The social brilliance of the Duke of Richmond's rule, however, could not blind the popular party to the inadequacy of the policy for which he stood; and discontent soon began to take a bitter and dangerous form. The concessions grudgingly doled out by Dalhousie and Kempt, succeeding governors, did not touch the main issue of the question, and even when Lord Aylmer removed the last serious grievance, only withholding from the Assembly the right to vote upon the salaries of civil officers, it might have seemed that there was no further ground for agitation. But the essential grievance lay not so much in material disabilities as in the limitation of the abstract right to self-government; and Joseph Papineau, the eloquent and ardent leader of the movement, summed up his party's political creed in the new watchword--_La nation Canadienne._ Parry and thrust, the fight grew faster, and the temper of the combatants became heated. Papineau was elected to the speakership of the Assembly, a challenge the Governor answered by prorogation. Next, the Progressives demanded an elective council, and the Government replied that such a step would mean abandoning the province wholly to the French, who were yet unprepared to wield complete popular power, and would moreover endanger the interests of the English minority. The demand was formally rejected by Lord John Russell on the return of Lord Gosford's commission in 1835. [Illustration: TRAPPISTS AT MISTASSINI] The fiery eloquence of Papineau now led the more ardent of his followers to the point of rebellion; and for a time it seemed as if Lower Canada would throw away the name for steadfast loyalty she had earned through so many years. The rebellion of 1837, however, met with no serious support throughout the Province of Canada; and, except as an original centre of agitation, Quebec did not figure in it at all. At the same time defensive measures were not omitted, the leading citizens, both French and English, forming themselves into a regiment at the disposal of the Governor-General. Parliament House was set apart for a drill-hall and guard-house, and garrison duty was performed here during the whole of an anxious winter. Montreal, however, suffered violence at the hands of a misguided mob; and in the country parishes the _habitants_ were harangued after Mass on Sunday by deputies of the _Fils de Liberté_. Yet, while they punctuated these fervent addresses with shouts of "_Vive Papineau_" and "_Point de despotisme!_" they neither knew nor cared what the struggle for responsible government really meant. In the parishes along the Richelieu, indeed, Papineau and his followers made a greater commotion; but, except in Bellechasse and L'Islet, the contented _habitants_ of the St. Lawrence forgot the seditious procession almost as soon as it passed. These ingenuous _enfants du sol_ had no political aspirations beyond the preservation of their religion, their