of the past, a people
above all intensely national, patriotic, jealous for the advancement of
their tongue and their race. I address you as faithful of the ancient
Church which was founded on the Petrine Rock, and names itself Catholic,
Apostolic, Roman; whose altars God has preserved unshaken through the
centuries amid terrible hosts of enemies, bitter oppressions, diabolical
persecutions; of whose faith your hearts, your bodies, your race itself,
are the consecrated depositories set apart and blessed of Heaven."

"I address you further, Frenchmen of Canada, as an oppressed remnant,
long crushed and evil treated under alien conquerors; who despoiled you
of your dominion, your freedom and your future, and whose military
despotism, history records, spurned your cry during eighty years with
unspeakable arrogance; till you rose like men in the despair of the '37,
for the simplest rights, brandishing in your hands poor scythes and
knives against armies with cannon, O my compatriots!--and compelled them
to dole you a little justice!"

"The brave and generous who still remain of the generation before,
recount to you those living scenes, and your hearts take part with the
wronged and valiant of your blood!"

"In this secluded countryside you see too little how they still insult
you. Ask yourselves frankly whether that for which our nation strove has
ever yet been had. What have we gained? Is not the battle still to be
fought? There are no facts more patent than that the English are our
conquerors, that they rule our country, that they are aliens, heretics,
enemies of our Holy Religion, and that they are heaping up unrighteous
riches, while we are becoming despised and poor."

"Think not that I speak without emotions in my breast. There was a day,
my poor French-Canadian brothers,--a solemn day, when I bound myself by
a great oath to the cause of my people. It was when my father told me,
his voice choking with, tears, of the murder of my grandfather,
ignominiously thrown from the gallows for the felony of patriotism! Was
I wrong to rise in grief and wrath, and swear with tears and prayers
before our good Ste. Anne that I would never rest or taste a pleasure
until I free the French-Canadians?"

"'It is I who will defend my race and my religion!' cried I then, and I
have ever striven to do this, and still so strive."

Having thus played along each different key of his hearer's prejudices,
he turned them towards his end.