Parti canadien

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Patriote leader Louis-Joseph Papineau speaks to the crowd at the Assembly of the Six Counties.

The Parti canadien (also Parti patriote) was a political party in what is now Quebec, that was founded by members of the liberal elite of Lower Canada at the beginning of the 19th century. Its members included François Blanchet, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, John Neilson, Jean-Thomas Taschereau, James Stuart, Louis Bourdages, Denis-Benjamin Viger, Daniel Tracey, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Andrew Stuart, and Louis-Joseph Papineau.

[edit] 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. At that time, the council was chosen by an appointed British governor, whom the Parti canadien considered to be severely corrupted 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, Bédard and some of his colleagues at the newspaper were 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 until the suspension of the Constitutional Act in 1837.

In 1826, the party took the name of Parti patriote following a change of strategy. The new strategy was considered too radical by some of its members who eventually left the party, most notably John Neilson.