Irish contemporary,
O'Connell. But O'Connell was too conservative to produce great results.
Papineau, dashing himself in vain for twenty years against the
entrenched camp of the ascendancy, finally degenerated, like Mackenzie,
into a commonplace rebel.

The phases through which the agitation passed before it reached this
disastrous point need only a brief review. Naturally enough, owing to
the bi-racial conditions, friction had arisen earlier in Lower than in
Upper Canada, yet the first recognition of the flagrant defects of the
Constitution was not made till 1828, when a Committee of the British
House of Commons published a Report which, though its recommendations
were mild and inadequate, was in effect a censure of the whole political
system of the Province and an admission of the justice of the agitation.
There was no result for four years, while matters went from bad to worse
in the Colony. At last, in 1832, under an Act similar to that passed for
Upper Canada, all the provincial revenues were placed under the control
of the Assembly in return for the voting of a fixed Civil List. This
well-meant half-measure made matters worse, because it left the Assembly
just as powerless as before over the details of legislation and
administration, while giving it the power to paralyze the Government by
refusing all, instead of only part, of the supplies. This it proceeded
to do, and in the next five years large deficits were piled up, and the
Colony became insolvent.

Meanwhile, in February, 1834, a year before the publication of the
"Seventh Report of Grievances" in Upper Canada, and three months before
O'Connell's celebrated motion in the House of Commons for the Repeal of
the Union between England and Ireland, the Assembly of Lower Canada, at
Papineau's instance, passed the equally celebrated "Ninety-two
Resolutions." Bombastic and diffuse, like parts of O'Connell's speech,
this historic document nevertheless was as true in all really essential
respects as Mackenzie's manifesto and as O'Connell's tremendous
indictment of the system of Government in Ireland. All three men,
O'Connell with far the most justification, demanded the same thing, good
government for their respective countries under a responsible Parliament
and Ministry. They all occasionally used wild language, O'Connell the
least wild. O'Connell, who nine years later deliberately quenched a
popular revolt he could have headed, failed in his aim as completely as