TOPICS OF THE WEEK - 18 MARCH 1886
THE Evil One who craftily inspires Loyalist meetings in his own interest, and “fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies,” may with some reason be suspected of having been the secret concocter of Mr. Landry’s motion; for nothing could possibly suit his game better than a direct vote on the execution of Riel. The Opposition leaders are now placed in a fatal dilemma. They must either disgust all their Protestant supporters by voting that Riel ought not to have been executed, or break with the Bleus. At the same time their fire will be prematurely drawn on the North-Western question, and the life will be taken out of the motion for inquiry into the cause of the rebellion, by which alone they have any chance of producing an effect upon the country. This is their merited punishment for having allowed themselves, or their organ, to be entrapped into such folly as an alliance with the Bleus on the subject of Riel's execution. No human being imagines that they are sincere in professing to believe that Riel was insane or that he had not a fair trial. Everybody sees that their motive is purely strategical, as well as that their strategy is very shallow. Their own language about Riel on the occasion of his first rebellion and his murder of Scott rises up in judgment against them. Their only wise and their only honest course was to leave Riel's unhappy corpse alone, let the Bleus attack the Government if they would, and reserve themselves for the great and genuine issue, to raise which is at
