- Jean-Paul Racelle: [addressing the Assembly] Nothing has changed in our times. We have wasted forty years advising a government in which we have no voice. Nothing we have asked has been given. No word we have spoken has been heard. We now know we are without will or honour or any rights of citizenship. We can no longer pretend, even to ourselves, that we can call our lives our own. I therefore ask that this worthless Assembly be dissolved.
- [general cries of "No!"]
- Jean-Paul Racelle: [he continues] Go to your homes. Carry to your parishes the call to arms. Raise every man who can lift a gun. Stand ready to march at a moment's notice. It will not be days, but now only hours before war to free Canada begins!
- Father Antoine: Blood! There's been a fight.
- Mark Douglas: We won it too. The leaders are free. Aren't you glad?
- Father Antoine: This unhappy thing you do has little connection with anything that is real to me. You're only postponing Canada's great days.
- Mark Douglas: But I thought you were helping us?
- Father Antoine: I won't betray you. But help? The only way I could help you would be to stop you. And I can't.
- Mark Douglas: You don't want us to win?
- Father Antoine: Everything you are fighting for is good, and will come. But great, good things must grow. Believe me, the liberties you seek will grow best within the framework of the government we have. I happen to believe the British Government is both wise and liberal.
- Mark Douglas: We have as many British rebels as we have French.
- Father Antoine: Do they think we can build our world by breaking it up into little pieces? First Canada from England, then Quebec from Montreal, then each village from its neighbour until you have a a hundred dismembered countries all at each others' throats. Our government ties two hemispheres into one; uniting many peoples into one great people, working together, at peace with each other. Can you tell me that is not for the glory of God?
- Mark Douglas: Then why would by father and La Fleur...
- Father Antoine: They are like all rebel leaders, they mistake their own bitterness and frustration and hatred for devotion to a cause.