"It is possible you may think I have, been speaking of everything but
politics, and that you are asking yourselves what I really mean. Do you
know what this election signifies? _It is a contest of the French with
the English._ It is a question whether that arrogant minority shall
continue to impose their ideas, their leaders, their execrable heresies,
their taxes and restrictions upon this great French-Canadian
Province--the only country which you have been able to hold for your
own. You are here, at least, the majority! If their artifices have
succeeded in excluding you from a part in governing the Dominion, there
is one thing left; _you can govern this Province if you stand by me!_ If
you stand by my me you can make our country purely and powerfully
French! The ballot gives us the government: we will legislate the
English. We will repay their oppressions with taxes and leave the
Frenchman free; we will overvalue their properties, and undervalue our
own; we will divide their constituencies; we will proclaim parishes out
of townships; we will deprive them of offices, harass their commerce,
vex their heretical altars; we will force new privileges from the
Federal power; we will colonize the public lands with our own people
exclusively, and repatriate our children lost; we will possess ourselves
of those palaces and that vast wealth they wring from our labor, and
finally, free as these great stretches of the valley, we shall live at
peace in our own land."

A sullen murmur passed about. The passions were being roused. "The
English eat the French-Canadians," repeated several.

"Messieurs of Dormilliere, you can judge of me! They have said of me all
sorts of calumnies, all kinds of insinuations. I have been painted as
black as the evil spirits. Men are here who will tell you 'Grandmoulin
is a hypocrite; Grandmoulin is a robber, a liar, a libertine,'--that I
have ruined my Province and sold my people and committed all the list of
mortal sins. But, my brothers, I turn from those who assert these wicked
falsehoods and I justify myself to you."

"Because I have not sought peace with the strong--because I have not
acted a vanquished to the victors--because I have suffered--but that is
nothing--because I have freely poured out every energy, as I do to-day,"
(and there was certainly vast physical effort in the output he was then
making of himself) "they have branded me that disturber, that robber,
that murderer, that liar and th