estions, Riel
was otherwise accountable for his actions, but other experts had held
him insane without qualification. In any event, the same experts for
the Government had declared that Riel's secretary, an {88} English
half-breed, William Jackson, was insane on religious questions, and
dazed at times, but that 'his actions were not uncontrollable'; yet
Quebec bitterly reflected that one of these men had been acquitted,
sent to an asylum and then allowed to escape, while the other was sent
to the gallows. 'Jackson is free to-day, and Riel is in his grave.'[4]

On wider grounds the Government should have stood for clemency. Who
was right in the United States after the Civil War--President Johnson,
who wished to try Lee for treason, or General Grant, who insisted that
he be not touched? Twenty years after, the unity of North and South
proves unmistakably Grant's far-seeing wisdom. 'We cannot make a
nation of this new country by shedding blood,' Mr Laurier concluded.
'Our prisons are full of men, who, despairing of getting justice by
peace, sought it by war, who, despairing of ever being treated like
freemen, {89} took their lives in their hands rather than be treated as
slaves. They have suffered greatly, they are suffering still, yet
their sacrifice will not be without reward.... They are in durance
to-day, but the rights for which they were fighting have been
acknowledged. We have not the report of the commission yet, but we
know that more than two thousand claims so long denied have at last
been granted. And more--still more: we have it in the Speech from the
Throne that at last representation is to be granted to those
Territories. This side of the House long sought, but sought in vain,
to obtain that measure of justice. It could not come then, but it came
after the war; it came as the last conquest of that insurrection. And
again I say that "their country has conquered with their martyrdom,"
and if we look at that one fact alone there was cause sufficient,
independent of all other, to extend mercy to the one who is dead and to
those who live.'

In parliament, for all the eloquence of Laurier and Blake, the
Government had its way. In the country the controversy raged in more
serious fashion. In Quebec Honore Mercier, the brilliant, tempestuous
leader of the Liberals, carried on a violent agitation, {90} and in
January 1887 rode the whirlwind into power. Wild and bitter words were
many in the contest, a