only a new and great nationality like that of Massachusetts, Connecticut , Vermont, Delaware, but “a Colombian nationality”, “cradle where were to be born and grow the virtues of Washington and the genius of the author of the declaration of Independence, not of the 13 colonies only, but of humanity whole”, “political rights common to people of all races and colors”.
In 1870, Papineau still had a broad view of the annexation of the Canadas which had become Canada three years earlier: “The Canadas are so vast that, if they were part of the happy American Confederation, they would have to be divided into five to six States, each of them great in extent as the important States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, etc., and with just degree of influence in both Houses of this Congress heard, studied, loved and respected by all civilization . His republicanism was articulated and universalized, and would have made it possible to bring the country into the circle of nations by taking it out of the shadow of small peoples.
Partial sovereignty
[…] Just as Lévesque had opted for a popular majority (the referendum), Papineau had made the radical choice of the American republican spirit and system. Political action, like public offices, had to be accountable and accountable to the people.
The Parti patriote had been elected with a very large majority in 1834. Papineau did not intend to upset the people. At the popular assembly of Saint-Laurent, in May 1837, he explained the meaning of not consuming imported goods and compared it with the situation in the United States in 1765 and 1776: Americans ten years before fighting. They began well, and they ended well, in circumstances similar to those in which we find ourselves. We’re just getting off to a good start. We don’t know where England will stop, so we can’t yet say where Canada will stop. It is not a question of jostling the people in a cul-de-sac.
What to do while waiting for the popular will to acquiesce in independence? Question could not be more Quebec, yesterday and today with Papineau, with La Fontaine, with Lévesque, with Legault.
Papineau will opt for annexation, that is to say for partial sovereignty as a state of the United States, but for a sovereignty greater than anything that can be hoped for under an imperial monarchy and, above all, a state in the great republic. The risk taken clearly indicates that democracy was a prerequisite for some form of sovereignty.