PARTI ROUGE

(French: Red Party), radical party formed in Lower Canada (now in Quebec) about 1849 and inspired primarily by the French-Canadian patriot Louis Joseph Papineau. In general the Parti Rouge advocated a more democratic system of government, with a broadly based electorate, and the abolition of the old feudal laws that still survived in Quebec. It also opposed the political influence of the Roman Catholic clergy in French Canada. In later years the party became more moderate, and in the 1860s it merged with the Liberal Party of Quebec.