rwhelming that it was accepted
as a matter of course that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of
the contrary decision was to them, as Professor Skelton says,
"unbelievable." The actual announcement of the hanging was a match
to a powder magazine. That night there were mobs on the streets of
Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was burned in effigy in Dominion
square. On the following Sunday forty thousand people swarmed around
the hustings on Champ de Mars and heard the government denounced in
every conceivable term of verbal violence by speakers of every tinge
of political belief. This outpouring of a common indignation with
its obliteration of all the usual lines of demarcation was the
result of the "wounding of the national self-esteem" by the flouting
of the demand for leniency, as it was put by La Minerve. Mercier put
it still more strongly when he declared that "the murder of Riel
was a declaration of war upon French Canadian influence in
Confederation." A binding cement for this union of elements
ordinarily at war was sought for in the creation of the "parti
national" which a year later captured the provincial Conservative
citadel at Quebec and turned it over to Honore Mercier. This violent
racial movement raged unchecked in the provincial arena, but in the
federal field it was held in leash by Laurier. That he saw the
possibilities of the situation is not to be doubted. He took part in
the demonstration on Champ de Mars and in his speech 'made a
declaration--"Had I been born on the banks of the Saskatchewan I
myself would have shouldered a musket"--which riveted nation-wide
attention upon him. Laurier followed this by his impassioned apology
for the halfbreeds and their leader in the House of Commons, of
which deliverance Thomas White, of the assailed ministry, justly
said: "It was the finest parliamentary speech ever pronounced in the
parliament of Canada since Confederation." In the debate on the
execution of Riel all the orators of parliament took part. It was
the occasion for one of Blake's greatest efforts. Sir John Thompson,
in his reply to Blake, revealed himself to parliament and the
country as one worthy of crossing swords with the great Liberal
tribune. But they and all the other "big guns" of the Commons were
thrown into complete eclipse by Laurier's performance. It is easy to
recall after the lapse of thirty-six years the extraordinary
impression which that speech made upon the great audience which
he