[martin] the colonial POLICY OF THE DOMINION 39 



insurrection secured — a measure of protection for their cherished 

 privileges of language and religious education. In that sense the 

 Riel Insurrection of 1869-70 was perhaps the promptest and the most 

 successful movement ever directed against a form of government 

 which has seldom been found other than transitional and unsatis- 

 factory even under the best of circumstances. 



The immediate attainment of provincial status for Manitoba in 

 1870 lies beyond the scope of this paper, but there can be no doubt 

 that very early in the movement, provincial as distinct from territorial 

 status came to be the avowed purpose of the Riel Insurrection. It 

 was proposed by Riel and his party in the Convention of February, 

 1870, and though defeated on the open vote it was stipulated in the 

 first section of the third "list of rights" published in French at the 

 Settlement in March, 1870.^ It was the basis of the secret "list of 

 rights" which Father Ritchot used at Ottawa in the discussion of the 

 Manitoba Bill. It seems to have been the basis of the "terms accorded 

 to himself and his Church" with which Bishop Taché, on his return to 

 Ottawa from Rome in April, 1870, "expressed himself quite satisfied."^ 

 A statute, particularly if confirmed by an Imperial Act, was naturally 

 regarded as the most enduring of all safeguards for the French lan- 

 guage, for separate schools "according to the system of the Province of 

 Quebec" and for the interests of a primitive community which was 

 certain at no distant date to find itself on the defensive. 



Not only was provincial status the . immediate purpose of the 

 Riel Insurrection but this was beyond question its immediate result. 

 It would be absurd to regard the Riel Insurrection as a "fight for 

 responsible government" since there was much less concern for 

 government by themselves than for "some breakwater" against 

 domination by Canada. The poverty-stricken administration of 

 Manitoba, with fiscal resources altogether inadequate to provincial 

 responsibilities, was largely the result of the Manitoba Act at that 

 time; but few communities have been bundled so unceremoniously 

 into responsible government. 



The inauguration of Canadian government in the remaining 

 territory after the transfer, began more auspiciously. By the Manitoba 

 Act (section 35) it was provided that the Lieutenant-Governor of the 

 Province should be ex officio Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West 



^"1. That the Territories, heretofore known as Rupert's Land and North- 

 West, shall not enter into the Confederation of the Dominion of Canada, except as a 

 Province . . . with all the rights and privileges common to the different Provinces 

 of the Dominion." — Recent Disturbances in the Red River Settlement, 1870, p. 130. 



^Telegram from the Governor-General to the Colonial Office, April 11, 1870. 



