Blake and Laurier differed in their view of the tactics to be followed by the Opposition. Mr Blake wished to throw the chief emphasis upon the question of Riel's insanity, leaving aside the thorny question of the division of responsibility. Mr Laurier wanted to go further. While equally convinced that Riel was insane, he thought that the main effort of the Opposition should be to divert attention from Riel's sorry figure and concentrate it on {87} the question of the Government's neglect. Accordingly in this speech Mr Laurier reviewed once more the conduct of the Government, arraigning it unsparingly for its common share in the guilt of the rebellion. He denied that the people of Quebec were demanding that no French Canadian should be punished, guilty or not guilty. As for Riel, who shared with the Government the responsibility for the blood and sufferings of the revolt, he urged, with Blake, that it was impossible to consider him sane and accountable for his actions. 'Sir,' he declared, 'I am not one of those who look upon Louis Riel as a hero. Nature had endowed him with many brilliant qualities, but nature had denied him that supreme quality without which all other qualities, however brilliant, are of no avail. Nature had denied him a well-balanced mind. At his worst he was a fit subject for an asylum, at his best he was a religious and political monomaniac.' True, some of the Government's experts had reported that, while insane on religious questions, Riel was otherwise accountable for his actions, but other experts had held him insane without qualification. In any event, the same experts for the Government had declared that Riel's secretary, an {88} English half-breed, William Jackson, was insane on religious questions, and dazed at times, but that 'his actions were not uncontrollable'; yet Quebec bitterly reflected that one of these men had been acquitted, sent to an asylum and then allowed to escape, while the other was sent to the gallows. 'Jackson is free to-day, and Riel is in his grave.'[4]