From O’Connell to Robespierre
The representations of Louis-Joseph Papineau in anglophone political discourse of the 1820s and 1830s were constructed using a political vocabulary and political rhetorics which helped structure the local public sphere, but were also shaped by multiple discursive traditions present in the British, American, as well as British North American contexts. From 1827 to 1832, texts dealing with Papineau focused mainly on his ability to act as Speaker of the Lower Canadian Assembly and on his role as leader of what his political enemies termed the « Papineau faction ». Reform newspapers refuted such charges and countered them with a representation of Papineau which portrayed him as the defender of the people in the broadest sense. Attacks on the Patriote leader intensified between 1832 and 1834, and critics increasingly insisted on his demagogic tendencies. After 1834, many articles devoted to Papineau portrayed him as French revolutionary, as a Jacobin, and sometimes as Robespierre himself, which underlines the continued relevance of anti-Jacobin discourse in Lower Canada. In all of these cases, the representations of Papineau relied on prototypes well established in the discursive universe of the period, which writers brandished in order to call up historical images and references familiar to their readers.