Joseph-Remi Vallières

Joseph-Remi Vallières (October 1st, 1787 - February 17th, 1847) was a politician, a business man, a judge and an officer of militia low-Canadian.

Biography

In 1786 lived with the Baie of Heats a young couple full with energy and hopes. October 1st of the following year was one day of joy for this happy couple: God had given him a child, a boy full with health, which was baptized under the name of Joseph-Remi Vallières. Several years afterwards, one finds the Vallières family in High-Canada. Joseph-Remi was a pretty 'big boy; he had fourteen or fifteen years. His/her father died about this time, and his/her mother remariait herself later with one named Munday.

Difficulties having burst within this new family, the Vallières young person who, already, was full with honor and pride, left for the Low-Canada, not having a penny in his pocket. He managed to go to Montreal by ground and, by water, thanks to the interest which he inspired with all those which saw it. He found in this city a friend of his father, Mr. the Juge Fouché, which gave him the means of going down to Quebec, at a lady Amyot, his/her aunt.

He had, one night, on board boat, a curious dream which he took pleasure to tell. A man appeared to him in this dream, under a strange and new costume for him. This man, with the imposing figure, with the maintenance full with dignity, tightened the hand to him and said to him to follow it with an air of kindness which fills it of joy and confidence.

Having met, a few days after, Mgr Plessis, it could not be prevented from escaping a cry from surprise; he had recognized the man of his dream. It will be seen how this dream became a reality. Vallières went to knock on the door of his aunt Amyot, and announced to him that it had left his mother to come to learn her catechism and to make his first communion in Quebec. It was accommodated with kindness and treaty with much of sympathy.

A few weeks after, the priest who made catechism à' the cathedral, said to Mgr Plessis that there was among the children who prepared for their first communion, a Vallières young person whose answers were, astonishing and much above his age.

Sunday suivaint, Mgr Plessis made come Vallières to its presbytery and a great number of questions about a crowd of things posed to him. It was astonished by the memory, of the perspicacity and the presence of mind of this child, who had learned, only, to read French, and Quoted the authors where it had read such or such passage. 11 understood that it had under the hand one of these unworked diamonds which one finds as with difficulty in the middle of the men as among sands of the sea.

It solved to work, polish this diamond, to make some one day the glory of its country, and perhaps ornament-of the clergy.

- Would you Like to make studies? he says him, after one moment of reflection. - Ah! yes, Monseigneur, it is all my ambition there. - Eh! well, if you want to remain with me, I will start as of tomorrow to give you myself of the Latin lessons.

Vallières ran in his aunt while leaping of joy to announce the happiness to him which arrived to him, and returned, the following day, to settle with évêché of Quebec and to begin his studies. Its progress was astonishing. At the end of dix-huitjmois, it knew Latin, wrote and spoke French with elegance and had the head filled with historical knowledge. Here how Mgr Plessis gave an account of successes of its pupil in a letter which he wrote with a friend, Mr. Perras:

I seriously think of sending my Remi to the seminar, in metaphysics, towards the end of the next month. This education has fixed me too much, for nineteen months that it is started. Moreover it is not, like one says, to praise it, but it is able. I for some time exerted it with the Latin Poésie and Frenchwoman. Yesterday, it had just seen the rules of the rondo; I prescribed to him to do of them one which had as a refrain: " In good dormant." Perhaps would like you to see how it of it is drawn. I send it to you without his knowledge:

In good sleeping on malicious a grabat,
Though I would be large like an average rat,
Not thinking more of dreadful misery
Which one knows well that I hardly miss,
I believe myself almost a rich person potentate;
At all events,
my sleep is ungrateful,
Because indeed I hardly profit
In dormant good.
Every morning one makes me the Sabbath,
What surely I am not to like;
Rise, gueux, rascal, scélérat,
To hundred times my too severe aunt says to me.
For my happiness, I endure the impropère In dormant good.

Vallières only entered to the seminar to make his philosophy; in the three years space and a few months it had made its course of studies.

Mr. de Gaspé, which was companion of class of Vallières, tells, in its memories, a feature which does not need comments. Vallières was met, one day, speaking with a young foreigner an unknown language. One went to information and one learned that this foreigner had been a young Portuguese made at Quebec for twenty-two days; that Vallières having made knowledge with him, had started to learn Portuguese to converse with his friend and to distract it. Fifteen days had been enough for him to learn and speak suitably this language.

Mgr Plessis attended with happiness the development of this intelligence which it had made hatch, and enjoyed the fruits of its work. It concentrated all the friendship and the interest of which it could lay out on this child of which it supervised and activated fast progress in sciences and the letters. Vallières, on his side, never forgot what it owed with his benefactor, and il' always did not take its advice, it always at least accepted them with respect and never missed the occasion to testify its devotion and its recognition with that which had drawn it from the darkness to raise it with the highest positions of its country.

A cooling took place however between Mgr Plessis and its protected, when the question of the choice of a career rose. There is no doubt that the good bishop had cherished the idea that this child, of which the talents inspired to him such an amount of admiration and hope, would be one day one of the lights of the church of Canada, his successor perhaps, and the continuator of his philosopher's stones.

It could not give up this beautiful dream willingly, and saw with sorrow the résistatoce of Vallières which, dissatisfied him also, escaped one day from the college, with a friend who was later the ftév. Mr. Dufresne, went to see his mother in Toronto and returned to engage as clerk in a grocer of the Low-City in Quebec. Mgr Plessis and all those which had protected it appeared to forget it, in order to make it reflect. Little time afterwards, one found Vallières with the Three-Rivers, studying the right at Mr. Thomas, protonotaire of this city.

A disease forces having attacked it, his/her aunt Amyot, who always liked it, reduced it to Quebec and the door of its house opened to him. Returned to health, it recovered with heat to the study from the law and prepared with its examinations. The examinations were not severe, at that time; one questioned the candidate on questions that one had communicated to him in advance.

And however, which would believe it? Vallières failed not to be allowed. He became so nervous during his examination, that its inspectors were obliged to make it leave one moment, to enable him to recover his forces and to find his ideas. It is possible that if that had occurred in the year 1870, Vallières had been refused. At all events, he was admitted by the inspectors who knew it, and conquered in little time splendid customers and a reputation. About the year 1820, the county of Champlain sent it to sit at the legislative assembly.

The life of Vallières belongs to the tradition rather than with the history; it remains of him only the memory of its talents in the memory of those which knew it. Its contemporaries speak with enthusiasm about his eloquence, the safety of its judgment and the infinite resources of its spirit; they quote of him thousand and thousand witty remarks and set out again, thousand anecdotes. They say that he was the first lawyer of his time, that nobody showed on the Bench more knowledge, of perspicacity and impartiality, and that with ambition and a manner of living less light, he had been at least the equal one of Mr. Papineau in the Parliament.

It there, besides scattered is some judgments truncated in the files of the courts of justice and some parts of light poetry, all that remains us of this remarkable man. Elected official, young person, with the legislative assembly, it mixed little with the burning fights with the time, it preferred the legal questions with the political questions. Friends and enemies did not have that a voice to recognize its merit, all sought the help of its lights and its eloquence. The Parti English tried several times to oppose Vallières to Papineau, in order to destroy the influence of the large powerful orator on the majority of the room of assembly. But, in spite of its immense talent, Vallières did not have gravity and patriotic enthusiasm necessary at that time to supplant a man like Mr. Papineau. Moreover, a similar role was not in connection with its tastes, its ambition and its character. The political concern and labors would have disturbed its independence and its pleasures.

When Mr. Papineau was charged to go to deposit with the feet of king d' Angleterre the complaints and the objections of Low-Canada, it is 'Vallières which replaced it in the presidency of the room. The English party wanting to benefit from the reputation that the nouyeau president had been made dansfaccomplissement its functions; tried to make it re-elect against Mr. Papi-. neàu; but the vote showed that all the efforts made to divide the Canadian-French would be useless and that they wanted to have of another chief only Papineau.

The English governors always had of Vallières the highest opinion; they admired the force of its intelligence and had fun its merry remarks. When Lord Dalhousie solved to pacify the public opinion, it made of Vallières its avisor, its adviser intimates and asked him to spend every morning to its castle to confer on the situation and the objections of the Canadian-French. Vallières went to the wishes of his Seigniory, but these interviews did not have a practical result. The political leeches interested in the order of things then existing, hastened to destroy all the effect of the good councils, of the good resolutions.

A cruel disease broke its political career and forced it to accept, in 1828, the place of judge of the superior court to the Three-Rivers. In 1838, its independent control attracted angers of the government to him, which relieved it. He had refused to recognize the legality of the suspension of Habeas Corpus.

When Lord Durham came to Canada, in 1839, it made it go up on the Bench. He said, in a report/ratio that he sent in England, that Vallières judge was more the legal high ranking authority of the country. Bagot appointed it judge-in-chief of the Cour of the Bench of the King in 1842. Low-Canada knew liking with this estimable governor of this act of respect towards the Canadian-French.

One was proud, at that time, to quote the name of Vallières; one was made of it a weapon, a national claim to fame. Like the majority of the remarkable men of this time, Vallières united with the gifts of the spirit the body advantages. It had a beautiful figure étincelante life and of spirit, an aspect of most attractive. It had the heart of fire and the solid judgment which make the true speakers, a fine, shining, prompt spirit like the flash, who opened out in sheaves of fire, in the rockets étincelantes, a sensitivity and an imagination of poet, an inexhaustible memory.

Its conversation was a travelling fire of witty remarks, anecdotes, left again and jokes that the old ones still repeat au.coin fire, low, sometimes. It is with the projections fine and original of its liveliness that it déridait the serious face of its famous benefactor and forced it to be burst to laugh in the middle of the most severe remonstrances. Misfortune also with those which heated the bile to him! it referred sarcastic which tore the skin like barbed arrows to them.

One day, one showed with the Juge Roland the portrait of Vallières: " It is the beautiful, known as scientist judges, but it is not ressemblant." Little time after Roland judge having shown in Vallières his portrait that it had just made take at Hamel: " Ah! known as Vallières, it is resembling, but it is not beau."

To intend to speak, when the subject lent to the deployment its immense oratorical faculties, was a pleasure about which its contemporaries speak with enthusiasm. Lord Gosford said that after having heard the best speakers of the English Parliament and the French rooms, it did not fear to say that Vallières was not lower than these men.

In its pleadings, its political discourses and its judgments, it had by time of these happy words, of these splendid features which illuminate a question and reveal the speaker and the philosopher. Remarkable improviser, his more beautiful inspirations came to him by chance, by accident, when, making way, it met a fertile idea, a principle with great range. It then had movements which removed its audience.

Some examples will make include/understand the power of this eloquence. The Ville of Quebec was in elections. One had made main efforts to urge Vallières to present his candidature, but nothing had been able to decide it. The day of the nomination arrived, a considerable crowd went to the public place. While passing in front of the residence of Mr. Vallières, some individuals launched abusive words to him. Several people were precisely occupied, in the moment, to press Vallières to go to the nomination; they benefitted from the circumstance to stimulate it.

Suddenly, Vallières opens its windows and fact signs with the crowd which he wanted to speak. The people stop one moment, and agree, while murmuring, to listen to it. Vallières was in liveliness: it had not been twenty minutes that it spoke, that the crowd moved to the tears and transported of enthusiasm, removed it on her shoulders, transferred it onto the husting in the middle of the cries of joy and of the hurrahs thousand times repeated, and elected it by acclamation. Mr. D. - B. Viger was victim, one day, of the magnetic effect and the facility of this eloquence, and it is known that he never forgot this nuisance.

It had been twenty years that this man of good prepared his famous law of swear, in which it had the greatest hopes. It decided, one day, with subject-with the room. Vallières had just left his seat and was going itself from there to meet friends who awaited it. Two or three members ran after him to say to him what occurred; they knew that Vallières liked to tease Mr. Viger. Vallières sought to escape, but at the end it ends up going to their desires and turned over to take his seat. Mr. Viger was to be explained his bill cherished, which formed twenty or thirty pages.

Vallières had never read this bill; he takes it on the desk of Mr. Viger and puts himself to traverse it with haste. Mr. Viger was stale, satisfied with the impression which it had made on the room and sure of his success. Vallières rises and launches out thoroughly of train against Mr. Viger and his Bill which it makes burn with small fire in the middle of the applause and of the laughter of the room. It is necessary to acknowledge which if success were large, IE reason was not perhaps more creditable. The whim was for much in this heat opposition to poor the bill C Mr. Viger, which deserved a better fate.

Another feature will emphasize and its talent and its character. When it remained with the Three-Rivers, it had a ground where men and animals penetrated freely against its orders and its will. It placed there, one day, a guard and a terrible guard, honest Irish with the frightening stick, and him enjoignit not to let any living being cross the limit of the ground in question. The worthy child of green the Erin taking the orders of his Master and his judge to the letter, as very good Irish would have done it in similar circumstance, failed to strike the first individual who had misfortune to put the end of the foot on the property of the scientist judges.

One empoigna the Irishman and one him enjoignit to appear before the magistrates of the Three-Rivers to answer a charge of Attack and battery. The day of the arrived lawsuit, the good small town of the Three-Rivers was in agitation and precipitated in the courtroom. It had been learned that honourable judge Vallières itself was going to plead the cause of his faithful Irishman in front of the scientists magistrates of the aforesaid the city.

Indeed, when the cause was called, Vallières judge appeared for the defendant and made, the made proof, his plea! What a plea! During one hour and half he spoke to prove that the three or four magistrates sitting were imbeciles and that they did not know what they said nor what they made. The listeners twisted laughter.

The magistrates let it speak, and when it had finished, they made it stop for contempt of court and condemned it, at once, at one hour of prison! The lawyers of the Three-Rivers left following judge Vallières and renewed it until in prison where they passed with him one of the merriest hours of their life.

Did the finished business, one require of the president court magistrates why they had been let whip during without anything saying so a long time? " I had such an amount of pleasure to hear it speak! " he answered. These magistrates, after all, did not miss a spirit. It had the heart as good as the brilliant intelligence; all those which had known it remained to him attached by the admiration and recognition, bonds of friendship; it allured them as much by overflowings of its heart as by the charms of its spirit.

Heart tender, significant, impressionable, it had tears for all the sufferings, all misfortunes. The poor one never struck vainly with its door; it gave all that it had, and when it did not have anything any more it borrowed to give. The charity, the affability and the exquisite courtesy which characterized it were not at his place the result of calculation or the inspiration even of the duty; it was the natural expansion of its heart, the overflowing necessary of sound eœur. The happiness which it continued with all the drives of its nature of fire, it wanted it for the others, very whole humanity. Sometimes the injustice threw it, when it sat, in terrible fits of anger; in this time, the culprits would have liked to return under ground to conceal itself with the flashes which spouted out its eyes, with the lightning which left its mouth. One moment after, of large tears poured him on the cheeks opposite a great misery; and its heart, carrying its reason of attack, returned decisions little harmonizes some with the rigors of the law.

One day, one brought in front of him poor Irish who, under the empire of the discouragement, had stolen two breads to nourish his children dying of hunger. A witness made the table of the misery of this unhappy and told the circumstances which had pushed it with the crime.

Vallières did not hold to with it any more. He rises suffocated by the emotion and addressing itself to the defendant, he says to him: So help me God! Poor man I think I would cuts gives the same thing yew I had been in your place. What veut' to say in French: How God is to me in assistance! Poor fellow! I believe that I would have made the same thing in your place.

It was not legal, but it was admirable. Justice must be blind admittedly but how to reproach him for opening the eyes, when is to cry over human misery. Rained with the sky which it never had of weaknesses more humiliating!

It is by touching a Prosopopée that Mr. de Gaspé crowned his memories of Vallières.

" How much time, O my friend! I saw running your tears on misfortunes of others. Cold hearts reproached you, when you sat on the legal Bench, for listening to often only the movements of your sensitive heart; to then draw aside you in your sentences of the letter of our laws. The hermine of which you were covered in soiled forever! It was also pure, also white when you presented yourself to the court of God, preceded by the prayers of the widow and the orphan, that the day when your sovereign decorated you with the acclamations with all your compatriots.

" Like all the men in the middle of fire, with extreme blood, you were not free from great passions during your youth. But the angel of the sensitivity, by registering your errors in the black page of the register of your actions, will have erased them with your tears. You would have lacked lawyer to the foot of the large court, you whose life was devoted to the defense of suffering humanity! "

The February 17th 1847 was one day of mourning for all Low-Canada; the angel of death extinguished the sharpest light which had still shone under our sky, and broke the last spring of this organization which twenty years of sufferings had been able to destroy so with difficulty.

Honourable Vallières judge had married in first weddings a Champlain young lady, of Quebec; become widowed after a few years of marriage, he married widowed Madam Bird, who surrounded her famous husband of so many care and devotion during her long and cruel disease. Mrs Bird lived with the Three-Rivers with her son, only heir to the name of Vallières.

References

Biographies and portraits/by L. - O. David. Montreal: Beauchemin & Valois, printer-booksellers, 1876.

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