PAPINEAU AND CARTIER. "the tribune who, from 1820 to 1837,
is the personification of a whole people ; who defends their most sacred rights ; the melodious speaker who fascinates and overpowers the multitudes with his sonorous sentences, his ample gestures, and his com- manding appearance—the true sovereign indeed of Quebec," he says : "As a living contrast Cartier represents the man of action all absorbed in his work, though wanting in those bewitching gifts which captivate the crowd, and attract men with an
irresistible magnetism The first is a speculative personality wedded to theories of his own ; the other believes only in what he can handle and put in tangible form." Papineau as a demagogue represented the struggle of his compatriots —les Pat notes as they came to be known—in the early part of the last century to assert themselves, and although that struggle ended in a bloody rebellion, it is doubtful whether he was in any way responsible for that catastrophe. His biographer, however, emphatically declares that he was not imbued with race prejudice, and that his action was "never directed against the English people, but solely against the Ministers who refused to grant us in their full integrity the rights as British subjects which we were entitled to claim." Cartier, who was sometimes opposed to, sometimes allied with, Sir John Macdonald, became a force in Canadian politics about four years after Papineau's death at the age of eighty-five. He lived in more peaceful times, and sustained a more peaceful role. But, especially when he was in alliance with Macdonald, he was as truly as Papineau the representative and chief of his countrymen. The close study of this volume—with allowances for the sentimentality which suffuses it—is essential to a thorough understanding of the Canada of to-day.
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