Excerpt from Speech of Hon. J. A. Chapleau on the Motion Made, Before the House of Commons, on the 11th March, 1886, to Blame the Government for Having Allowed the Execution of Louis Riel: From the Official Debates; House of Commons, March 24th, 1886

We all remember the feeling that pervaded this House when, on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of March, the news arrived that really a rebellion was existing in the N orth - West, and that the agitation which had begun many months before had taken the form of an open revolt. We remember the feeling that existed in this House. It is true that then, as since the beginning of this Session, some gentlemen on the other side, exercising their rights as members of Parliament, had been asking for information, had been clamoring for papers, but still the House went 011 with the performance of its duties until the day we heard the sound of rebellion, and learned that the sons of Canada, at the call of the Government, had to go up and fight that revolt. Sir, when the news of the Duck Lake fight arrived, there was not one man to be found here who would not have said frankly and openly that those who had commenced that rebellion, those men who were ignoring the laws of the country and rebelling against, them, were deserving the severest punishment of the law.

I remember a few days later, when a newspaper in Ontario had had the audacity, as it was then styled, to say that my honorable friend sitting on our left had been actually giving countenance to the rebel lion, that he had been aiding the conspirators against the peace and integrity of the country, that the honorable members sitting on that side of the House were accomplices of those in the north-west who were trying to take those larges territories away from their allegiance to Our Sovereign, I remember what took place in this House; I remember seeing the honorable leader of the Opposition rising in his seat, his features altered, trembling with emotion and saying, with tears in his voice, that there never was such a slanderous insinuation cast upon him and his party as to say that he and they might be called accomplices or even sympathisers with the rebellion in the N orth West. We all remember the honorable member for west-durham stating that he had a relation whose blood had already stained the snow of the prairies, that he had a nephew whose life was in danger, that his son and his brother's son were ready to shoulder their muskets and go to the Saskatchewan and fight against those who wanted-to commit that attempt against the liberties of the empire, and the good name of the people of Canada. At that time we responded to the expression of those feelings and I remember the right honorable Premier in this House getting up in his seat and saying that whatever differences of opinion there might be between him and honorable gent lemen Opposite, he thought the article in question was an ill-advised one - that we all here in this House sympathised together in support ing the laws of Our Dominion, and keeping in its integrity the fine_3.

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