History
Under the leadership of Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, the party campaigned for ministerial responsibility and a responsible government in which the members of the Legislative Council of Quebec would be appointed by the Legislative Assembly's majority party. Although the party controlled the assembly in Lower Canada, at that time the council, which held most of the power, was chosen by an appointed British governor, whom the Parti canadien considered to be seriously corrupt and hostile to the interests of the majority of the population.
In 1806 the Parti canadien imitated its political adversaries, the Tory Château Clique, in founding a newspaper named Le Canadien. In 1810 Governor Craig had Bédard and some of his colleagues at the newspaper arrested and imprisoned without trial for a comment published in Le Canadien.
In 1811 James Stuart became leader of the Parti canadien in the assembly and, in 1815, reformer Louis-Joseph Papineau was elected Assembly Speaker. Papineau's reformist ideas gained in authority and popularity as he led the party in its fight against the union of the Canada's proposal in 1822, until the suspension of the Constitutional Act in 1837.
Read more about this topic: Parti Canadien
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)