With news so transmitted and the bulk of the population unable to read or write, and with only the comparatively wealthy and the adventurous able or willing to travel, it is not surprising that “the focus of sedition, that asylum for all the demagogic turbulence of the province,” the Assembly rooms at Quebec, had not succeeded in disseminating their beliefs and hopes among the most rural of the population. One thing which made remote villages loath to be disturbed was that they had more than once seen noisy demagogues and blatant liberators side with the alien powers when opportunity for self-aggrandizement came. Also, in many cases their isolated lot precluded feeling governmental pressure. But in the county of Two Mountains, at St. Denis, St. Charles, and also at Berthier, they were alert enough, and the most stirring pages in the coming revolt were to be written in blood in these localities. There secret associations flourished; open resistance only waited opportunity. There the Sons of Liberty drilled and wrote themselves into fervour, with pikes made by local blacksmiths and manifestoes founded on French and Irish models for outward tokens of the inward faith: “The diabolical policy of England towards her Canadian subjects, like to her policy towards Ireland, forever staining her bloody escutcheon.” The history of “my own, my native land,” inspires all words written from this point of view; one patriot, “plethoric with rhethoric,” had many fine lines, such as “the torch, the sword, and the savage,” and pages devoted to the “tyrannical government of palace pets.” Away back in 1807 many militia officers of fluctuating loyalty had been dismissed, and the precedent established by Governor Craig was continued. Papineau was one of these officers; he had made an insolent reply--“The pretension of the Governor to interrogate me respecting my conduct at St. Laurent is an impertinence which I repel with contempt and silence”--to the Governor’s secretary, and had to suffer for it. The political compact called the Confederation of the Six Counties was governed by some of those so dismissed, and they all grew still more enthusiastic from the sight of such banner legends as “Papineau and the Elective System,” “Our Friends of Upper Canada,” “Independence.” The Legislative Council was pictorially represented by a skull and cross bones, and the declaration of the rights of man was voiced.