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CHAPTER TWO

Captain on the Side-lines

1

“Looking southward, we see no streak of blue sky; all is gloomy, dark, threatening. A fierce civil war, unlike anything ever experienced on this continent, seems inevitable.”¹ So judged the Globe in January of 1861, as with awed fascination it watched the slow, inexorable movement of the United States to apparent self-destruction. There was little else in the papers for weeks: Canadians, Brown among them, were tensely conscious of the storm so near. Abolitionist sympathies strong in Canada, close business connections, ties of family and friendship: all linked them with the mounting tragedy in the republic; and they were no less concerned about their own future in North America. As the Globe expressed it, “There is little danger that the tide of war will overflow its legitimate boundaries and deluge us. But who can tell what questions will arise, what international difficulties will spring up during a long civil war among thirty-two millions of people in our immediate vicinity?”²

Brown watched the deadly pattern unfolding month by month and week by week: in November of 1860, the election of the Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in the face of the implacable hostility of Southern slave interests; in December, the secession of slave-holding South Carolina; in January, four more states seceding; and, early in February, the creation of a southern Confederacy to which other slave states would soon adhere. At times there were lulls in the progress of what the Globe had already begun to call the “second American Revolution”.³ Then there were brief moments of hope for negotiation, for settlement or compromise, or at any rate for the peaceful parting of two American republics. But the quick-rising hopes soon faded, and seldom did Brown himself believe in them.

Secession, he saw, was a revolutionary right: it could only be maintained by arms. The North would not and could not let the Southern states withdraw from the sovereign entity of the Union; the South would have to fight to gain its independence.⁴ Besides, there was another reason why the Confederacy should not be permitted to go its own way: “The existence of a professedly Christian and civilized nation of men-stealers is a disgrace not only to America but to the whole world, and however strong the measures which the men of the North take for breaking it down, they will confer an inestimable benefit on the human race at large.”⁵

Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, however, did not bring the violent outbreak feared. Again for a moment there was relief, talk of a revival of goodwill; and then came a seeming doldrum period, the kind a later age would miscall “phoney war”. Yet, though the guns did not sound until the Confederate assault on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour on April 12, nothing for two months before made their explosion less inevitable. For Brown and the Globe, convinced since early January that war would come, this was an interlude that altered nothing. There was sure to be a long and brutal conflict when the adversaries were ready.⁶ Meanwhile, there was another question at home to be considered.

The decennial census of the United Province of Canada was under way. Soon there should be certain proof of Upper Canada’s claim to a far greater rate of growth than Lower Canada during the past decade. The census of 1851 had shown the western section of the union to have the larger population, and everything since then had indicated that its lead had steadily increased. That lead, of course, had been the basis of western demands for representation according to population, both as a practical necessity and a moral right. Nevertheless, it had been possible for Canada East to argue that the West’s apparent greater rate of growth was a passing phenomenon and no reason for a fundamental change in the constitution; that the next census would show a different situation; or at least that there should be no change in the equal division of parliamentary seats until the census of 1861 confirmed whether the western section really did contain a notably larger population. Now the time for the crucial count had at last arrived. It was only to be expected that as local returns started to come out in February the press of both sections would teem with estimates and predictions, counterestimates and refutations.

The Globe itself was emphatic on the outcome of the census: the West’s predominance was a foregone conclusion. Even early in January, when preparations for counting heads were just beginning, Brown’s paper had confidently declared: “It is evident that we are rapidly approaching a solution of the differences between Upper and Lower Canada. The census settles the question.”⁷ It would be impossible to deny the right of representation by population any longer – and this was “the keystone of the Reform arch, as well as the lever by which the structure is to be raised”.⁸

It seemed that Brown was bringing out and dusting off his old solution for the troubles of the Canadian union, now that the Toronto Convention plan of dual federation had failed in parliament. To a considerable extent he was. “Rep by pop” had a simplicity and a direct appeal that was lacking in the more complicated and less comprehended concept of federation. Besides, there was the census to give it new opportunity and well-nigh irresistible argument. Furthermore, it had been winning converts among Upper Canada Conservatives, as they came to share the western Reformers’ disgust with a union dominated by Lower Canadian interests – though they would not go so far as to turn towards George Brown as a result. It was evident that right-wing Tories, especially, were reverting to old anti-French antipathies; so much so that some Conservative papers even sought to claim that the Upper Canada members of the government were not really opposed to rep by pop, but only waiting for the right time to bring it forward.⁹ From all this, then, it appeared to be only sound strategy for Brown to take up the cause of representation by population once again. The potential support it could win and the expectations of the census both demanded it.

Yet this was not wholly a change in policy. Brown had never dropped rep by pop earlier, but had rather included it in the Convention scheme of federation as the underlying principle of the new governments that were to be established. He did not drop the federal idea now, but rather appended it to rep by pop as a means by which special interests – that is, French Lower Canada’s – might henceforth be safeguarded. It was a change of emphasis and priority, more than of policy, in his continuing quest for justice in the Canadian union.

At the Convention of 1859, the sixth and last of the resolutions there adopted had stated that no federal government that was not based on the principle of representation by population would be acceptable to Upper Canada Reformers.¹⁰ Now, in 1861, the Globe declared that rep by pop was “the principle governing all their arrangements and a mighty weapon to secure the object they have in view”.¹¹ But the final objective, it said, remained the same: a federal union of the two Canadas, with the North West added – and with the prospect that the Maritime Provinces might ultimately join, if poor communications and mutual lack of interest were one day overcome.¹² In short, rep by pop was still conceived as linked with and leading to a scheme of federation.

Nevertheless, if this was only a change in priority, it undoubtedly put federation well into the background, since for all immediate purposes Brown and the Globe once more concentrated on winning representation by population within the existing Canadian union. Indeed, it seemed almost like old times in the United Province, as on the one side the demand for rep by pop went up again, and on the other the old cry of “maintain the union” was heard anew. The more sweeping proposals for constitutional reform were all in abeyance now. If Grit Liberals had laid aside dual federation, and dissolution was a static force among an unreconstructed radical rearguard, so the ministerial ranks were silent on the grand design for British North American confederation. During their recent western speaking tour, moreover, Macdonald and his colleagues had said little or nothing about a general federation. Instead they had harped stirringly on the preservation of the existing union against the disruption designed by Brown. And when that same autumn the Premier of New Brunswick, Leonard Tilley, had visited Canada to discuss the question of British North American union informally with the Canadian ministers, he found them too busy even to take up the subject of his visit. He had returned to Fredericton sharply noting that the experience had “not in any way strengthened my desire for union” – and that “there appears less prospect of arriving at a satisfactory solution of this than I formerly anticipated”.¹³ Politics in Canada were apparently back in their old groove. It might take strong pressure – perhaps something like the impact of the American war – to bring them out of it.

The census and rep by pop; rep by pop and the census: that was the programme Brown now set for his paper, whenever there was time to turn from the American crisis. “HAS A CENSUS PAPER BEEN LEFT AT YOUR HOUSE?” the Globe demanded in large black type, reminiscent of the style in which it so often urged Reform electors to go out and die voting.¹⁴ As the Upper Canada figures came in, it published them like so many triumphant election returns, noting jubilantly that in newer western counties the rate of increase since the last census had reached as high as 450 per cent, and, as well, that Lower Canadian papers were now falling silent on their earlier confident prophecies of parity with the West.¹⁵ It really did seem evident that the final population figures would give Upper Canada a commanding lead – nearly a million and a half to a little over a million.¹⁶ Although the completed census would probably not be published before the next session of parliament was over, it was equally probable that the proceedings of the session would be greatly affected by awareness of the coming results. The House would have to give full consideration to the question of representation by population. To prepare for that debate, and for the elections that must follow the session, was now Brown’s prime concern.

Or, rather, it should have been. It was announced late in February that parliament would meet on March 16. Brown should have used the remaining time to tighten the Liberal press and party organization behind the renewed demand for rep by pop. There should have been a string of powerful Globe editorials for reprinting throughout the satellite party papers, and more of his glowing speeches at Reform meetings to rouse the electors and keep their representatives in line. That, at least, had been the usual practice. But it was markedly absent this time. For the leader was seriously ill; he could not fulfil commitments. The Globe gradually lost way. George Brown’s health had finally collapsed from constant strain. He had gone down with pleurisy at the very moment when his leadership was most required.¹⁷

His health had been declining for some weeks, and still he forced himself to work at the Globe office. But, on March 2, he had to take to bed and admit to “severe indisposition” – which rapidly became far worse.¹⁸ “The disease,” he said later, “had fastened on me long before it became fully developed, and was undoubtedly caused by the great exertions I had to make to put my house in order – for there was no mercy.”¹⁹ He had had to strive so long and hard with financial problems, had never been really free of them since the onset of the depression in 1857. And, in the last year, there had been the costly outlay on the Globe, the mortgaging of Bothwell for the $20,000 loan, the slander that this had roused, and the further strain put on his credit and his feelings through the purposeful attacks on his business reputation.

Political troubles and his recent busy speaking tour had scarcely lightened George Brown’s load. Moreover, at the close of navigation the outlook for the Canadian lumber trade had been gloomy in the extreme, for the American market had seemed to freeze with panic in the mounting secession crisis – a matter of particular concern to the owner of the Bothwell mills. With the approach of spring, however, and gathering military preparations, trade had begun to come to life again; in fact, there would soon be a rising war-time market in the northern states. Furthermore, Brown’s expensive improvements in the Globe, by now seemed to be justifying themselves: at all events, by April of 1861 that paper was apologizing for temporary delays in delivery caused by a forty-per-cent increase in circulation.²⁰ And so its proprietor shortly could give thanks “that I was not driven to my bed until the ship was safe inside the breakers in comparatively smoother waters than it has known for years”.²¹

But by that time all the damage had been done. Luther Holton put it simply: “You have spent so much of your apparently exhaustless energy that you have overwrought the machine.”²² At forty-two, Brown, worn out with business worry and with the outpouring of vitality on so many projects, had finally broken a constitution that had once seemed indestructible. Of course, he had been ill before. But never for so long, or with such lasting effect.

2

For two months and more he lay in the quiet house on Church Street, solicitously tended by his elderly parents, his sister Isabella, and sister-in-law Sarah, while physicians consulted over him and friends called by to learn of his condition. The actual peak of his illness passed fairly early, and when the severe inflammation had subsided Brown briefly felt that he would be up and doing in a few days. Yet this, he found, “was only the buoyancy of fever; as it lowered, my utter prostration soon appeared.”²³ He was prescribed the proper nourishing foods, but could not digest them. He had to go on a debilitating Victorian regimen of “stimulants”, and continued terribly weak, subject to a racking cough that would not leave him. At length, by early May, the patient had improved enough to drive out in the carriage for an hour a day in the mild spring air. Still, his weakness was such that when after nine weeks he tried to put pen to paper, it was – he said – “like the scrawl of an old man of eighty”.²⁴

Gradually strength returned, until he was able to bear the fatigue of a journey to Clifton Springs, a highly regarded health resort near Rochester, to take its water-cure and convalesce for a week or two further – though he would later claim that “fresh air, beefsteaks and London porter set me up”.²⁵ Early in June he could at last go back to the Globe office for light duties, while still not fully recovered.²⁶ And in the meantime he had missed the entire parliamentary session.

The House had no less missed him. It had been a dull, inconsequential sitting. One Liberal comrade wrote to him from Quebec: “Your absence has in a party sense been useful. It has demonstrated to all that you are a political necessity, and not a ‘governmental impossibility’! Even ministerialists admit that the House is without interest when it is without Brown.”²⁷ Representation by population had certainly been debated; and while it had been lost, 67 to 49, the wholly Upper Canadian vote supporting it had included a number of Conservatives. Hence the government had wisely declared that the principle was not a “cabinet question”, thus allowing their followers to go two ways upon it, and avoiding for themselves the consequences of a nasty split. But in the absence of the senior member for Toronto no one had effectively exploited the situation. In fact, the best speech on rep by pop was made by Premier Cartier, a five-hour oration that decisively and defiantly rejected it, despite Upper Canada’s now admitted lead of more than a quarter of a million people. Cartier condemned the proposal utterly, both as principle and practice, declaring in one fervent passage that “the codfish of Gaspé Bay should also be represented, as well as the 250,000 Clear Grits of Western Canada”:²⁸ a highly quotable remark that did not endear him to Upper Canadian Liberals, though it well might to their newspaper editors.

Otherwise, the session mainly showed the ineptitude of the Reform opposition, once more demonstrating that if some of the party could not do with Brown, none could do without him. They were an oddly uncertain group, deprived of the man they had come so greatly to rely on. William McDougall, who was still writing for the Globe, when he could, reported back to the invalid in Toronto to reveal the indecision and weakness of the rather chastened bunch of Grits in parliament.²⁹ “There is no one on our side,” he lamented, “who will really go into a fight of this kind with vigour and skill. Mowat is too wishy-washy and besides is friendly to John A. personally. Connor might be inclined to work to pay him off for his attack … but he is not well posted and too indolent.…”³⁰ Then there was the lack of leadership: “I have tried to push out Mowat, but he is afraid – wants the leadership put to commission.” Accordingly, a “sort of committee of safety” of four or five had been recommended, though McDougall personally preferred to accept Dorion as nominal leader.³¹

In any case, Michael Foley was out of the running, although by a good speech on the address he had “re-established himself somewhat in the confidence of the party”. There was still the suspicion that he would intrigue with the unpredictable Sandfield Macdonald – besides a problem of his recurrent drinking bouts.³² Mowat also wrote, reporting that Foley’s drinking had grown “very bad”, adding a bit piously: “Poor fellow, he is always so mortified afterwards.”³³

Still further, there was no effective critic of the ministry’s vulnerable financial policies; in Brown’s absence, Finance Minister Galt would have it all his own way. The party, said McDougall dolefully, had “no man of commercial training combined with political knowledge and speaking talent, but yourself”.³⁴ If there were men like William Howland with the requisite business background, they lacked force in talking to the House; Holton would have been invaluable, but was still out of parliament – and so on.³⁵ The dismal picture might have given Brown the satisfaction of seeing how much he was needed; but it was small comfort for him, fretting helplessly in Toronto, to watch the whole session being thrown away.

And then, early in June, parliament was dissolved and a general election called. Reformers wanted George Brown; his Toronto constituency besought him to run again. He would have to go into the battle weak and unready as he was, with a party that he had not been able to pull together again, and, indeed, that had never fully recovered from the defeats and dissensions of the previous year. He had seldom entered an election campaign under less favourable auspices.

On June 7, the Toronto Reform Association called a general meeting in the Mechanics’ Institute to nominate candidates for the city’s two parliamentary seats, now denominated East Toronto and West Toronto.³⁶ The full turn-out that packed the lecture room that night included such local party notables as McDougall, Howland, and Adam Wilson, the member for North York and former mayor who had been asked to stand for West Toronto. And there was also the city’s Reform representative in the late parliament, George Brown, there to be nominated for the constituency of East Toronto. As he rose to speak in this first public appearance since his illness, its mark was plain upon him. There was no dramatic change; his tall, erect figure had not noticeably wasted, his red-brown hair had not turned grey, his deep voice had lost none of its resonance. Yet he was obviously weak – “I doubt if my physicians approve of my being here tonight,” he observed, explaining that he would not talk long in order to save his strength.³⁷ Above all, his speech did not climb and soar, and at the end he apologized for a lame performance. He also made clear that it was obligation, not enthusiasm, that impelled him. This was surely not the old Brown.

“With perfect frankness and sincerity,” he said, “were I at liberty to follow my own inclination at this moment, I would not be a candidate for election on the present occasion. After twenty years of unremitting toil I feel the preservation of my health demands a period of relaxation. And most gladly would I now retire from parliamentary life – at least for a season. But I feel in this I cannot be my own master. Political connections and ties have grown up around me which I cannot sever in a day. And there are responsibilities which, when public men assume them, must not be shrunk from – at any sacrifice to themselves. At such a moment I cannot think it would be right in me to withdraw from the good cause any service I can render it.”³⁸ It was a lofty declaration that brought cheers; but it was scarcely in the spirit that wins elections.

The candidate went off to the country for a few more days of rest before beginning his campaign, and returned on June 17 to speak to the largest indoor political meeting yet held in Toronto, before a Liberal audience of one thousand in St. Lawrence Hall. Mowat and Connor spoke also, but the chief effort was Brown’s. This time there was nothing faltering or resigned about him, as he held forth on the population question and the wrongs done Upper Canada. She had 60,000 more inhabitants than Lower Canada in 1851, he proclaimed, had waited ten years under eastern domination, now had five times that lead – and still was denied justice! Were 300,000 westerners to remain disfranchised – because of the treachery of John A. Macdonald and his clique?³⁹ It was all rapturously received. In fact, Brown’s old vitality seemed to come flooding back that evening, stirred as he was by the big, excited audience.

Just two nights later he was back at the hall again, to address a very different meeting in company with his Conservative opponent in the election, John Crawford.⁴⁰ It was a gathering of both parties, the kind of situation made for trouble. Reformers filled the back of the main floor and the gallery, but in the front and around the platform sat a solid phalanx of Conservatives, a band of some thirty to forty rowdies noisily prominent among them. As soon as Mayor Bowes had opened the proceedings, the meeting began to fall apart. Amid hoots and catcalls, a shaky Mr. Allan tried stumblingly to introduce George Brown – then had his notes snatched away by Tories clambering onto the platform. The two candidates came forward; a wild contest of cheers and jeers filled the hall. Allan was still trying, and the Mayor was already calling frantically for an adjournment, when the funloving roughs still on the platform tried to push Brown off as he arrived. He fought back; more of them rushed up; over went the Mayor’s table; down to the reporters’ desk below crashed Brown; while Grits howling vengeance came racing down the aisles.

Highland blood up, torn coat flapping fiercely, Brown led a Liberal charge that almost reconquered the platform. But out stepped Constable Jones of the Grand Trunk, and with a huge push tumbled them all back to the floor. For good measure his friend Murphy swung at Brown’s head with a cudgel, but Brown had rammed his hat on in the first attack and the blow only smashed a good Victorian top-hat – a useful safety helmet for the politics of the day. At this point the police arrived, and the Mayor managed to convince the candidates that it was useless to go on. The rival forces marched out, the Reformers chanting, “On to the Globe!” There on the steps of the office their battered leader addressed them, ruined hat, ripped coat and all. He appeared “considerably exhausted”, the press remarked next day.⁴¹

Thereafter the campaign was less strenuous, though the round of smaller meetings at taverns and hotels was taxing enough for Brown. Moreover, it was not going very well. He could not make the efforts he once could; his meetings were fewer and shorter. Then on June 28 he lost the show of hands at the official public nomination of the opposing candidates (still deemed a matter of considerable psychological importance), apparently because the Conservatives had brought in a large body of their West Toronto voters to strengthen their showing in the East Toronto test.⁴² A long procession of Grand Trunk employees also appeared with banners flying to support Crawford, the son of one director of the line and the partner of another.⁴³

The Reform contender launched into a last urgent rush of meetings before the two days of voting began on July 5. But when the polls closed on that date he was thirty-four votes behind.⁴⁴ This was the ominous, the often fatal sign: undecided electors had their minds made up for them by the outcome of the first day of polling. At the end of the second day George Brown was in the minority by 191.⁴⁵ He was beaten. He had entered parliament in the elections of 1851; he left it in elections just ten years later.

There were good reasons for Brown’s defeat, among them his failure to accomplish his policies since the last general election. He had failed to establish a lasting ministry in 1858 and to achieve representation by population. He had failed to advance his federation scheme in 1860, and again had not settled the discords in the union – nor even in his own party. Now Conservatives like Crawford, who himself espoused rep by pop, were contending that they could meet Upper Canada’s needs far better than the Grits, since they assuredly had proved that they could win and hold power in the country.⁴⁶ Then, too, there was the fact that, if Brown’s alliance with McGee might bring him some Roman Catholic support, his earlier record still kept other Roman Catholics away from him. Finally, a powerful pivot group in West Toronto, the Methodists, remembered his stand in opposition to Victoria and to denominational colleges generally on the university committee of 1860. They paid him back at the polls.⁴⁷

Beyond all this, however, was the fact of Brown’s illness, which had kept him out of the last session, made him a reluctant candidate, and vitiated much of his effort at campaigning. Nevertheless, after the initial shock of disappointment, the defeated candidate showed small regret for what might have been. His speech to the crowd at the official declarations on July 11, in the hot sun outside Toronto’s City Hall, was almost thankful, and certainly amiable. “I believe there has never been an election conducted in this or any constituency more satisfactory for both parties than this has been,” he told the crowd around him, charitably ignoring the recent battle at St. Lawrence Hall. “Mr. Crawford and I went into the contest good personal friends and I hope we come out of it as cordial as ever.”⁴⁸

Of course, he added, he regretted the result, for the sake of the friends who had supported and worked for him, and for the sake of the cause he fought for; but personally he was overjoyed that henceforth he could attend to his health and his personal interests. “I have now faithfully discharged my duty to my party – my defeat has opened up the way for my retirement without dishonour – and I mean to take advantage of it! ”⁴⁹ So passed George Brown, M.P.P. It remained to be seen how long his retirement might last, and to what use he would put his new freedom.

3

The whole election had been a disappointment for the western Reform party. Both Toronto seats were gone, for Adam Wilson had lost, as well as Brown. Mowat, a Kingstonian in origin, though now identified with Toronto, had also failed to capture his native city from John A. Macdonald, and several other old reliable Brownites had not been re-elected. Still, it had by no means been a Liberal rout. While there were a number of new men and moderates who were claimed by both sides, the strength of government and opposition would likely be close to equal in Upper Canada: thirty definite ministerialists to twenty-nine decided Reformers, with the remainder probably dividing to give a narrow margin of support to the government.⁵⁰ Moreover, Mowat and Wilson had both been returned in their old ridings of South Ontario and North York, each having run in two constituencies; and other prominent Liberals, such as McDougall, Howland, Connor, Foley, and Sandfield Macdonald, were safely back. It was worthy of comment, besides, that George Brown’s old lieutenant in Lambton County, the faithful Alexander Mackenzie, had now won entrance to parliament, replacing his brother Hope for Lambton when ill-health forced the latter to retire.

Nevertheless, the Grit Liberals had not only failed to increase their power in parliament, but also lost their clear majority of Upper Canada’s seats. What had caused the set-back? To some extent, the same things that had worked to defeat their leader personally: the failure to achieve Reform policies since 1858, the damaging disputes in the party in 1860, and Brown’s own inability to give leadership in 1861. Then the Reform thrust for rep by pop had lost some of its efficacy, since the government had made it an “open” question in the election, thus enabling individual western Conservative candidates to advocate it for themselves, even if their cabinet leaders did not. But finally, the Grits in the last session had presented the ministry with a splendid stick to use against their own heads – and used it was, to the full. It had been William McDougall’s doing, once again too quick in his own cock-sure cleverness for the good of his party.

Carried away by a need for emphasis during the debate on rep by pop, McDougall had darkly warned that Upper Canadians had waited ten years for justice, and would not wait another ten. They might “look below the border for relief”.⁵¹ The government benches had been shocked, too horribly shocked to accept any explanations for the remark. Why spoil a good thing? It was ideal for elections, as John A. Macdonald saw. He informed Egerton Ryerson, just before the campaign began: “The cry is ‘Union’, ‘No looking to Washington’, and ‘University Reform’.”⁵² Here was something for everybody, even for the disgruntled Methodist supporters of Victoria College. And “No looking to Washington”, loudly reiterated, effectively blackened the Reform crusade for Upper Canada’s rights, whether it made sense or not. Besides, the appeal to British loyalty overrode any lingering Orange resentments of the ministry left over from the Prince’s visit. That University Reform was even emptier of meaning, of course, was neither here nor there.⁵³ The point was, the slogans worked.

And so the Liberal-Conservatives checked the trend towards the steady increase of Reform power in Upper Canada – temporarily, as it turned out. In Lower Canada, however, the elections had been far less favourable to the Coalition forces. If giving a nod to rep by pop had won the Liberal-Conservatives votes in the West, it had lost them votes in the East, where French Canadians, facing the stark facts of the census, dreaded the least concession to a principle that would inevitably swamp them.⁵⁴ Cartier’s powerful block of Bleus had shrunk from forty-eight to some thirty-five, and the regular Lower Canadian opposition had gone up from fifteen to twenty-six or so.⁵⁵ Yet this did not mean that the Rouges had been greatly strengthened thereby. Dorion himself had been defeated, though McGee was safe. No, eastern Reformers who had been associated, however loosely, with a western party that demanded rep by pop had not done well in a keenly anxious French Canada, determined to defend race, language, and religion.

Instead, it was moderate Liberals and dissentient Bleus who had swelled the eastern opposition: men dissatisfied with Cartier’s leadership, not by any means because they would concede representation by population, but because they feared lest Cartier’s own bold but intransigent conduct might actually point the way to that disaster.⁵⁶ His typical response to debate on the representation question had been to settle it with big battalions. His classic contemptuous answer to vexing opposition attacks – “call in the members” – wholly expressed his own forthright fighting spirit. But some Lower Canadians had apparently come to feel that this stark exemplification of the power of eastern votes would ultimately unite the whole West in anger, until the demand for rep by pop could no longer be resisted. During the last session, in fact, McDougall had noted the growth of discontent with Cartier in French-speaking circles, and reported it to Brown.⁵⁷ One likely focus for it might be Louis Victor Sicotte, a prominent if crotchety oppositionist who had once been a Rouge, was then a Coalition minister, and now might best be termed a moderate Liberal of a shimmering shade of mauve.

All in all, if Brown and his friends had not triumphed in the election, then neither had Macdonald and Cartier. They were in office still; they had an over-all majority. But their failure to win decisively in Upper Canada, their crumbling position in Lower, meant that the movement of only a few of their more uncertain supporters into opposition could bring the Coalition crashing down at last. With this in mind, accordingly, and at the behest of his own followers, George Brown made certain political inquiries of Dorion by letter, shortly after the elections closed in mid-July. Neither man would be in the next House. They had each refused to take other “safe” seats offered them. Yet they were still the Liberal leaders for the present, and hence conducted the negotiations.

The western captain carefully outlined the Upper Canadian balance of seats as it now appeared, and asked Dorion for a similar assessment of the situation in Lower Canada. Could a common opposition policy be adopted, one that could swing over the uncertain quantities in the Assembly by its very display of unity – and thus turn out the ministry? To secure a solid western following, there was really only one line such a policy could take: reform of the representative system. “The Upper Canada Reformers,” Brown noted, “can enter no government that is not pledged to take up this question with the sincere determination of framing a measure that, while assuring justice to the 300,000 unrepresented people of U.C., will at the same time protect your countrymen from that interference with their local matters so much dreaded or affected to be dreaded.”⁵⁸

Dorion sent back both a personal letter and an official party answer. The first was a friendly return to Brown’s own private covering note. The second was a flat rejection of the western leader’s proposal for the renewal of Reform unity. “The great and perhaps only difficulty in the way of that united party,” he asserted formally, “is, as you are aware, the question of representation. There is no party in Lower Canada who while in opposition could attempt to submit a proposition or agree to a plan for the settlement of this question on a basis which would meet the views of the Upper Canada majority without completely destroying itself as a party. The difficulties are now much greater than they were in 1858.”⁵⁹ In other words, the results of the census had hardened Lower Canadian opinion far beyond the time of the Brown-Dorion administration, when that government had actually combined the leaders of both sections of Liberalism behind an agreement on rep by pop. Furthermore, as Dorion went on to observe, the Coalition ministers were now claiming in Lower Canada that they had beaten the evil scheme, and that it surely would be abandoned. “I can well conceive the advantages of having an opposition united on all questions of public policy,” he concluded, “but with the present feeling in Lower Canada the difficulties appear to be insuperable.”⁶⁰

The Rouge leader’s personal letter in no way differed from this unhopeful stand; but the comments he added were illuminating. Brown had privately urged him to re-enter the House, even to take the Upper Canadian seat of North Waterloo – one of two constituencies won by Foley.⁶¹ But the calm, perceptive Dorion had no intention of seeking a place in this new parliament. He expected no good from it. For, if the existing government fell, some other attempt at meaningless coalition would only follow; and then, as he said, “failure and confusion until the parties are thoroughly reorganized through another appeal to the people”.⁶² It was wise to stay outside until the current tendencies had played themselves out. “This parliament will not last long, and it is better for us that the moderates of all shades should try their hands, in order that the country should be convinced of their incompetency to settle the difficulties accumulated by seven years of mismanagement.”⁶³

Here was shrewd prediction and advice, a sound answer to Brown’s gesture for Liberal unity. The time was not right. The next period properly belonged to moderates who abjured constitutional change: the Sandfield Macdonalds and Louis Sicottes, who thought that new men in a new combination, freed from the “extremists”, could somehow satisfy both sections and make the present union work. Let the moderate men try, and in trying prove their bankruptcy – along with that of the union itself. Brown could afford to wait. He could no longer be used as an excuse for the persistence of sectional friction, the reputed trouble-maker blamed for all the discord in the union’s politics. Dorion had given him a further excellent reason for retirement.

He had made his gesture for party reconstruction. He now withdrew from further political activity, refusing invitations to party rallies in August on the grounds that the Toronto election had “relieved me of public responsibility, and I think it best to enjoy the full benefit of the period of relaxing at my disposal”.⁶⁴ That is, he would relax from politics, so far as the owner of the Globe and the ertswhile leader of Reform could ever find this possible.

4

Wonderful changes were occurring in Upper Canada’s far south-west, Brown’s favourite countryside. Oilfields were being developed not twenty miles from Sarnia in Lambton County, his old constituency, and near Bothwell in the adjoining county of Kent: the settlement that had grown up out of his own estate. In September, the Globe ran a series of long articles on the “Oil Region” that was rapidly coming into production.⁶⁵ “Rock oil” – petroleum – had gained a new significance in two short years since 1859, when Edwin Drake had drilled a well in Pennsylvania to tap rich sources far underground. Henceforth, instead of the limited, scanty offerings of shallow pools and hand-dug wells, drilled wells promised to provide an ample flow of petroleum for commercial uses: above all, to replace the whale-oil of a lamp-lit civilization. The resulting boom in rock oil had brought a spate of advertisements in the Canadian press (“Beauty, Brilliancy, Economy – NOT Explosive”) and produced a flurry of well-drilling in Upper Canada in those parts where surface oil pools had long been known and utilized.⁶⁶

Enniskillen Township in Lambton and lands along the Thames a few miles from Bothwell were notable areas of this kind. Here Indians had prized the dark and scummy oil pools for their medicinal value, and had dipped blankets in their surface, wringing them out to obtain the oil. It was said that natives who swallowed this “lion’s grease” never took the cholera – or rather, never died of cholera, which was not quite the same thing.⁶⁷ But now this land of pools was prized far more highly, as, in happy bewilderment, settlers who had replaced the wandering Indians saw speculators lease portions of their farms and drill wells in frantic haste. An ugly litter of rough pole derricks, squat black oil vats, piles of barrels, and greasy mounds of mud spread out through clearings in the still-enclosing forests. The creak of the wooden treadles that drove the drills continued day and night, and always there was the harsh smell of oil and escaping gas.

Men with packsacks were tramping to the “oil springs” to make their fortunes.⁶⁸ Teamsters were making theirs, as they hauled wagon-loads of barrelled oil down jolting, rutted trails to the railway line, where the Great Western’s new oil cars were waiting. Plank roads were going in; taverns and hotels were going up. The far south-west was entering on a land boom greater than anything it had yet known. And Bothwell, on the railway, was ideally situated to enjoy it – there where Brown’s own lands lay. There could be little question now about his credit, or the value of his holdings. The new questions facing him were what to buy and when to sell, and when the boom might reach its peak.

He bought 400 more acres, and for the time being held on.⁶⁹ Apart from his sawmills, he enjoyed the working and developing of his Bothwell farm; in any case, the boom was still too young to foresee how it might grow in that quarter. No doubt, he went up to Kent and Lambton to watch the developments for himself. In October, at any rate, he could see them gain fresh impetus from the application of the new Pennsylvania technique of deep drilling.⁷⁰ Wells were being sunk beyond 200 feet now, instead of less than 100, and were producing a continuous flow of oil in large quantities. The remaining problems were the market and the price. Thanks to the lack of sufficient Canadian refineries, American imports were largely supplying the province’s needs, and Canadian crude was worth but six and a half cents a gallon at railhead.

It was natural that Brown’s Globe should hail the building of new refineries in Sarnia, London, Toronto, and elsewhere, and deem it “suicidal” for Torontonians with sensitive noses to try to block the building of still another refinery in the city.⁷¹ It mused besides on the full meaning of the “recent remarkable discoveries” in the western peninsula. Where would they all lead? “We are apparently only at the beginning of a very remarkable change in the arrangements of civilized man for illuminating the darkness of the night – but none can say how far the revolution will go.”⁷² No one, indeed, could then have measured the oil revolution. Yet Canada, and Brown, were caught up in its first stirrings.

They were also caught up in something far less attractive and more ominous that autumn: the reverberations of the American Civil War. It had never been far from mind since the fighting had started in the spring. For Canadians, it was like a deep, unceasing drum-beat in the background: sometimes drowned by their own outcries over the census, rep by pop, or the general elections; sometimes swelling in its own crescendos, as during the first great battle of Bull Run in late July. Yet always it was there. Nor was it merely that Canadians were front-row spectators of an immense conflict. The war was rousing old antagonisms between the United States and Britain, between Americans and British subjects in America. And, more and more, the problem of their own defence began to loom as a serious question for Canadians, as the war and growing international tension went onward without sign of end.

They had lost much of their initial sympathy for the Northern cause, which had largely been based on their own strong aversion to slavery. When it became apparent that Lincoln and the Republicans did not, after all, intend to fight a war to free the slaves but rather to preserve the American union, the Canadians had felt disgruntled and confused. Many asked why it had been right for the thirteen original colonies to declare their independence, but wrong for the southern states to do the same. Some degree of sentiment favourable to the South emerged: either for resolute men struggling for their liberty, or for discontented states that had proved that the sprawling democratic republic was inherently unsound and must collapse. In short, either the left or right in Canadian political opinion could turn pro-Southern, though the trend became more noticeable in the Conservative press. Furthermore, the colonial views might often echo those of the Mother country, where the governing classes decidedly sympathized with the “gentlemanly” South – although leading British middle-class Liberals like Richard Cobden and John Bright, with strong working-class support, maintained their faith in the democracy of the American North, and in its ultimate decision to abolish slavery.⁷³

There were other reasons, too, for a Canadian reaction against the North. The Americans’ rather irritating tendency to identify their own purposes with Divine plan had led them to angry denunciations of the British, who at home and in America had not shown proper willingness to aid the sword of the Lord in putting down most foul rebellion.⁷⁴ They had not opened the colonies’ skimpy stock of arms for Northern use; they had even presumed to invoke neutrality in the struggle.⁷⁵ And mounting American resentment showed itself further in renewed talk of wresting British North America from England. The powerful New York Herald had pushed the project quite cold-bloodedly, either as a means of reuniting the divided states in a war against the old national enemy, or as a consolation prize to the North for letting the South go.⁷⁶ This sort of talk might be discounted as so much American press bluster, except that it expressed a genuine growth of animosity to Britain in the United States. It even seemed to be reflected in the policies of Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, who in the early months of the war toyed with notions of his own for exploiting anti-British sentiment, and by no means kept them hidden.⁷⁷

Consequently, as British-American relations deteriorated almost steadily throughout 1861, and as Canadian and American newspapers snapped at each other across the border, it was all the more noteworthy that the largest provincial journal, George Brown’s Globe, continued to support the North in the Civil War. Not that his paper failed to criticize the Americans, to answer their attacks on Britain, or to scorn their wild proposals to annex Canada. Yet, like Brown’s own archetypes of middle-class British Liberalism, Cobden and Bright, the Globe continued to believe in the essential rightness of the Northern cause, and in the absence of any real grounds for a war between Britain and the United States.

Plainly, the explanation lay in Brown himself. His personal and business ties with the Northern states were many; and he had repeatedly visited New York, not only to transact Globe business but also to stay with his sister and brother-in-law, Jane and George Mackenzie, who were firmly rooted in that city. Furthermore, his first six years in America, spent in New York, had given him a deep appreciation of the ordinary American’s sense of freedom, his self-reliance and innate decency, even though the excessive sweep of elective institutions might make his democratic government unstable or irresponsible. But despite the shortcomings of republican rule, Brown as a Liberal warmly believed in the value of the huge American democratic experiment for all mankind.⁷⁸ It must not fail. And, inevitably, the blot of slavery must be erased from it. His own abolitionism, begun in youth in Scotland, had simply been made more ardent by his years in the United States. Certainly it did not flag in Canada thereafter, as his prominent part in Toronto’s Anti-Slavery Society made fully evident.

Thus it was that Brown and his journal stayed firmly by the North in battle: because it fought to save a vast enterprise of freedom, and because it would yet become the means of expunging slavery from half a continent. They denied that the chaotic Federal retreat from Bull Run meant that the fight would soon end in Confederate victory. They assured exulting pro-Southern journals in Canada that there still would be a desperate struggle, but that the North would win.⁷⁹ They discounted alarmist talk of the danger of invasion, and of the Federals’ plans to turn their armies against the British provinces when the Civil War was over, contending that the United States was bending all its energies to the internal conflict, and would have had quite enough of warfare when that was done.⁸⁰ By these determined efforts Brown and his paper did much to sustain pro-Northern opinion in Canada. Others did so as well, for the North had by no means lost all its support in the province. Yet the Globe’s influence was so extensive that it must have played a major part in countering pro-Southern leanings among Canadians. It was no easy part, in any case – especially when, in mid-November 1861, a major crisis suddenly broke out between the United States and Britain.

The Federal frigate San Jacinto had stopped the British mail steamer Trent in mid-Atlantic, and high-handedly seized two Confederate commissioners aboard, Mason and Slidell, who were being sent as their government’s emissaries to France and England. It was a blatant violation of neutral rights; but the Northern press, eager for a hero at a dull moment in the war, loudly applauded gallant Captain Wilkes of the San Jacinto. On the other hand, when the news reached England on November 27, the British press howled quite as loudly over the outrage to the British flag, never so sacred as on the high seas. It was a dangerous situation, if scarcely worth a war. Yet the United States government was all but committed by the surge of anti-British public feeling, and the British government could hardly do less than demand that the insolent republic surrender the two commissioners.

British North America learned of the Trent affair before England did, and loyally and utterly condemned Captain Wilkes. There was indignant, gusty talk of the need for Britain to teach the Yankees a lesson, but at first no widespread expectation of war. The Globe itself, while denouncing the Wilkes coup as wrong and stupid (“a bit of bravado – a foolish flout”), held that neither Britain nor the United States wanted war, and saw the “only possible danger” in popular hysteria.⁸¹ Earnestly it counselled moderation, cautious waiting at least till Britain’s official response could be made known.⁸² Yet as Canadians awaited that response through tense days in early December, the pro-Southern papers were anything but moderate; and, as anti-British diatribes mounted in the neighbouring American press, the colonists grew sharply aware of how thoroughly exposed their own position was beside the armed and hostile republic. “The cry of war rings throughout the land,” the Globe uneasily admitted on December 10. “At the corner of every street you hear excited discussions as to the Mason and Slidell outrage, the next news from England, the erection of forts, and the problems of a fight with the Americans.”

If it had to come, those who had tried hardest for peace would not be slow to draw the sword.⁸³ So Brown resolutely affirmed; but, in the meantime, he turned his journal against the recklessly pro-Southern papers in the province (mainly Conservative), bitterly attacking them for war-mongering.⁸⁴ The most fire-eating of all was the largest ministerial journal, the Leader; and its replies to Brown were quite as strong as his attacks. There was good cause, too. Charles Lindsey, for years and with only a few breaks the chief editor of the Leader, had had to step aside again through illness. And who had replaced him? George Sheppard, who had recently returned to Canada a violent Southern partisan, after writing for secessionist papers in Washington at the close of 1860, and thereafter in Richmond, the capital of the Confederate States of America.⁸⁵ “Jeff Davis’s Agent”, the Globe bluntly named him.⁸⁶ The Brown-Sheppard feud was readily renewed, and swiftly it descended to personalities.

Brown was “disloyal”, a shameless Yankee-lover pandering to the North.⁸⁷ Sheppard was a miserable turncoat, a one-time annexationist who was still quite prepared to see Canada destroyed.⁸⁸ The Globe traced Sheppard’s many shifts and swings, the number of papers that had died under him. The Leader printed old and new charges against Brown: that he had absconded from Scotland, defrauded creditors in New York, intrigued “with a foreign government”, and was now debt-ridden and insolvent.⁸⁹ Brown promptly brought an action of libel against the Leader’s owner, James Beaty.⁹⁰ And as the North-South conflict raged between the two chief newspapers of Upper Canada, it seemed that the Trent affair might almost be forgotten in their vicarious Civil War at home.

Meanwhile, however, the crisis was coming to a head. The anxiously awaited news from Britain at last arrived in Canada on December 16 – by courtesy of George Brown: he had bought exclusive Canadian telegraph rights for the occasion.⁹¹ When the fast steamship Europa docked in New York with the crucial report of Britain’s official rejoinder to the Trent affair, the Globe gave it to the Canadian people before any other paper or official source. Its headlines were black, in type and meaning: “Intelligence Very Warlike! ” “Law Officers Declare Seizure Illegal! – Reparations Demanded! – 10,000 troops for Canada!”⁹² Nevertheless, Brown’s paper still dared hope that war would be avoided, for it observed that the precise British demands on the American government would not be known until presented at Washington. If Britain asked, quite justly, for the surrender of the Confederate commissioners, then surely the United States would have the good sense to accede?⁹³

Hence there was more waiting. But now war fever was at a peak on both sides of the Canadian-American border, and Brown and his journal no longer wholly escaped it. As British troopships steamed full speed westward against the freezing of the St. Lawrence, and as the Canadian government called for 40,000 volunteers, the Globe was vigorously exhorting: “Boats for the Lakes, Men for the Boats” – conscious that Upper Canada might only be saved from American conquest by a re-established Great Lakes fleet.⁹⁴ “Form, Riflemen, Form”, it cried, while in the general turmoil the old crumbling fort at Toronto was hurriedly reoccupied and repaired.⁹⁵ Sir Fenwick Williams, commander of the forces in British North America, advocated sinking block-ships across Toronto Harbour.⁹⁶ Port Dover was planning heavy fortifications; Simcoe and Dundas sought batteries of artillery, while throughout the province hastily armed militiamen were drilling.⁹⁷ It was a grimly ominous, cold Christmas, as the Globe wondered gloomily how many now at the fireside would be in the battlefield next year.⁹⁸ Still, it talked bravely of peaceful settlement, and of certain British victory if war should really come. But its fears for Canada were much in evidence indeed.

Then suddenly, on December 30, “Peace!” The peril was over: “All doubt is at an end.” Britain in a judiciously worded note had asked for the release of Mason and Slidell. The American government, no less judiciously, had accepted that necessity. Canada was jubilant – but much, much more relieved. And so, of course, were Brown and the Globe, who now found salutary lessons in the vanishing crisis. Canadians, they said with satisfaction, could see in Britain’s swift dispatch of troops a sure and ample pledge of aid, if war should ever threaten them again. Americans would understand that Canada stood solidly with Britain, and Britain with her – that talk of annexation, willing or otherwise, was futile. And the British equally should recognize that Canada, which would bear the brunt of conflict and destruction if the Empire ever warred with the United States, stood staunchly ready to accept her role.⁹⁹ This last, indeed, was almost the prime consideration, as Brown and the paper reflected on the defence question, which the Trent affair had thrust into the foreground and which seemed likely to remain there, as long as the Civil War and its accompanying stress should last.

5

There was a major public meeting in Toronto on December 31, to discuss the problem of colonial defence; but Brown did not attend. He was ill again, confined to his room for nearly two weeks more.¹⁰⁰ Conceivably, the strain of the crisis and perhaps the row with Sheppard had proved too much for his health. Yet there were some consolations. Early in January of 1862, the Leader announced that Mr. Sheppard had left its employ and ran an article disclaiming any governmental responsibility for its own late incendiary career.¹⁰¹ It was apparent that Sheppard’s course as editor had not been much appreciated either by proprietor James Beaty, who faced a suit for libel, or by a weak coalition ministry that had sufficient troubles without being stamped as far more warlike than the imperial government itself. The ill-fated Sheppard moved on again, this time to try his luck in Lower Canada at Quebec. But soon there would be one more shift, to the New York Times, where at last he would find an enduring haven for his undoubted journalistic talents.¹⁰²

The libel action came up in February, when Adam Wilson and Skeffington Connor argued the plaintiff’s case before the justices.¹⁰³ Beaty, through his lawyer, M. C. Cameron, retracted most of the charges that had been made; namely, that Brown had skipped from Edinburgh with the money of widows and orphans, that he had intrigued with a foreign (presumably the American) government, that he had exploited friends to raise money for himself and now was hopelessly in debt. “Defrauding” American creditors was reduced to leaving New York without paying all his debts. On this and a charge of “swindling” in four minor business transactions they stood ready to justify a case. The justices rejected the first plea a few weeks later, and the second was set aside by mutual agreement.¹⁰⁴ Thus the grand press libel suit evaporated, like so many others of the day. But Brown had forced his attackers to give most of their ground, and once more exhibited his own swift readiness to fight for his personal reputation.

Of much more public interest through the troubled winter of 1862 was the question of colonial defence. As a postscript, or perhaps an anticlimax, to the Trent affair, the troops sent from Britain to reinforce the small imperial garrison of regulars continued to arrive throughout January and February. The bulk of them had been compelled to land in Maritime ports because of the St. Lawrence ice barrier, and to proceed to Canada in long sleigh convoys through the empty, snowy wilderness of upland New Brunswick. The lack of effective year-round communications between Canada and Britain’s Atlantic provinces was thus graphically displayed.

The long-debated project for an Intercolonial Railway to join Halifax with Quebec received new impetus from this practical indication of its need. The scheme had never completely lapsed, ever since the breakdown of negotiations between the British American provinces and the imperial government in 1851 had led instead to the building of Canada’s own Grand Trunk. There had been further Intercolonial missions to the Mother Country in the decade thereafter, largely pressed by Maritime enthusiasts – and explained by the Toronto Globe as chiefly useful for “the possible presentation at court of Mrs. Bluenose and the Misses Bluenose”.¹⁰⁵ But now it seemed that both the colonies and Britain might be readier to shoulder the heavy financial outlay for such a line, because of its political and military value. Actually, there was an Intercolonial mission waiting on the Colonial Office when the Trent affair occurred, and the delegates had not been slow to point out the necessity of the railway for successful British North American defence.¹⁰⁶

If Brown had not necessarily opposed the Intercolonial in itself, he had given it a very low priority. Now in February of 1862, as the ministerial press was exclaiming over the project, he used the Globe to criticize its “fictitious importance”.¹⁰⁷ It would no doubt serve to tighten “the friendly bonds which already unite us to our kindly fellow countrymen”, and could be a boon to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.¹⁰⁸ Yet the line would never be a great highway to the sea: the St. Lawrence furnished that. And, while it would have some military merit, the Americans still might cut it at the narrow neck of land where Quebec met New Brunswick. Above all, the huge costs to Canada of building such a line would be a poor exchange for her development towards the North West: “The Red River route has a ten times better claim than the country through which the Intercolonial Railroad passes,” declared the Globe emphatically.¹⁰⁹

That was the crux of it. George Brown would not have eastern extension at the cost of westward expansion. His faith in the North West and Canada’s future there was quite as strong as ever. The Globe had never ceased to run articles on the value of the North West beyond the Lakes, and now on the mounting dangers of American penetration into that region. Moreover, there was cause indeed to think that the Intercolonial scheme would either replace or still further postpone Canada’s acquisition of the Hudson’s Bay territories. The governing Coalition had shown little real concern – and, in French Canada, actual distaste – for North West expansion. Yet the Montreal business power associated with the government might contemplate the extension of its empire into the nearby Maritimes. More specifically, the huge bankrupt Grand Trunk enterprise was hopefully viewing the Intercolonial as a means of redeeming itself – at further substantial cost to the taxpayer.¹¹⁰

The new president of Grand Trunk, Edward Watkin, a clever, confident Englishman most appreciative of his own abilities, had recently come out to view the “organized mess” of the railway (his own term), and concluded that its one salvation lay in dazzling extensions to east and west, until it became the first transcontinental line linking Europe and the Orient across America.¹¹¹ But the opening step would be eastward extension, through having the Intercolonial built jointly by the provinces with imperial support. Consequently, Brown still further refused to sanction the Intercolonial as essential to colonial development or defence. He cherished too many suspicions of costly Grand Trunk projects, and of the patriotic and plausible Mr. Watkin, who, as the Globe averred, “fanned the flame which is always kept burning on the railway altars in Halifax and Saint John [until] the conflagration has spread through three provinces”.¹¹²

Brown’s own concern for defence lay with measures more immediately needed to protect the long inland flank of Canada, that is, with the provision of an effective militia force to supplement the British regulars in the country.¹¹³ At present the colonial force existed largely on paper, the “sedentary militia” in which all able-bodied male inhabitants were enrolled, and which had met and drilled – more or less – once a year on the annual muster day. There was, besides, a small body of active militia with a little more claim to training, exemplified in the local volunteer companies that had been hurriedly embodied during the Trent crisis. But clearly the entire militia system needed overhauling, to provide for an efficient active force on a provincewide foundation. To that end, a militia commission had been named in January of 1862 by the new Governor-General, Lord Monck, who had replaced Sir Edmund Head shortly before the Trent affair. While it studied the problem in order to prepare for new militia legislation, the Canadian press and public concerned themselves with the drilling of the volunteer companies, and the proper principles of military organization.¹¹⁴

Brown recognized the importance of sound military organization. He saw that the early course of the American war had demonstrated the fallacy of believing that free citizens bearing arms made soldiers in themselves. That February he wrote thoughtfully to Luther Holton, who was far more uncritically pro-Northern than himself: “After all, have not the events of the past few months rather lowered your estimate of our neighbours? Has it not shown that there is something more needed to make up a great people than sharpness in business and agreeable social qualities? Has it not raised your estimate of the value of military power; of the faculty of commanding masses of men? Has it not proved the advantages of the people being taught to obey those placed in authority over them? I wish we had a chance to talk this over.”¹¹⁵

On the other hand, while he wanted a thoroughly trained militia, it was to be based on volunteering. “The volunteer system,” he asserted, “which has been attended with such wonderful success in Britain, is equally well adapted to Canada.”¹¹⁶ Furthermore, while provincials should look “to the Volunteer Force to meet the invader”, it was clear that the militia’s task would still be to assist, not to replace, the British regular.¹¹⁷ In short, Brown still foresaw only a limited peace-time military commitment for Canada, the provision of a select and well trained volunteer militia – all, in any case, that a small colonial population could afford.¹¹⁸

Conceiving as he did that any possible war with the United States would arise through the clash of American with imperial, not provincial, interests, there seemed little wrong with the view that the primary task of defending Canada remained with Great Britain.¹¹⁹ The colony was proud and happy to see the imperial bond retained. She would fight for it, accept her chances of war-time devastation. But she was still a colony, guided by a great power that controlled foreign policy and thus had the first responsibility for its consequences.¹²⁰ In this, Brown’s concept of the imperial relationship, there was no desire to foist all obligations off on Britain, nor any wish for a larger scope for Canada in managing her own affairs. He simply took the situation as it was, while the colony was weak and the Mother Country strong, and assumed a division of the duties of colonial defence, with the Canadians clearly taking the secondary part. His assumptions might look reasonable enough. But they would be sharply tested before the Civil War was over.

6

A bill to reorganize the militia would come before the next session of parliament; and parliament was now called for March 20. Before that date, however, the discussion of defence measures had largely subsided, not to regain prominence until the Militia Bill was actually introduced. Tensions with the United States had slackened for the time being, and there were interesting domestic developments to capture Canadian attention once more.

The difficulties of the Cartier-Macdonald régime were now fully in the open. They centred in Upper Canada, where John A. Macdonald was again facing the need to reconstruct the western half of the ministry. Three of his ministers, Vankoughnet, Ross, and Morrison, were thoroughly used up and anxious to retire. Morrison, in fact, had not managed to get himself a seat in parliament in more than two years of trying. Really, Macdonald had gone through an amazing string of colleagues in keeping office since 1854. As the Globe unkindly put it, “Mr. Macdonald is a kind of political ogre who demands a virgin reputation every year at least, to satisfy his needs, and casts aside his victim when every shred of popularity and character has disappeared.”¹²¹ The Attorney-General’s critical problem, however, was not just the need for “fresh new eggs, after the old are sucked dry”.¹²² It was to deal with the embarrassing growth of sentiment for representation by population among his own Conservative following.

Macdonald himself still wholly rejected the principle, almost as strenuously as his Lower Canadian associates in government; but increasingly his own party was dividing on the issue. To hold it together, he might well have to take pledged advocates of rep by pop into the cabinet, dangerous as that would seem to the taut and suspicious Bleus of Lower Canada. If he did not do so, John Hillyard Cameron might gain control of the rep-by-pop Conservatives: Cameron, the powerful right-wing Tory who had once been his closest rival for party leadership, and who had now returned to politics and become Orange Grand Master besides. The result could well be a fatal split in Conservatism, and the consequent fall of the Liberal-Conservative Coalition that had ruled virtually without a break for the past eight years.

Ever since the previous summer’s elections the western government leader had faced this problem, but delayed as long as he dared. Now, as parliament assembled in Quebec, and there were still no new ministers, he could procrastinate no longer. While the Globe hopefully announced that he was at Bull Run – or perhaps Waterloo – Macdonald made his changes.¹²³ Vankoughnet, Morrison, and Ross readily resigned, the first two going to their just reward, the judicial bench, the third to spend more time at his Grand Trunk offices as president of the railway’s Canadian board. And three rep-by-pop Conservatives were sworn in: John Carling, James Patton, and John Beverley Robinson. Yet, as Macdonald assured the House, this did not involve a change in government policy. Representation by population remained an open question for all to vote on as they would. In short, he was on a tight-rope, but still had hopes of walking it.

The Reformers naturally sought to push him off, by bringing up rep by pop to divide and distress the ministerial forces. Foley had now been officially named leader by the party caucus, though his role seemed largely nominal. (Indeed, William McDougall wrote Brown: “You must lead still, or we will make a poor fight.”)¹²⁴ It was actually McDougall who took the initiative in parliament in pressing rep by pop, even driving on Foley and his friends. John Hillyard Cameron brought in a similar motion. After sharp debate, both measures were defeated on April 1 by the united weight of Lower Canada; but there were only sixteen western votes behind the ministry on each motion.¹²⁵ Upper Canada itself gave a solid majority of twenty-seven for reform in the representation. Party lines were dissolving in sheer sectionalism, and surely neither the Cartier-Macdonald government nor the union itself could carry on much longer.

At this point the militia commission made public its report. It called for an active force of 50,000 men, a reserve of the same number, and, moreover, accepted the principle of draft or conscription when necessary to secure the requisite contingents from country districts. Canadians generally were surprised, even startled, by the size of the scheme, and its recognition of a principle that they regarded as both alien and ineffective. Publishing the report on April 10, the Globe was still more emphatic. It could not believe that the government could contemplate a bill on this cumbersome basis, and, above all, load such heavy new expenses on debt-burdened Canada. It might do for the British exchequer, but for the empty provincial treasury it was “totally indefensible”, far beyond the country’s capabilities and duty.¹²⁶ Plainly, the militia legislation would have a hard time, especially when a critical phase in Canadian-American relations had passed, and there was no longer the sense of imminent war abroad.

Nevertheless, on May 2, John A. Macdonald brought in the required Militia Bill, doubling in another post as the new Minister of Militia Affairs. He was suavely and carefully vague on details, on precise costs; but, under relentless opposition probing, the government had to admit that the first year of the scheme alone would cost close to half a million dollars.¹²⁷ The country was startled anew; the bill made little progress. The Globe gleefully reported that it had “stuck in the mud”.¹²⁸ Meanwhile, the by-elections for the new western ministers were held, and one of them, James Patton, was defeated. This came partly through the intervention of George Brown who, urged by his party, briefly stepped off the side-lines to speak in the campaign.¹²⁹ A weak and battered ministry was in its last extremity. And, if it fell, the Militia Bill would be only the occasion, not the cause.

It did fall. On May 20, when Macdonald moved the second reading of the Militia Bill, the ministry lost the vote without debate, 61 to 54.¹³⁰ Essentially it lost because a group of Bleus abandoned it to vote with the opposition, themselves convinced that the scheme was excessive, extravagant, and wrong in principle – but also probably resenting the inroads rep by pop had made in western ministerial ranks.¹³¹ Edward Watkin of the Grand Trunk was at the House the next day, when the Liberal-Conservative government resigned, and just afterwards buttonholed a furious ex-premier, George Etienne Cartier, to express his regret. Replied Cartier with eyes flashing and fists clenched: “Well, I have saved the honour of my country against those Grits and Rouges – traitres, traitres.”¹³² But, Watkin noted, “Mr. J. A. Macdonald, afterwards, took the matter very quietly, merely remarking that the slightest tact might have prevented the occurrence.”¹³³ Whatever the case, both the passionate and the politic were out of office at last. It remained to be seen what new combination could be put together to run the province.

7

It might appear that the most likely way to form a new administration would be to call on the leader of the largest Liberal group in opposition, Michael Foley. But Foley, who had only been awarded the leadership after Mowat and McDougall had both refused it, had pretty conclusively proved his incapacity for command during the session, and ended in violent, open quarrels with his colleagues.¹³⁴ Yet it still seemed strange when the Governor-General instead approached Sandfield Macdonald, that temperamental, stiff-necked individualist who was, as he rather prided himself, a kind of political Ishmaelite in Upper Canada Reform. Nevertheless, perhaps his very isolation would make it easier for a new combination to gather around him. In any event, he was more than willing to try.

Certainly the Lower Canada opposition would not have joined readily with any thoroughgoing Grit Liberal, and whole-hearted advocate of rep by pop. And Sandfield Macdonald, of course, was not only an Upper Canada Reformer of undoubted seniority and standing, but also a tireless champion of his own pet scheme for keeping the existing union operating – the double majority principle. There was another possible explanation for his choice, a more Machiavellian one: that Cartier and John A. Macdonald, as retiring ministers, had advised the governor to call on Sandfield partly in an attempt to head off rep by pop, and partly in the expectation that he would have to call in Conservatives to fill out the Upper Canadian half of his ministry – so that, to all intents and purposes, the old Coalition rule would return once more.

Thoughts such as these must have run through George Brown’s mind when on Wednesday, May 21, he learned by telegraph of Sandfield’s opening negotiations at Quebec with Foley, McDougall, and Louis Sicotte for Lower Canada.¹³⁵ In the two days following, the Montreal Telegraph Company’s line flashed a series of important messages back and forth between Quebec and Globe headquarters in Toronto. McDougall wired his former leader and old master on the journal, asking for advice. Should he enter a cabinet formed “on opposition principles?”¹³⁶ Brown, waiting for more news, which was coming through in snatches from the Globe’s Quebec reporter, J. K. Edwards, hedged carefully, not yet certain of what this new ministry might mean. He could not advise McDougall on his own decision, he wired back; yet if reliable Reformers should compose the cabinet, and “policy on the representation question is satisfactory, I will cordially support the government”.¹³⁷

But then came a telegram from Edwards, giving both the settled list of ministers and a statement of the proposed government’s policy received direct from Sandfield Macdonald.¹³⁸ McDougall, Foley, Howland, and Adam Wilson were all going in – and had agreed that representation by population would be dropped! Swiftly Brown cancelled his pledge of support. “Are you all mad there? ” he telegraphed incredulously.¹³⁹ McDougall returned: “Not mad. If get fair play can make great reforms. Have done best possible as friends here believe you could not do more except allow corruptionists return. Do you advise this? Party after full discussion unanimously agree we ought to go in.”¹⁴⁰

The next few days brought a clearer picture, as Brown’s Liberal associates at Quebec sent him long and rather defensive letters, all hastening to explain to the man who was still the party overlord – and controller of the potent Globe - the reasons why they had set aside their chief party principle. There had been an Upper Canada Reform caucus on May 23, which had approved the new ministry, or at least conceded it “a fair and liberal trial”.¹⁴¹ This, it seemed, was as far as the confused and reluctant Grits would go. It was a close vote, and far from the “unanimous” agreement that McDougall had breezily indicated. Summing up by mail, Edwards reported: “The party generally are surprised at McDougall and feel he has given them a hard dose to swallow, and their only reason for going into it is because they think anything is better than the late government.”¹⁴²

That, moreover, was the line taken by Oliver Mowat in writing to the Globe owner immediately after the caucus. Brown had confidence in Mowat. Foley had always been willing to enter a “moderate” Liberal government, constitutional reform or no, while Howland and Wilson were weak enough to be swayed in that direction. As for McDougall, inherently hasty and overoptimistic, he was simply doing what he had done years before, when in 1851 he had pushed the original Clear Grits into a futile combination with moderate Hincksites in a mistaken belief that once in power they could achieve “great reforms”. Yet if the competent, substantial Mowat – rather stuffy perhaps, but wholly sound on rep by pop – could in any way accept this new and clearly retrogressive ministry, then possibly Brown might also swallow it.

Decidedly, Mowat was far from happy over the Sandfield Macdonald-Sicotte administration. “On R by P,” he noted gravely, “the new cabinet has a worse policy than the old.”¹⁴³ The former at least had made it an open question, while this one would vote “all intentions inexpedient on the subject”. Still, the issue for the moment, as Mowat saw it, was whether to sustain a cabinet drawn entirely from the opposition or to allow the old gang back. At the least, he expected such disclosures now from the investigation of the public accounts as would ruin the prestige of the former lot forever. Furthermore, he held that “no govt. to carry R. by P. could just now be formed”.¹⁴⁴ Rep by pop would not die, he said; he and other Grits had explicitly informed the new ministers that they would press it unyieldingly. All in all, this was the only possible choice in a choice of evils: to accept a régime of the moderates for the present.

Correspondents other than Mowat argued more positively in favour of the Macdonald-Sicotte ministry. From the Upper House, Fergusson Blair (who had changed his name from simpler days when he was A. J. Fergusson, and George Brown’s first follower in parliament) expressed his confidence that on everything but the representation question the government would prove excellent – “and the reign of corruption be brought to a close”.¹⁴⁵ But probably Brown paid more attention to his old Lambton agent, Alexander Mackenzie, who, while still “a full private of recent standing” in parliament, had zealously identified himself as “an out-and-outer”.¹⁴⁶ Mackenzie would accept the new Reform cabinet, bad as it was, because he believed that Sandfield Macdonald’s original aim had been to bring Conservatives into a coalition with him. “I am tolerably well satisfied,” he asserted, “that the only part of the plan which failed was the introduction of the intended Tory constituent.”¹⁴⁷ Hence it was necessary to stand by the present set in office, and watch Sandfield like a hawk.

With this Brown had to rest for the moment. He did not question the integrity of those who approved the new ministry, though he continued to doubt their judgment. The Globe still condemned the abandoning of rep by pop, refusing to believe that better arrangements could not have been made if Upper Canadians had held to their principles.¹⁴⁸ Particularly it attacked “the monstrous doctrine” of the double majority set forth in the new cabinet’s official statement of policy.¹⁴⁹ This viewed the union as a sort of bastard federation, wherein the particular affairs of each section would be managed in parliament by its own sectional majority, and no local legislation would be forced on either Canada against the majority vote of its own representatives. Perhaps the end was right; but the method was wrong. It offered the worst of two worlds: neither a true federation nor yet a real legislative union. Apart from that, the principle was clumsy and impractical, for it could well require a government to base itself on two antagonistic sectional majorities: Grits and Bleus, for instance – a position of paralysis, to say the least.

In any event, Brown had not yet made peace with his four Upper Canada associates who had jumped so readily into office alongside Sandfield Macdonald. On May 29, Foley and Wilson came to see him in Toronto and spent five hours explaining, until nearly one in the morning.¹⁵⁰ They must have looked and felt like schoolboys caught cheating, as they sat in the great man’s study, a mixture of apology, penitence, and badgered defiance, enduring the lashing scorn of his tongue and the piercing thrust of his indignant questions. Yet they had to endure it, if for no other reason than that they faced by-elections as new members of the government and could hardly hope to be returned by western Reformers without the backing, or at least the tacit acceptance, of George Brown and the Globe.

As soon as they had gone, Brown poured out his feelings to one friend who had not been at all involved in the doings at Quebec: to Luther Holton, like himself still out of parliament although often urged to return. “The conclusion I have come to from all that they have told me,” he wrote disgustedly, “is that a greater set of jackasses … was never got by accident into the government of any country.”¹⁵¹ They had told him that the cabinet’s own so-called constitutional policy would be placed in formal resolutions before the next session of parliament, and (“Would you believe it?”) vowed that “they themselves will do their utmost to have representation by population made part of the scheme, and if necessary will resign or take any other course the party will desire! ”¹⁵²

He would have given anything to have Holton there with him: “It is so hard to tell how to act. There is no doubt that if I go into it and stump the four counties three of them at any rate can be beaten! But it will split the party, and bring on once more a most disagreeable personal warfare, which I wish to avoid of all things. I am keenly desirous of sticking to my business for a couple of years, and especially of getting off to England for a few months. To go into such a fight would knock everything on the head. But then – if we don’t kill them, won’t their conduct kill us as a party? ”¹⁵³

He remained in his unsettled state a day or two longer, while Holton wrote to say that he could not manage to come up, and McDougall arrived in Toronto to make his explanations in turn.¹⁵⁴ McDougall (who “felt his oats”, Brown thought) admitted that he looked on the present ministry as a makeshift, and was willing like the others to agree that when resolutions on the constitution did come before the next session they would follow the course the party then might ask of them, even at the risk of losing office.¹⁵⁵ But while Foley and Wilson were ready to put such a declaration in their election addresses, McDougall, far more sure of himself and less awed by Brown, positively refused to have it included in his own or any other.¹⁵⁶

Thus Brown was still left to his decision – and, as he told Holton, with only his brother Gordon to consult.¹⁵⁷ The two of them deliberated long hours at the Globe office on what was best to do: “Start candidates against all four and run out as many of them as possible, or permit them to go in unopposed, and hold them up to the mark under the stimulus of bit and spur?”¹⁵⁸ Finally, they determined on the latter course. “We shall quickly fall into the attitude of independent but hearty support on all but the one question,” Brown asserted. “I will ask no favours from them for myself or others, and will stand ready heartily to aid them to the best of my ability, with the one reservation that on the constitutional question they are to be coerced on every occasion.”¹⁵⁹ By early June the Globe was again fixed on course, as it declared succinctly of the Macdonald-Sicotte cabinet: “They will earn no popularity by their constitutional doctrines; they must rest for success on their administrative virtues.”¹⁶⁰

Two things especially had decided Brown: the first, that to oppose the ministers would split the party, not merely in a few constituencies, but all over the province, which was assuredly a grave responsibility to face.¹⁶¹ As for the second, even if he did divide the party, it would be to little purpose unless he himself ran to provide new leadership – and this he was determined not to do.¹⁶² He still intended to stay out of parliament until his health was fully restored. He meant to take the trip to Britain that he had been planning for months past, and for which he had booked passage in the Montreal Steamship Company’s Anglo-Saxon, sailing from Quebec on July 12.¹⁶³

He was free for his first return in twenty-five years. His business interests had recovered; the Globe’s circulation, at over 31,000, was three times larger than that of any other paper in Canada.¹⁶⁴ He had successfully launched an evening edition in the winter, and Bothwell was on the rising curve of a land boom.¹⁶⁵ No, politics would positively not be allowed to interfere with his personal plans. Let the Macdonald-Sicotte venture have its day. There would be occasion enough to deal with it on his return.

Accordingly, the next few weeks were chiefly spent preparing for departure: a week at Both well, final arrangements at the Church Street house and at the Globe office, where Gordon would keep things running for the coming four or five months. His parents would stay behind in Toronto, where his sister Isabella, Gordon, and their families would look after them. They were too old and infirm now to face the strain of an Atlantic crossing, which could still be thoroughly arduous, even in the new age of steam. Early in July, he said his good-byes and set out alone for Quebec. Yet, even as he left, politics pursued him. There was an odd little incident in Kingston on July 11, as he was en route from Toronto to take ship.

There he was approached by a certain David Shaw, who desired some conversation with him on the subject of constitutional reform. Shaw purported to be an emissary from – John A. Macdonald! At any rate, he gave Brown the surprising information that the defeated Conservative leader was now prepared to advocate representation by population, and to co-operate with any party in order to carry that measure.¹⁶⁶ Brown must have been amazed, though he may have conjectured that Macdonald, out of power, weakened by the growth of rep by pop in his own party, and casting about for some new coalition to upset the double-majority ministry, might well be applying an American maxim not unknown to the political art; namely, “If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.”

Whatever the explanation, Brown’s reply was safe enough. He would be delighted, he said, to see an understanding reached at last between the two great parties of Upper Canada to achieve rep by pop. He suggested that it might be done through both Conservatives and Reformers pledging themselves not to support any government that refused to adopt this principle, and that, when a crisis followed, whichever party was called to form a government should be sustained by the other until the principle was carried.¹⁶⁷ Here was a simple plan for achieving constitutional reform without coalition, which he would again put forward under other circumstances two years hence. But certainly, a coalition of the parties was far from his mind.

He had left the country before Shaw could carry negotiations further. When, however, the latter did so by mail, Brown had further cause to be amazed. Now the presumed emissary reported that John A. Macdonald “was animated with the most friendly desire to co-operate with you in every possible way” – that he accepted Brown’s proposal to act with him on the basis of rep by pop or any other question – and that both partners should bring their own best followers with them, “forming therefrom one strong party”.¹⁶⁸ Was John A. Macdonald seriously prepared to combine with his most obvious foe, and to espouse the very policy he had so vigorously opposed? Brown might reflect that this was exactly what Macdonald had done in the case of Francis Hincks and the secularization of the clergy reserves eight years before. But perhaps Shaw was exaggerating, even though he said that Macdonald had “instructed” him to make the offer.¹⁶⁹ Or, more likely, perhaps Macdonald was merely playing his old amiable game of throwing out lines to the opposition, suggesting alliances that might never come off, but that could at least bring him information on the state of the enemy.

One thing was sure: Brown’s stiff response to Shaw, making plain that he had never for a moment considered a coalition of parties – “which I regard as demoralizing and from which I am persuaded the right feeling of the country would revolt”.¹⁷⁰ He would not work with Macdonald inside a party combination; he would not play his game at all. In fact, he went still further. “I did not contemplate renewing friendly personal intercourse with Mr. Macdonald,” he wrote bluntly. “A public man has no right to permit his personal feelings to prevent his meeting anyone on public business in a recognized public capacity. But Mr. Macdonald has made charges against me of a character that until entirely withdrawn must debar any other than parliamentary intercourse between us.”¹⁷¹

The old rancorous accusations were still remembered: Macdonald’s blackening charges of perjury, falsification of records, and suborning of witnesses, which he had levied in parliament in 1856 against Brown’s conduct on the Penitentiary Commission – charges he had never retracted, although the evidence taken at the subsequent committee of inquiry had shown how groundless they were. In any case, Brown’s message ended the dubious intervention of David Shaw. The returning Scot was far too much caught up in the visit to his homeland to spend time in weighing all the implications of the strange little episode.

He landed on July 23, 1862, at Liverpool, the same port from which he had sailed for America with his father in 1837.¹⁷² He had left at eighteen, impoverished, in a crowded emigrant sailing vessel. He had returned at forty-three in a first-class mail steamer, the owner of a great newspaper and a valuable estate, a dominant figure in Canadian affairs. Meanwhile, the guns were roaring in Virginia in the York Peninsula campaign. And in Britain, the press was questioning the very worth of a colony like Canada, that had refused to pass an urgently needed militia measure, to guard against the threat that war might spread.