The Ninety-Two Resolutions do not rank high as a constructive document. The chief change in the constitution which they proposed was the application of the elective principle to the Legislative Council. Of anything which might be construed into advocacy of a statesmanlike project of responsible government there was not a word, save a vague allusion to 'the vicious composition and irresponsibility of the Executive Council.' Papineau and his friends had evidently no conception of the solution ultimately found for the constitutional problem in Canada--a provincial cabinet chosen from the legislature, sitting in the legislature, and responsible to the legislature, whose advice the governor is bound to accept in regard to provincial affairs. Papineau undoubtedly did much to hasten the day of responsible government in Canada; {42} but in this process he was in reality an unwitting agent. The Ninety-Two Resolutions secured a majority of fifty-six to twenty-four. But in the minority voted John Neilson, Augustin Cuvillier, F. A. Quesnel, and Andrew Stuart, who now definitely broke away from Papineau's party. There are signs, too, that the considerable number of Catholic clergy who had openly supported Papineau now began to withdraw from the camp of a leader advocating such republican and revolutionary ideas. There is ground also for believing that not a little unrest disturbed those who voted with Papineau in 1834. In the next year Elzear Bedard, who had moved the Ninety-Two Resolutions, broke with Papineau. Another seceder was Etienne Parent, the editor of the revived _Canadien_, and one of the great figures in French-Canadian literature. Both Bedard and Parent were citizens of Quebec, and they carried with them the great body of public opinion in the provincial capital. It will be observed later that during the disturbances of 1837 Quebec remained quiet. None of the seceders abandoned the demand for the redress of grievances. They merely {43} refused to follow Papineau in his extreme course. For this they were assailed with some of the rhetoric which had hitherto been reserved for the 'Bureaucrats.' To them was applied the opprobrious epithet of _Chouayens_[1]--a name which had been used by Etienne Parent himself in 1828 to describe those French Canadians who took sides with the government party.