In 1853 the relative strength of Brown and the ministers was tested in a series of demonstrations held throughout Canada. The Hon. James Young gives a vivid description of Brown as he appeared at a banquet given in his honour at Galt: "He was a striking figure. Standing fully six feet two inches high, with a well-proportioned body, well balanced head and handsome face, his appearance not only indicated much mental and physical strength, but conveyed in a marked manner an impression of youthfulness and candour. These impressions deepened as his address proceeded, and his features grew animated and were lighted up by his fine expressive eyes." His voice was strong and soft, with a well-marked Edinburgh accent. His appearance surprised the people who had expected to see an older and sterner-looking man. His first remarks were disappointing; as was usual with him he stammered and hesitated until he warmed to his subject, when he spoke with such an array of facts and figures, such earnestness and enthusiasm, that he easily held the audience for three hours.[8]

On October 1st, 1853, the Globe was first issued as a daily. It was then stated that the paper was first published as a weekly paper with a circulation of three hundred. On November 1st, 1846, it was published twice a week with a circulation of two thousand, which rose to a figure between three thousand and four thousand. In July, 1849, it was issued three times a week. When the daily paper was first published the circulation was six thousand. To anticipate a little, it may be said that in 1855 the Globe absorbed the North American and the Examiner, and the combined circulation was said to be sixteen thousand four hundred and thirty-six. The first daily paper contained a declaration of principles, including the entire separation of Church and State, the abolition of the clergy reserves and the restoration of the lands to the public, cessation of grants of public money for sectarian purposes, the abolition of tithes and other compulsory taxation for ecclesiastical purposes, and restraint on land-holding by ecclesiastical corporations.

An extract from this statement of policy may be given:

"Representation by population. Justice for Upper Canada! While Upper Canada has a larger population by one hundred and fifty thousand than Lower Canada, and contributes more than double the amount of taxation to the general revenue, Lower Canada has an equal number of representatives in parliament.

"National education.—Common school, grammar school, and collegiate free from sectarianism and open to all on equal terms. Earnest war will be waged with the separate school system, which has unfortunately obtained a footing.

"A prohibitory liquor law.—Any measure which will alleviate the frightful evils of intemperance."

The inclusion of prohibition on this platform was the natural result of the drinking habits of that day. In a pamphlet issued by the Canada Company for the information of intending immigrants, whiskey was described as "a cheap and wholesome beverage." Its cheapness and abundance caused it to be used in somewhat the same way as the "small beer" of England, and it was a common practice to order a jug from the grocer along with the food supply of the family. When a motion favouring prohibition was introduced in the Canadian parliament there were frequent references to the convivial habits of the members. The seconder of the motion was greeted with loud laughter. He good-naturedly said that he was well aware of the cause of hilarity, but that he was ready to sacrifice his pleasure to the general good. Sir Allan MacNab, the leader of the Opposition, moved a farcical amendment, under which every member was to sign a pledge of abstinence, and to be disqualified if he broke it. Brown made an earnest speech in favour of the motion, in which he remarked that Canada then contained nine hundred and thirty-one whiskey shops, fifty-eight steamboat bars, three thousand four hundred and thirty taverns, one hundred and thirty breweries, and one hundred and thirty-five distilleries.

The marked diminution of intemperance in the last fifty years may be attributed in part to restrictive laws, and in part to the work of the temperance societies, which rivalled the taverns in social attractions, and were effective agents of moral suasion.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Young, op. cit., pp. 58, 59.



CHAPTER VIII

RECONSTRUCTION OF PARTIES

In June, 1854, the Hincks-Morin government was defeated in the legislature on a vote of censure for delay in dealing with the question of the clergy reserves. A combination of Tories and Radicals deprived Hincks of all but five of his Upper Canadian supporters. Parliament was immediately dissolved, and the ensuing election was a melee in which Hincks Reformers, Brown Reformers, Tories and Clear Grits were mingled in confusion. Brown was returned for Lambton, where he defeated the Hon. Malcolm Cameron, postmaster-general under Hincks. The Reform party was in a large majority in the new legislature, and if united could have controlled it with ease. But the internal quarrel was irreconcilable. Hincks was defeated by a combination of Tories and dissatisfied Reformers, and a general reconstruction of parties followed. Sir Allan MacNab, as leader of the Conservative opposition, formed an alliance with the French-Canadian members of the Hincks government and with some of its Upper Canadian supporters. Hincks retired, but gave his support to the new combination, "being of opinion that the combination of parties by which the new government was supported presented the only solution of the difficulties caused by a coalition of parties holding no sentiments in common, a coalition which rarely takes place in England. I deemed it my duty to give my support to that government during the short period that I continued in public life."[9]

Whether the MacNab-Morin government was a true coalition or a Tory combination under that name was a question fiercely debated at that time. It certainly did not stand for the Toryism that had resisted responsible government, the secularization of the clergy reserves, and the participation of French-Canadians in the government of the country. It had at first some of the elements of a coalition, but it gradually came to represent Conservatism and the personal ascendency of John A. Macdonald. Robert Baldwin, from his retirement, gave his approval to the combination, and hence arose the "Baldwin Reformer," blessed as a convert by one party, and cursed as a renegade by the other.

Reconstruction on one side was followed by reconstruction on the other. Upper Canadian Reformers rallied round Brown, and an alliance was formed with the Quebec Rouges. This was a natural alliance of radical Reformers in both provinces. Some light is thrown on it by an article published in the Globe in 1855. The writer said that in 1849, some young men of Montreal, fresh from the schools and filled to the brim with the Republican opinions which had spread from France throughout all Europe, formed associations and established newspapers advocating extreme political views. They declaimed in favour of liberty and against priestcraft and tyranny with all the ardour and freshness of youth. Their talents and the evident purity and sincerity of their motives made a strong impression on their countrymen, contrasting as they did with the selfishness and mediocrity of other French-Canadian leaders, and the result was that the Rouge party was growing in strength both in the House and in the country. With the growth of strength there had come a growing sense of responsibility, greater moderation and prudence. In the legislature, at least, the Rouges had not expressed a single sentiment on general policy to which a British constitutional Reformer might not assent. They were the true allies of the Upper Canadian Reformers, and in fact the only Liberals among the French-Canadians. They had Reform principles, they maintained a high standard of political morality. They stood for the advance of education and for liberty of speech. They were the hope of Canada, and their attitude gave promise that a brighter day was about to dawn on the political horizon.

It was unreasonable to expect that the Liberals could continue to receive that solid support from Lower Canada which they had received in the days of the Baldwin-Lafontaine alliance. In those days the issue was whether French-Canadians should be allowed to take part in the government of the country, or should be excluded as rebels. The Reformers championed their cause and received the solid support of the French-Canadian people. But when once the principle for which they contested was conceded, it was perceived that Lower Canada, like Upper Canada, had its Conservative element, and party lines were formed. Mr. Brown held that there could be no lasting alliance between Upper Canadian Reformers and Lower Canadian Conservatives, and especially with those Lower Canadians who defended the power and privileges of the Church. He was perfectly willing that electors holding these views should go to the Conservative party, which was their proper place. The Rouges could not bring to the Liberal party the numerical strength of the supporters of Lafontaine, but as they really held Liberal principles, the alliance was solidly based and was more likely to endure.

The leader of the Rouges was A. A. Dorion, a distinguished advocate, and a man of culture, refinement and eloquence. He was Brown's desk-mate, and while in physique and manner the two were strongly contrasted, they were drawn together by the chivalry and devotion to principle which characterized both, and they formed a strong friendship. "For four years," said Mr. Brown, in a public address, "I acted with him in the ranks of the Opposition, learned to value most highly the uprightness of his character, the liberality of his opinions, and the firmness of his convictions. On most questions of public general policy we heartily agreed, and regularly voted together; on the questions that divided all Upper Canadians and all Lower Canadians alone we differed, and on these we had held many earnest consultations from year to year with a view to their removal, without arriving at the conviction that when we had the opportunity we could find the mode." Their habit was not to attempt to conceal these sectional differences, but to recognize them frankly with a view to finding the remedy. It was rarely that either presented a resolution to the House without asking the advice of the other. They knew each other's views perfectly, and on many questions, especially of commerce and finance, they were in perfect accord.

By this process of evolution Liberals and Conservatives were restored to their proper and historic places, and the way was cleared for new issues. These issues arose out of the ill-advised attempt to join Upper and Lower Canada in a legislative union. A large part of the history of this period is the history of an attempt to escape the consequences of that blunder. This was the reason why every ministry had its double name—the Lafontaine-Baldwin, the Hincks-Morin, the Tache-Macdonald, the Brown-Dorion, the Macdonald-Sicotte. This was the reason why every ministry had its attorney-general east for Lower Canada and its attorney-general west for Upper Canada. In his speech on confederation Sir John Macdonald said that although the union was legislative in name, it was federal in fact—that in matters affecting Upper Canada alone, Upper Canadian members claimed and usually exercised, exclusive power, and so with Lower Canada. The consolidated statutes of Canada and the consolidated statutes of Upper Canada must be sought in separate volumes. The practice of legislating for one province alone was not confined to local or private matters. For instance, as the two communities had widely different ideas as to Sabbath observance, the stricter law was enacted for Upper Canada alone. Hence also arose the theory of the double majority—that a ministry must, for the support of its general policy, have a majority from each province.

But all these shifts and devices could not stay the agitation for a radical remedy. Some Reformers proposed to dissolve the union. Brown believed that the difficulty would be solved by representation by population, concerning which a word of explanation is necessary. When the provinces were united in 1841, the population of Lower Canada exceeded that of Upper Canada in the proportion of three to two. "If," said Lord Durham, "the population of Upper Canada is rightly estimated at four hundred thousand, the English inhabitants of Lower Canada at one hundred and fifty thousand, and the French at four hundred and fifty thousand, the union of the two provinces would not only give a clear English majority, but one which would be increased every year by the influence of English emigration, and I have little doubt that the French, when once placed by the legitimate course of events in a minority, would abandon their vain hopes of nationality." But he added that he was averse to every plan that had been proposed for giving an equal number of members to the two provinces. The object could be attained without any violation of the principles of representation, such as would antagonize public opinion, and "when emigration shall have increased the English population of the Upper Province, the adoption of such a principle would operate to defeat the very purpose it is intended to serve. It appears to me that any such electoral arrangement, founded on the present provincial divisions, would tend to defeat the purpose of union and perpetuate the idea of disunion."

Counsels less wise and just prevailed, and the united province was "gerrymandered" against Lord Durham's protest. Lower Canada complained of the injustice, and with good reason. In the course of time Lord Durham's prediction was fulfilled; by immigration the population of Upper Canada overtook and passed that of Lower Canada. The census of 1852 gave Upper Canada a population of nine hundred and fifty-two thousand, and Lower Canada a population of eight hundred and ninety thousand two hundred and sixty-one. Brown began to press for representation by population. He was met by two objections. It was argued on behalf of the French-Canadians that they had submitted to the injustice while they had the larger population, and that the Upper Canadians ought to follow their example. Mr. Brown admitted the force of this argument, but he met it by showing that the Lower Canadians had been under-represented for eight years, and that by the time the new representation went into force, the Upper Canadians would have suffered injustice for about an equal term, so that a balance might be struck. A more formidable objection was raised by Mr. Hincks, who said that the union was in the nature of a compact between two nations having widely different institutions; that the basis of the compact was equal representation, and that Brown's proposition would destroy that basis. Cartier said that representation by population could not be had without repeal of the union. The French-Canadians were afraid that they would be swamped, and would be obliged to accept the laws and institutions of the majority.

It is impossible to deny the force of these objections. In 1841 Lower Canada had been compelled to join a union in which the voting power of Upper Canada was arbitrarily increased. If this was due to distrust, to fear of "French domination," French-Canadians could not be blamed for showing an equal distrust of English domination, and for refusing to give up the barrier which, as they believed, protected their peculiar institutions. Ultimately the solution was found in the application of the federal system, giving unity in matters requiring common action, and freedom to differ in matters of local concern. Towards this solution events were tending, and the importance of Brown's agitation for representation by population, which gained immense force in Upper Canada, lies in its relation to the larger plan of confederation.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Hincks's Political History of Canada, p. 80.



CHAPTER IX

SOME PERSONAL POLITICS

After the burning of the parliament buildings in Montreal the seat of government oscillated between Quebec and Toronto. Toronto's turn came in the session of 1856. Macdonald was now the virtual, and was on the point of becoming the titular, leader of the party. Brown was equally conspicuous on the other side. During the debate on the address he was the central figure in a fierce struggle, and some one with a turn for statistics said that his name was mentioned three hundred and seventy-two times. The air was stimulating, and Brown's contribution to the debate was not of a character to turn away wrath.

Smarting under Brown's attack, Macdonald suddenly gave a new turn to the debate. He charged that Brown, while acting as a member and secretary of a commission appointed by the Lafontaine-Baldwin government to inquire into the condition of the provincial penitentiary, had falsified testimony, suborned convicts to commit perjury, and obtained the pardon of murderers to induce them to give false evidence. Though the assembly had by this time become accustomed to hard hitting, this outbreak created a sensation. Brown gave an indignant denial to the charges, and announced that he would move for a committee of inquiry. He was angrily interrupted by the solicitor-general, who flung the lie across the House. The solicitor-general was a son of the warden of the penitentiary who had been dismissed in consequence of the report of the commission. Macdonald was a strong personal friend of the warden, and had attempted some years before to bring his case before the assembly. Brown promptly moved for the committee, and it was not long before he presented that tribunal with a dramatic surprise. It was supposed that the report of the penitentiary committee had been burned, and the attack on Brown was made upon that supposition. When Mr. Brown was called as a witness, however, he produced the original report with all the evidence, and declared that it had never been out of his possession "for one hour." The effect of this disclosure on his assailants is shown in a letter addressed to the committee by VanKoughnet, Macdonald's counsel: "Mr. Macdonald," he said, "had been getting up his case on the assumption and belief that these minutes had been destroyed and could not be procured, and much of the labour he had been allowed to go to by Mr. Brown for that purpose would now be thrown away; the whole manner of giving evidence, etc., would now be altered."

The graver charges of subornation of perjury etc., were abandoned, and Macdonald's friends confined themselves to an attempt to prove that the inquiry had been unfairly conducted, that the warden had been harshly treated, and the testimony not fairly reported. It was a political committee with a Conservative majority, and the majority, giving up all hope of injuring Brown, bent its energies to saving Macdonald from the consequences of his reckless violence. The Liberal members asked for a complete exoneration of Mr. Brown. A supporter of the government was willing to exonerate Brown if Macdonald were allowed to escape without censure. A majority of the committee, however, took refuge in a rambling deliverance, which was sharply attacked in the legislature. Sir Allan MacNab bluntly declared that the charge had been completely disproved, and that the committee ought to have had the manliness to say so. Drummond, a member of the government, also said that the attack had failed. The accusers were willing to allow the matter to drop, and as a matter of fact the report was never put to a vote. But Mr. Brown would not allow them to escape so easily. Near the close of the session he made a speech which gave a new character to the discussion. Up to this time it had been a personal question between Brown and his assailants. Brown dealt with this aspect of the matter briefly but forcibly. He declared that not only his conduct but the character of the other commissioners was fully vindicated, and that a conspiracy to drive him from public life had signally failed. Conservative members had met him and admitted that there was no truth in the charges, but had pleaded that they must go with the party. Members had actually been asked to "pair" off on the question of upholding or destroying his character, before they had heard his defence.

From these personal matters he returned to the abuses that had been discovered by the commission. A terrible story of neglect and cruelty was told. These charges did not rest on the testimony of prisoners. They were sustained by the evidence of officers and by the records of the institution. "If," said the speaker, "every word of the witnesses called by the commissioners were struck out, and the case left to rest on the testimony of the warden's own witnesses and the official records of the prison, there would be sufficient to establish the blackest record of wickedness that ever disgraced a civilized country." Amid applause, expressions of amazement and cries of "Shame!" from the galleries, Brown told of the abuses laid bare by the prison commission. He told of prisoners fed with rotten meal and bread infested with maggots; of children beaten with cat and rawhide for childish faults; of a coffin-shaped box in which men and even women were made to stand or rather crouch, their limbs cramped, and their lungs scantily supplied with air from a few holes. Brown's speech virtually closed the case, although Macdonald strove to prove that the accounts of outrages were exaggerated, that the warden, Smith, was himself a kind-hearted man, and that he had been harshly treated by the commissioners.

In a letter written about this time, Macdonald said that he was carrying on a war against Brown, that he would prove him a most dishonest, dishonourable fellow, "and in doing so I will only pay him a debt that I owe him for abusing me for months together in his newspaper."[10] Whatever the provocation may have been, the personal relations of the two men were further embittered by this incident.

Eight years afterwards they were members of the coalition ministry by which confederation was brought about, and Brown's intimate friend, Alexander Mackenzie, says that the association was most distasteful to Brown, on account of the charges made in connection with the prison commission. That the leaders of the two parties were not merely political opponents but personal enemies must have embittered the party struggle; and it was certainly waged on both sides with fury, and with little regard either for the amenities of life or for fair play.

His work on the commission gave Brown a strong interest in prison reform. While the work of the commission was fresh in his mind he delivered an address in the Toronto Mechanics' Institute, in which he sketched the history of prison reform in England and the United States, and pointed out how backward Canada was in this phase of civilization. He pleaded for a more charitable treatment of those on whom the prison doors had closed. There were inmates of prisons who would stand guiltless in the presence of Him who searches the heart. There were guilty ones outside. We cannot, he said, expect human justice to be infallible; but we must not draw a hard and fast line between the world inside the prison and the world outside, as if the courts of justice had the divine power of judging between good and evil. In Canada, he said, we have no system of reforming the prisoner; even the chaplain or the teacher never enters the prison walls. "Children of eight and ten years of age are placed in our gaols, surrounded by hundreds of the worst criminals in the province." He went on to describe some of the evils of herding together hardened criminals, children, and persons charged with trifling offences. He advocated government inspection of prisons, a uniform system of discipline, strict classification and separation, secular and religious instruction, and the teaching of trades. The prisoner should be punished, but not made to feel that he was being degraded by society for the sake of revenge. Hope should be held out to those who showed repentance. The use of the lash for trifling offences against discipline was condemned. On the whole, his views were such as are now generally accepted, and he may be regarded as one of the pioneers of prison reform in Canada.

The habit of personal attack was further illustrated in the charge, frequently made by Mr. Brown's enemies, that he had been a defaulter in Scotland. The North American had printed this accusation during its fierce altercation with the Globe, but the editor, Mr. Macdougall, had afterwards apologized, and explained that it had crept into the paper during his absence and without his knowledge. In the session of 1858, a Mr. Powell, member for Carleton, renewed the attack in the House, and Mr. Brown made a reply of such compelling human interest that not a word can be added or taken away. He said: "This is not the first time that the insinuation has been made that I was a defaulter in my native city. It has been echoed before now from the organs of the ministry, and at many an election contest have I been compelled to sit patiently and hear the tale recounted in the ears of assembled hundreds. For fifteen years I have been compelled to bear in silence these imputations. I would that I could yet refrain from the painful theme, but the pointed and public manner in which the charge has now been made, and the fear that the public cause with which I am identified might suffer by my silence, alike tell me that the moment has come when I ought to explain the transaction, as I have always been able to explain it, and to cast back the vile charge of dishonesty on those who dared to make it. That my father was a merchant in the city of Edinburgh, and that he engaged in disastrous business speculations commencing in the inflated times of 1825 and 1826, terminating ten years afterwards in his failure, is undoubtedly true. And it is, unhappily, also true, that he did hold a public office, and that funds connected with that office were, at the moment of his sequestration, mixed up with his private funds, to the extent, I believe, of two thousand eight hundred pounds. For this sum four relatives and friends were sureties, and they paid the money. Part of that money has been repaid; every sixpence of it will be paid, and paid shortly. Property has been long set aside for the payment of that debt to its utmost farthing. My father felt that while that money remained unpaid there was a brand on himself and his family, and he has wrought, wrought as few men have wrought, to pay off, not only that, but other obligations of a sacred character. Many a bill of exchange, the proceeds of his labour, has he sent to old creditors who were in need of what he owed. For myself, sir, I have felt equally bound with my father; as his eldest son I felt that the fruits of my industry should stand pledged until every penny of those debts was paid and the honour of my family vindicated. An honourable member opposite, whom I regret to hear cheering on the person who made the attack, might have known that, under the legal advice of his relative, I long ago secured that in the event of my death before the accomplishment of our long-cherished purpose, after the payment of my own obligations, the full discharge of those sacred debts of my father should stand as a first charge on my ample estate. Debts, sir, which I was no more bound in law to pay than any gentleman who hears me. For the painful transaction to which I have been forced to allude, I am no more responsible than any gentleman in this assembly. It happened in 1836; I was at that time but seventeen years of age, I was totally unconnected with it, but, young as I was, I felt then, as I feel now, the obligation it laid upon me, and I vowed that I should never rest until every penny had been paid. There are those present who have known my every action since I set foot in this country; they know I have not eaten the bread of idleness, but they did not know the great object of my labour. The one end of my desire for wealth was that I might discharge those debts and redeem my father's honour. Thank God, sir, my exertions have not been in vain. Thank God, sir, I have long possessed property far more than sufficient for all my desires. But, as those gentlemen know, it is one thing in this country to have property, and another to be able to withdraw a large sum of money from a business in active operation; and many a night have I laid my head on my pillow after a day of toil, estimating and calculating if the time had yet arrived, when, with justice to those to whom I stood indebted, and without fear of embarrassment resulting, I might venture to carry out the purpose of my life. I have been accused of being ambitious; I have been charged with aspiring to the office of prime minister of this great country and of lending all my energies to the attainment of that end; but I only wish I could make my opponents understand how infinitely surpassing all this, how utterly petty and contemptible in my thoughts have been all such considerations, in comparison with the one longing desire to discharge those debts of honour and vindicate those Scottish principles that have been instilled into me since my youth. The honourable member for Cornwall [John Sandfield Macdonald] is well aware that every word I have spoken to-night has been long ago told him in private confidence, and he knows, too, that last summer I was rejoicing in the thought that I was at last in a position to visit my native land with the large sum necessary for all the objects I contemplated, and that I was only prevented from doing so by the financial storm which swept over the continent. Such, sir, are the circumstances upon which this attack is founded. Such the facts on which I have been denounced as a public defaulter and refugee from my native land. But why, asked the person who made the charge, has he sat silent under it? Why if the thing is false has he endured it so many years? What, sir, free myself from blame by inculpating one so dear! Say 'It was not I who was in fault, it was my father'? Rather would I have lost my right arm than utter such a word! No, sir, I waited the time when the charge could be met as it only might be fittingly met; and my only regret even now is that I have been compelled to speak before those debts have been entirely liquidated. But it is due, sir, to my aged father that I explain that it has not been with his will that these imputations have been so long pointed at me, and that it has only been by earnest remonstrance that I have prevented his vindicating me in public long ere now. No man in Toronto, perhaps, is more generally known in the community, and I think I could appeal even to his political opponents to say if there is a citizen of Toronto at this day more thoroughly respected and esteemed. With a full knowledge of all that has passed, and all the consequences that have flowed from a day of weakness, I will say that an honester man does not breathe the air of heaven; that no son feels prouder of his father than I do to-day; and that I would have submitted to the obloquy and reproach of his every act, not fifteen years, but fifty—ay, have gone down to the grave with the cold shade of the world upon me, rather than that one of his gray hairs should have been injured."

Public opinion was strongly influenced in Mr. Brown's favour by this incident. "The entire address," said a leading Conservative paper next day, "forms the most refreshing episode which the records of the Canadian House of Commons possess. Every true-hearted man must feel proud of one who has thus chivalrously done battle for his gray-haired sire. We speak deliberately when asserting that George Brown's position in the country is at this moment immeasurably higher than it ever previously has been. And though our political creed be diametrically antipodal to his own, we shall ever hail him as a credit to the land we love so well."

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Pope's Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald, p. 161.



CHAPTER X

THE "DOUBLE SHUFFLE"

By his advocacy of representation by population, by his opposition to separate schools, and his championship of Upper Canadian rights, Mr. Brown gained a remarkable hold upon the people. In the general elections of 1857 he was elected for the city of Toronto, in company with Mr. Robinson, a Conservative. The election of a Liberal in Toronto is a rare event, and there is no doubt that Mr. Brown's violent conflict with the Roman Catholic Church contributed to his victory, if it was not the main cause thereof. His party also made large gains through Upper Canada, and had a large majority in that part of the province, so that the majority for the Macdonald government was drawn entirely from Lower Canada. Gross election frauds occurred in Russell county, where names were copied into the poll-books from old directories of towns in the state of New York, and of Quebec city, where such names as Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Judas Iscariot and George Washington appeared on the lists. The Reformers attacked these elections in parliament without success, but in 1859 the sitting member for Russell and several others were tried for conspiracy, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. That the government felt itself to be much weakened throughout the country is evident from Mr. John A. Macdonald's unsuccessful effort to add another to his list of political combinations by detaching Mr. John Sandfield Macdonald from the Reform party, offering seats in the cabinet to him and another Reformer. The personal attack on Mr. Brown in the session of 1858 has already been mentioned. The chief political event of the session was the "Double Shuffle."

On July 28th, 1858, Mr. Brown succeeded in placing the ministry in a minority on the question of the seat of government. Unable to decide between the conflicting claims of Toronto, Quebec, Montreal and Kingston, the government referred the question to the queen, who decided in favour of Ottawa. Brown had opposed the reference to the queen, holding that the question should be settled in Canada. He also believed that the seat of government should not be fixed until representation by population was granted, and all matters in dispute between Upper and Lower Canada arranged. He now moved against Ottawa and carried his motion. During the same sitting the government was sustained on a motion to adjourn, which by understanding was regarded as a test of confidence. A few hours later the ministers met and decided that, although they had been sustained by a majority of the House, "it behoved them as the queen's servants to resent the slight which had been offered Her Majesty by the action of the assembly in calling in question Her Majesty's choice of the capital." The governor-general, Sir Edmund Bond Head, sent for Mr. Brown as the leader of the Opposition to form a government. It was contended by Liberals that he ought not to have taken this step unless he intended to give Mr. Brown and his colleagues his full confidence and support. If he believed that the defeat of the government was a mere accident, and that on general grounds it commanded a working majority in the legislature, he ought not to have accepted the resignation, unless he intended to sanction a fresh appeal to the country.

The invitation to form an administration was received by Mr. Brown on Thursday, July 28th. He at once waited on the governor-general and obtained permission to consult his friends. He called a meeting of the Upper Canadian members of his party in both Houses, and obtained from them promises of cordial support. With Dorion he had an important interview. Dorion agreed that the principle of representation by population was sound, but said that the French-Canadian people feared the consequences of Upper Canadian preponderance, feared that the peculiar institutions of French Canada would be swept away. To assure them, representation by population must be accompanied by constitutional checks and safeguards. Brown and Dorion parted in the belief that this could be arranged. They believed also that they could agree upon an educational policy in which religious instruction could be given without the evils of separation.

Though Mr. Brown's power did not lie in the manipulation of combinations of men, he succeeded on this occasion in enlisting the services of colleagues of high character and capacity, including besides Dorion, Oliver Mowat, John Sandfield Macdonald, Luther Holton and L. T. Drummond. On Saturday morning Mr. Brown waited upon the governor-general, and informed him that having consulted his friends and obtained the aid of Mr. Dorion, he was prepared to undertake the task of forming an administration. During the day the formation of the ministry was completed. "At nine o'clock on Sunday night," to give the story in Mr. Brown's words, "learning that Mr. Dorion was ill, I went to see him at his apartments at the Rossin House, and while with him the governor-general's secretary entered and handed me a despatch. No sooner did I see the outside of the document than I understood it all. I felt at once that the whole corruptionist camp had been in commotion at the prospect of the whole of the public departments being subjected to the investigations of a second public accounts' committee, and comprehended at once that the transmission of such a despatch could have but the one intention of raising an obstacle in the way of the new cabinet taking office, and I was not mistaken."[11]

The despatch declared that the governor-general gave no pledge, express or implied, with reference to dissolution. When advice was tendered on the subject he would act as he deemed best. It then laid down, with much detail, the terms on which he would consent to prorogation. Bills for the registration of voters and for the prohibition of fraudulent assignments and gifts by leaders should be enacted, and certain supplies obtained.

Mr. Brown criticized both these declarations. It was not necessary for the governor-general to say that he gave no pledge in regard to dissolution. To demand such a pledge would have been utterly unconstitutional. The governor was quite right in saying that he would deal with the proposal when it was made by his advisers. But while he needlessly and gratuitously declared that he would not pledge himself beforehand as to dissolution, he took exactly the opposite course as to prorogation, specifying almost minutely the terms on which he would consent to that step. Brown contended that the governor had no right to lay down conditions, or to settle beforehand the measures that must be enacted during the session. This was an attempt to dictate, not only to the ministry, but to the legislature. Mr. Brown and his colleagues believed that the governor was acting in collusion with the ministers who had resigned, that the intriguers were taken by surprise when Brown showed himself able to form a ministry, and that the Sunday communication was a second thought, a hurriedly devised plan to bar the way of the new ministers to office.

On Monday morning before conferring with his colleagues, Brown wrote to the governor-general, stating that his ministry had been formed, and submitting that "until they have assumed the functions of constitutional advisers of the Crown, he and his proposed colleagues will not be in a position to discuss the important measures and questions of public policy referred to in his memorandum." Brown then met his colleagues, who unanimously approved of his answer to the governor's memorandum, and agreed also that it was intended as a bar to their acceptance of office. They decided not to ask for a pledge as to dissolution, nor to make or accept conditions of any kind. "We were willing to risk our being turned out of office within twenty-four hours, but we were not willing to place ourselves constitutionally in a false position. We distinctly contemplated all that Sir Edmund Head could do and that he has done, and we concluded that it was our duty to accept office, and throw on the governor-general the responsibility of denying us the support we were entitled to, and which he had extended so abundantly to our predecessor."

When parliament assembled on Monday, a vote of want of confidence was carried against the new government in both Houses. The newly appointed ministers had, of course, resigned their seats in parliament in order that they might offer themselves for re-election. It is true the majority was too great to be accounted for by the absence of the ministers. But the result was affected by the lack, not only of the votes of the ministers, but of their voices. In the absence of ministerial explanation, confusion and misunderstanding prevailed. The fact that Brown had been able to find common ground with Catholic and French-Canadian members had occasioned surprise and anxiety. On the one side it was feared that Brown had surrendered to the French-Canadians, and on the other that the French-Canadians had surrendered to Brown.

The conference between Brown and Dorion shows that the government was formed for the same purpose as the Brown-Macdonald coalition of 1864—the settlement of difficulties that prevented the right working of the union. The official declaration of its policy contains these words: "His Excellency's present advisers have entered the government with the fixed determination to propose constitutional measures for the establishment of that harmony between Upper and Lower Canada which is essential to the prosperity of the province."

Dissolution was asked on the ground that the new government intended to propose important constitutional changes, and that the parliament did not represent the country, many of its members owing their seals to gross fraud and corruption. Thirty-two seats were claimed from sitting members on these grounds. The cases of the Quebec and Russell election have already been mentioned. The member elected for Lotbiniere was expelled for violent interference with the freedom of election. Brown and his colleagues contended that these practices had prevailed to such an extent that the legislature could not be said to represent the country. Head's reply was that the frauds were likely to be repeated if a new election were held; that they really afforded a reason for postponing the election, at least until more stringent laws were enacted. The dissolution was refused; the Brown-Dorion government resigned, and the old ministers were restored to office.

On the resignation of the Brown-Dorion ministry the governor called upon A. T. Galt, who had given an independent support to the Macdonald-Cartier government. During the session of 1858 he had placed before the House resolutions favouring the federal union of Canada, the Maritime Provinces and the North-West Territory, and it is possible that his advocacy of this policy had something to do with the offer of the premiership. As yet, however, he was not prominent enough, nor could he command a support large enough, to warrant his acceptance of the office, and he declined. Then followed the "Double Shuffle."

The Macdonald-Cartier government resumed office under the name of the Cartier-Macdonald government, with Galt taking the place of Cayley, and some minor changes. Constitutional usage required that all the ministers should have returned to their constituents for re-election. A means of evading this requirement was found. The statute governing the case provided that when any minister should resign his office and within one month afterwards accept another office in the ministry, he should not thereby vacate his seat. With the object of obviating the necessity for a new election, Cartier, Macdonald, and their colleagues, in order to bring themselves within the letter of the law, although not within its spirit, exchanged offices, each taking a different one from that which he had resigned eight days before. Shortly before midnight of the sixth of August, they solemnly swore to discharge the duties of offices which several of them had no intention of holding; and a few minutes afterwards the second shuffle took place, and Cartier and Macdonald having been inspector-general and postmaster-general for this brief space, became again attorney-general east and attorney-general west.

The belief of the Reformers that the governor-general was guilty of partiality and of intrigue with the Conservative ministers is set forth as part of the history of the time. There is evidence of partiality, but no evidence of intrigue. The biographer of Sir John Macdonald denies the charge of intrigue, but says that Macdonald and the governor were intimate personal friends.[12] Dent, who also scouts the charge of intrigue, says that the governor was prejudiced against Brown, regarding him as a mere obstructionist.[13] The governor-general seems to have been influenced by these personal feelings, making everything as difficult as possible for Brown, and as easy as possible for Macdonald, even to the point of acquiescing in the evasion of the law known as the "Double Shuffle."

In the debate on confederation. Senator Ferrier said that a political warfare had been waged in Canada for many years, of a nature calculated to destroy all moral and political principles, both in the legislature and out of it. The "Double Shuffle" is so typical of this dreary and ignoble warfare and it played so large a part in the political history of the time, that it has been necessary to describe it at some length. But for these considerations, the episode would have deserved scant notice. The headship of one of the ephemeral ministries that preceded confederation could add little to the reputation of Mr. Brown. His powers were not shown at their best in office, and the surroundings of office were not congenial to him. His strength lay in addressing the people directly, through his paper or on the platform, and in the hour of defeat or disappointment he turned to the people for consolation. "During these contests," he said some years afterwards, "it was this which sustained the gallant band of Reformers who so long struggled for popular rights: that, abused as we might be, we had this consolation, that we could not go anywhere among our fellow-countrymen from one end of the country to the other—in Tory constituencies as well as in Reform constituencies—without the certainty of receiving from the honest, intelligent yeomanry of the country—from the true, right-hearted, right-thinking people of Upper Canada, who came out to meet us—the hearty grasp of the hand and the hearty greeting that amply rewarded the labour we had expended in their behalf. That is the highest reward I have hoped for in public life, and I am sure that no man who earns that reward will ever in Upper Canada have better occasion to speak of the gratitude of the people."

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Speech to Toronto electors, August, 1858.

[12] Pope's Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald, Vol. I., pp. 133, 134.

[13] Dent's Last Forty Years, Vol. II., pp. 379, 380.



CHAPTER XI

AGAINST AMERICAN SLAVERY

In his home in Scotland Brown had been imbued with a hatred of slavery. He spent several years of his early manhood in New York, and felt in all its force the domination of the slave-holding element. Thence he moved to Canada, for many years the refuge of the hunted slave. It is estimated that even before the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, there were twenty thousand coloured refugees in Canada. It was customary for these poor creatures to hide by day and to travel by night. When all other signs failed they kept their eyes fixed on the North Star, whose light "seemed the enduring witness of the divine interest in their deliverance." By the system known as the "underground railway," the fugitive was passed from one friendly house to another. A code of signals was used by those engaged in the work of mercy—pass words, peculiar knocks and raps, a call like that of the owl. Negroes in transit were described as "fleeces of wool," and "volumes of the irrepressible conflict bound in black."

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law deprived the negro of his security in the free states, and dragged back into slavery men and women who had for years been living in freedom, and had found means to earn their bread and to build up little homes. Hence an impetus was given to the movement towards Canada, which the slave-holders tried to check by talking freely of the rigours of the Canadian climate. Lewis Clark, the original of George Harris in Uncle Tom's Cabin was told that if he went to Canada the British would put his eyes out, and keep him in a mine for life. Another was told that the Detroit River was three thousand miles wide.

But the exodus to Canada went on, and the hearts of the people were moved to compassion by the arrival of ragged and foot-sore wanderers. They found a warm friend in Brown, who paid the hotel bill of one for a week, gave fifty dollars to maintain a negro family, and besides numerous acts of personal kindness, filled the columns of the Globe with appeals on behalf of the fugitives. Early in 1851 the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada was organized. The president was the Rev. Dr. Willis, afterwards principal of Knox Presbyterian College, and the names of Peter Brown, George Brown, and Oliver Mowat are found on the committee. The object of the society was "the extinction of slavery all over the world by means exclusively lawful and peaceable, moral and religious, such as the diffusion of useful information and argument by tracts, newspapers, lectures, and correspondence, and by manifesting sympathy with the houseless and homeless victims of slavery flying to our soil." Concerts were given, and the proceeds applied in aid of the refugees.

Brown was also strongly interested in the settlements of refugees established throughout Western Canada. Under an act of the Canadian parliament "for the settlement and moral improvement of the coloured population of Canada," large tracts of land were acquired, divided into fifty acre lots, and sold to refugees at low prices, payable in instalments. Sunday schools and day schools were established. The moving spirit in one of these settlements was the Rev. William King, a Presbyterian, formerly of Louisiana, who had freed his own slaves and brought them to Canada. Traces of these settlements still exist. Either in this way or otherwise, there were large numbers of coloured people living in the valley of the Thames (from Chatham to London), in St. Catharines, Hamilton, and Toronto.

At the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, Mr. Brown moved a resolution expressing gratitude to those American clergymen who had exposed the atrocities of the Fugitive Slave Law. He showed how, before its enactment, slaves were continually escaping to the Northern States, where they were virtually out of reach of their masters. There was a law enabling the latter to recover their property, but its edge was dulled by public opinion in the North, which was rapidly growing antagonistic to allowing the free states to become a hunting-ground for slave-catchers. The South took alarm at the growth of this feeling, and procured the passage of a more stringent law. This law enabled the slave-holder to seize the slave wherever he found him, without warrant, and it forbade the freeman to shelter the refugee under penalty of six months' imprisonment, a fine of one thousand dollars, and liability to a civil suit for damages to the same amount. The enforcement of the law was given to federal instead of to State officials. After giving several illustrations of the working of the law, Mr. Brown proceeded to discuss the duty of Canada in regard to slavery. It was a question of humanity, of Christianity, and of liberty, in which all men were interested. Canada could not escape the contamination of a system existing so near her borders. "We, too, are Americans; on us, as well as on them, lies the duty of preserving the honour of the continent. On us, as on them, rests the noble trust of shielding free institutions."

Having long borne the blame of permitting slavery, the people of the North naturally expected that when the great struggle came they would receive the moral support of the civilized world in its effort to check and finally to crush out the evil. They were shocked and disappointed when this support was not freely and generously given, and when sympathy with the South showed itself strongly in Great Britain. Brown dealt with this question in a speech delivered in Toronto shortly after Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation. He had just returned from Great Britain, and he said that in his six months' journey through England and Scotland, he had conversed with persons in all conditions of life, and he was sorry to say that general sympathy was with the South. This did not proceed from any change in the feeling towards slavery. Hatred of slavery was as strong as ever, but it was not believed that African slavery was the real cause of the war, or that Mr. Lincoln sincerely desired to bring the traffic to an end. This misunderstanding he attributed to persistent misrepresentation. There were men who rightly understood the merits of the contest, and among these he placed the members of the British ministry. The course of the ministry he described as one of scrupulous neutrality, and firm resistance to the invitations of other powers to interfere in the contest.

Brown himself never for a moment failed to understand the nature of the struggle, and he showed an insight, remarkable at that time, into the policy of Lincoln. The anti-slavery men of Canada, he said, had an important duty to discharge. "We, who have stood here on the borders of the republic for a quarter of a century, protesting against slavery as the sum of all human villainies—we, who have closely watched every turn of the question—we, who have for years acted and sympathized with the good men of the republic in their efforts for the freedom of their country—we, who have a practical knowledge of the atrocities of the 'peculiar institution,' learned from the lips of the panting refugee upon our shores—we, who have in our ranks men all known on the other side of the Atlantic as life-long abolitionists—we, I say, are in a position to speak with confidence to the anti-slavery men of Great Britain—to tell them that they have not rightly understood this matter—to tell them that slavery is the one great cause of the American rebellion, and that the success of the North is the death-knell of slavery. Strange, after all that has passed, that a doubt of this should remain."

It was true, he said, that Lincoln was not elected as an abolitionist. Lincoln declared, and the Republican party declared, that they stood by the constitution; that they would, so far as the constitution allowed, restrict slavery and prevent its extension to new territory. Yet they knew that the constitution gave them all they desired. "Well did they know, and well did the Southerners know, that any anti-slavery president and congress, by their direct power of legislation, by their control of the public patronage, and by the application of the public moneys, could not only restrict slavery within its present boundaries, but could secure its ultimate abolition. The South perfectly comprehended that Mr. Lincoln, if elected, might keep within the letter of the constitution and yet sap the foundation of the whole slave system, and they acted accordingly."

In answering the question, "Why did not the North let the slave states go in peace?" Brown freely admitted the right of revolution. "The world no longer believes in the divine right of either kings or presidents to govern wrong; but those who seek to change an established government by force of arms assume a fearful responsibility—a responsibility which nothing but the clearest and most intolerable injustice will acquit them for assuming." Here was a rebellion, not to resist injustice but to perpetuate injustice; not to deliver the oppressed from bondage, but to fasten more hopelessly than ever the chains of slavery on four millions of human beings. Why not let the slave states go? Because it would have been wrong, because it would have built up a great slave power that no moral influence could reach, a power that would have overawed the free Northern States, added to its territory, and re-established the slave trade. Had Lincoln permitted the slave states to go, and to form such a power, he would have brought enduring contempt upon his name, and the people of England would have been the first to reproach him.

Brown argued, as he had done in 1852, that Canada could not be indifferent to the question, whether the dominant power of the North American continent should be slave or free. Holding that liberty had better securities under the British than under the American system, he yet believed that the failure of the American experiment would be a calamity and a blow to free institutions all over the world. For years the United States had been the refuge of the oppressed in every land; millions had fled from poverty in Europe to find happiness and prosperity there. From these had been wafted back to Europe new ideas of the rights of the people. With the fall of the United States this impetus to freedom, world-wide in its influence, would cease. Demands for popular rights and free constitutions would be met by the despotic rulers of Europe with the taunt that in the United States free constitutions and popular rights had ended in disruption and anarchy. "Let us not forget that there have been, and still are, very different monarchies in the world from that of our own beloved queen; and assuredly there are not so many free governments on earth that we should hesitate to devise earnestly the success of that one nearest to our own, modelled from our own, and founded by men of our own race. I do most heartily rejoice, for the cause of liberty, that Mr. Lincoln did not patiently acquiesce in the dismemberment of the republic."

The Civil War in the United States raised the most important question of foreign policy with which the public men of Canada were called upon to deal in Brown's career. The dismemberment of the British empire would hardly have exercised a more profound influence on the human race and on world-wide aspirations for freedom, than the dismemberment of the United States and the establishment on this continent of a mighty slave empire. Canada could not be indifferent to the issue. How long would the slave-holding power, which coerced the North into consenting to the Fugitive Slave Law, have tolerated the existence of a free refuge for slaves across the lakes? Either Canada would have been forced to submit to the humiliation of joining in the hunt for men, or the British empire would have been obliged to fight the battle that the North fought under the leadership of Lincoln. In the face of this danger confronting Canada and the empire and freedom, it was a time to forget smaller international animosities. Brown was one of the few Canadian statesmen who saw the situation clearly and rose to the occasion. For twenty years by his public speeches, and still more through the generous devotion of the Globe to the cause, he aided the cause of freedom and of the union of the lovers of freedom.



CHAPTER XII

BROWN AND THE ROMAN CATHOLICS

That the Globe and Mr. Brown, as related in a previous chapter, became associated with Lord John Russell's bill and the "no popery" agitation in England, may be regarded as a mere accident. The excitement would have died out here as it died out in England, if there had not been in Canada such a mass of inflammable material—so many questions in which the relations of Church and State were involved. One of these was State endowment of denominational schools. During Brown's early years in Canada the school system was being placed on a broad and popular basis. Salaries of teachers were wretchedly low. Fees were charged to children, and remitted only as an act of charity. Mr. Brown advocated a free and unsectarian system. Claims for denominational schools were put forward not only by the Roman Catholics but by the Anglicans. He argued that if this were allowed the public school system would be destroyed by division. The country could barely afford to maintain one good school system. To maintain a system for each denomination would require an immense addition to the number of school-houses and teachers, and would absorb the whole revenue of the province. At the same time, the educational forces would be weakened by the division and thousands of children would grow up without education. "Under the non-sectarian system," said Brown, "the day is at hand when we may hope to abolish the school-tax and offer free education to every child in the province."

Eventually it was found possible to carry out Mr. Brown's idea of free education for every child in the province, and yet to allow Roman Catholic separate schools to be maintained. To this compromise Mr. Brown became reconciled, because it did not involve, as he had feared, the destruction of the free school system by division. The Roman Catholics of Upper Canada were allowed to maintain separate denominational schools, to have them supported by the taxes of Roman Catholic ratepayers and by provincial grants. So far as the education of Protestant children was concerned Mr. Brown's advocacy was successful. He opposed denominational schools because he feared they would weaken or destroy the general system of free education for all. Under the agreement which was finally arrived at, this fear was not realized. In his speech on confederation he admitted that the sectarian system, carried to a limited extent and confined chiefly to cities and towns, had not been a very great practical injury. The real cause of alarm was that the admission of the sectarian principle was there, and that at any moment it might be extended to such a degree as to split up our school system altogether: "that the separate system might gradually extend itself until the whole country was studded with nurseries of sectarianism, most hurtful to the best interests of the province and entailing an enormous expense to sustain the hosts of teachers that so prodigal a system of public instruction must inevitably entail."

This, however, was not the only question at issue between Mr. Brown and the Roman Catholic Church. It happened, as has been said above, that on his first entry into parliament, the place of meeting was the city of Quebec. The Edinburgh-bred man found himself in a Roman Catholic city, surrounded by every evidence of the power of the Church. As he looked up from the floor of the House to the galleries he saw a Catholic audience, its character emphasized by the appearance of priests clad in the distinctive garments of their orders. It was his duty to oppose a great mass of legislation intended to strengthen that Church and to add to its privileges. His spirit rose and he grew more dour and resolute as he realized the strength of the forces opposed to him.

It would be doing an injustice to the memory of Mr. Brown to gloss over or minimize a most important feature of his career, or to offer apologies which he himself would have despised. The battle was not fought with swords of lath, and whoever wants to read of an old-fashioned "no popery" fight, carried on with abounding fire and vigour, will find plenty of matter in the files of the Globe of the fifties. His success in the election of 1857, so far as Upper Canada was concerned, and especially his accomplishment of the rare feat of carrying a Toronto seat for the Reform party, was largely due to an agitation that aroused all the forces and many of the prejudices of Protestantism. Yet Brown kept and won many warm friends among Roman Catholics, both in Upper and in Lower Canada. His manliness attracted them. They saw in him, not a narrow-minded and cold-hearted bigot, seeking to force his opinions on others, but a brave and generous man, fighting for principles. And in Lower Canada there were many Roman Catholic laymen whose hearts were with him, and who were themselves entering upon a momentous struggle to free the electorate from clerical control. In his fight for the separation of Church and State, he came into conflict, not with Roman Catholics alone. In his own Presbyterian Church, at the time of the disruption, he strongly upheld the side which was identified with liberty. For several years after his arrival in Canada he was fighting against the special privileges of the Anglican Church. He often said that he was actuated, not by prejudice against one Church, but by hatred of clerical privilege, and love of religious liberty and equality.

In 1871 Mr. Brown, in a letter addressed to prominent Roman Catholics, gave a straight-forward account of his relations with the Roman Catholic Church. It is repeated here in a somewhat abbreviated form, but as nearly as possible in his own words. In the early days of the political history of Upper Canada, the great mass of Catholics were staunch Reformers. They suffered from Downing Street rule, from the domination of the "family compact," from the clergy reserves and from other attempts to arm the Anglican Church with special privileges and powers; they gave an intelligent and cordial support to liberal and progressive measures. They contributed to the victory of Baldwin and Lafontaine. But when that victory was achieved, the Upper Canadian Reformers found that a cause was operating to deprive them of its fruits,—"the French-Canadian members of the cabinet and their supporters in parliament, blocked the way." They not only prevented or delayed the measures which the Reformers desired, but they forced through parliament measures which antagonized Reform sentiment. "Although much less numerous than the people of Upper Canada, and contributing to the common purse hardly a fourth of the annual revenue of the United Provinces, the Lower Canadians sent an equal number of representatives with the Upper Canadians to parliament, and, by their unity of action, obtained complete dominancy in the management of public affairs." Unjust and injurious taxation, waste and extravagance, and great increases in the public debt followed. Seeking a remedy, the Upper Canadian Reformers demanded, first, representation by population, giving Upper Canada its just influence in the legislature, and second, the entire separation of Church and State, placing all denominations on a like footing and leaving each to support its own religious establishments from the funds of its own people. They believed that these measures would remove from the public arena causes of strife and heartburning, and would bring about solid prosperity and internal peace. The battle was fought vigorously. "The most determined efforts were put forth for the final but just settlement of all those vexed questions by which religious sects were arrayed against each other. Clergymen were dragged as combatants into the political arena, religion was brought into contempt, and opportunity presented to our French-Canadian friends to rule us through our own dissensions." Clergy reserves, sectarian schools, the use of the public funds for sectarian purposes, were assailed. "On these and many similar questions, we were met by the French-Canadian phalanx in hostile array; our whole policy was denounced in language of the strongest character, and the men who upheld it were assailed as the basest of mankind. We, on our part, were not slow in returning blow for blow, and feelings were excited among the Catholics from Upper Canada that estranged the great bulk of them from our ranks." The agitation was carried on, however, until the grievances of which the Reformers complained were removed by the Act of Confederation. Under that Act the people of Ontario enjoy representation according to population; they have entire control over their own local affairs; and the last remnant of the sectarian warfare—the separate school question—was settled forever by a compromise that was accepted as final by all parties concerned.

In this letter Mr. Brown said that he was not seeking to cloak over past feuds or apologize for past occurrences. He gloried in the justice and soundness of the principles and measures for which he and his party had contended, and he was proud of the results of the conflict. He asked Catholics to read calmly the page of history he had unfolded. "Let them blaze away at George Brown afterwards as vigorously as they please, but let not their old feuds with him close their eyes to the interests of their country, and their own interests as a powerful section of the body politic."

The censure applied to those who wantonly draw sectarian questions into politics, and set Catholic against Protestant, is just. But it does not attach to those who attack the privileges of any Church, and who, when the Church steps into the political arena, strike at it with political weapons. This was Brown's position. He was the sworn foe of clericalism. He had no affinity with the demagogues and professional agitators who make a business of attacking the Roman Catholic Church, nor with those whose souls are filled with vague alarms of papal supremacy, and who believe stories of Catholics drilling in churches to fight their Protestant neighbours. He fought against real tyranny, for the removal of real grievances. When he believed that he had found in confederation the real remedy, he was satisfied, and he did not keep up an agitation merely for agitation's sake. It is not necessary to attempt to justify every word that may have been struck off in the heat of a great conflict. There was a battle to be fought; he fought with all the energy of his nature, and with the weapons that lay at hand. He would have shared Hotspur's contempt for the fop who vowed that "but for these vile guns he would himself have been a soldier."



CHAPTER XIII

MOVING TOWARDS CONFEDERATION

To whom is due the confederation of the British North American provinces is a long vexed question. The Hon. D'Arcy McGee, in his speech on confederation, gave credit to Mr. Uniacke, a leading politician of Nova Scotia, who in 1800 submitted a scheme of colonial union to the imperial authorities; to Chief-Justice Sewell, to Sir John Beverley Robinson, to Lord Durham, to Mr. P. S. Hamilton, a Nova Scotia writer, and to Mr. Alexander Morris, then member for South Lanark, who had advocated the project in a pamphlet entitled Nova Britannia. "But," he added, "whatever the private writer in his closet may have conceived, whatever even the individual statesman may have designed, so long as the public mind was uninterested in the adoption, even in the discussion of a change in our position so momentous as this, the union of these separate provinces, the individual laboured in vain—perhaps, not wholly in vain, for although his work may not have borne fruit then, it was kindling a fire that would ultimately light up the whole political horizon and herald the dawn of a better day for our country and our people. Events stronger than advocacy, events stronger than men, have come in at last like the fire behind the invisible writing, to bring out the truth of these writings and to impress them upon the mind of every thoughtful man who has considered the position and probable future of these scattered provinces." Following Mr. McGee's suggestion, let us try to deal with the question from the time that it ceased to be speculative and became practical, and especially to trace its development in the mind of one man.

In the later fifties Mr. Brown was pursuing a course which led almost with certainty to the goal of confederation. The people of Upper Canada were steadily coming over to his belief that they were suffering injustice under the union; that they paid more than their share of the taxes, and yet that Lower Canadian influence was dominant in legislation and in the formation of ministries. Brown's tremendous agitation convinced them that the situation was intolerable. But it was long before the true remedy was perceived. The French-Canadians would not agree to Brown's remedy of representation by population. Brown opposed as reactionary the proposal that the union should be dissolved. He desired not to go back to the day of small things—on the contrary, even at this early day, he was advocating the union of the western territories with Canada. Nor was he at first in favour of the federal principle. In 1853, in a formal statement of its programme, the Globe advocated uniform legislation for the two provinces, and a Reform convention held at Toronto in 1857 recommended the same measure, together with representation by population and the addition of the North-West Territories to Canada.

In January, 1858, Brown wrote to his friend, Luther Holton, in a manner which showed an open mind: "No honest man can desire that we should remain as we are, and what other way out of our difficulties can be suggested but a general legislative union, with representation by population, a federal union, or a dissolution of the present union. I am sure that a dissolution cry would be as ruinous to any party as (in my opinion) it would be wrong. A federal union, it appears to me, cannot be entertained for Canada alone, but when agitated must include all British America. We will be past caring for politics when that measure is finally achieved. What powers should be given to the provincial legislatures, and what to the federal? Would you abolish county councils? And yet, if you did not, what would the local parliaments have to control? Would Montreal like to be put under the generous rule of the Quebec politicians? Our friends here are prepared to consider dispassionately any scheme that may issue from your party in Lower Canada. They all feel keenly that something must be done. Their plan is representation by population, and a fair trial for the present union in its integrity; failing this, they are prepared to go for dissolution, I believe, but if you can suggest a federal or any other scheme that could be worked, it will have our most anxious examination. Can you sketch a plan of federation such as our friends below would agree to and could carry?"

Probably Dorion and other Lower Canadians had a part in converting Brown to federation. In 1856 Dorion had moved a resolution favouring the confederation of the two Canadas. In August, 1858, Brown and Dorion undertook to form a government pledged to the settlement of the question that had arisen between Upper and Lower Canada. Dorion says it was agreed by the Brown-Dorion government "that the constitutional question should be taken up and settled, either by a confederation of the two provinces, or by representation according to population, with such checks and guarantees as would secure the religious faith, the laws, the language, and the peculiar institutions of each section of the country from encroachments on the part of the other."

At the same time an effort in the same direction was made by the Conservative party. A. T. Galt, in the session of 1858, advocated the federal union of all the British North American provinces. He declared that unless a union were effected, the provinces would inevitably drift into the United States. He proposed that questions relating to education and likely to arouse religious dissension, ought to be left to the provinces. The resolutions moved by Mr. Galt in 1858 give him a high place among the promoters of confederation. Galt was asked by Sir Edmund Head to form an administration on the resignation of the Brown government. Galt refused, but when he subsequently entered the Cartier government it was on condition that the promotion of federal union should be embodied in the policy of the government. Cartier, Ross and Galt visited England in fulfilment of this promise, and described the serious difficulties that had arisen in Canada. The movement failed because the co-operation of the Maritime Provinces could not be obtained.

In the autumn of 1859 two important steps leading towards federation were taken. In October the Lower Canadian members of the Opposition met in Montreal and declared for a federal union of the Canadas. They went so far as to specify the subjects of federal and local jurisdiction, allowing to the central authority the customs tariff, the post-office, patents and copyrights, and the currency; and to the local legislatures education, the laws of property, the administration of justice, and the control of the militia. In September a meeting of the Liberal members of both Houses was held at Toronto, and a circular calling a convention of Upper Canadian Reformers was issued. It declared that "the financial and political evils of the provinces have reached such a point as to demand a thorough reconsideration of the relations between Upper and Lower Canada, and the adoption of constitutional changes framed to remedy the great abuses that have arisen under the present system"; that the nature of the changes had been discussed, but that it was felt that before coming to a conclusion "the whole Liberal party throughout Upper Canada should be consulted." The discussion would be free and unfettered. "Supporters of the Opposition advocating a written constitution or a dissolution of the union—or a federal union of all the British North American provinces—or a federal system for Canada alone—or any other plan calculated, in their opinion, to meet the existing evils—are all equally welcome to the convention. The one sole object is to discuss the whole subject with candour and without prejudice, that the best remedy may be found." Then came an account of the grievances for which a remedy was sought: "The position of Upper Canada at this moment is truly anomalous and alarming. With a population much more numerous than that of Lower Canada, and contributing to the general revenue a much larger share of taxation than the sister province, Upper Canada finds herself without power in the administration of the affairs of the union. With a constitution professedly based on the principle that the will of the majority should prevail, a minority of the people of Upper Canada, by combination with the Lower Canada majority, are enabled to rule the upper province in direct hostility to the popular will. Extravagant expenditures and hurtful legislative measures are forced on us in defiance of the protests of large majorities of the representatives of the people; the most needful reforms are denied, and offices of honour and emolument are conferred on persons destitute of popular sympathy, and without qualification beyond that of unhesitating subserviency to the men who misgovern the country."

The convention of nearly six hundred delegates gave evidence of a genuine, popular movement for constitutional changes. Though it was composed of members of only one party, its discussions were of general interest, and were upon a high level of intelligence and public spirit. The convention was divided between dissolution and federal union. Federation first got the ear of the meeting. Free access to the sea by the St. Lawrence, free trade between Upper and Lower Canada, were urged as reasons for continuing the union. Oliver Mowat made a closely reasoned speech on the same side. Representation by population alone would not be accepted by Lower Canada. Dissolution was impracticable and could not, at best, be obtained without long agitation. Federation would give all the advantages of dissolution without its difficulties.

Mowat's speech was received with much favour, and the current had set strongly for federation when George Sheppard arose as the chief advocate of dissolution. Sheppard had been an editorial writer on the Colonist, had been attracted by Brown and his policy and had joined the staff of the Globe. His main argument was that the central government under federation would be a costly and elaborate affair, and would ultimately overshadow the governments of the provinces. There would be a central parliament, a viceroy with all the expense of a court. "A federal government without federal dignity would be all moonshine." There was an inherent tendency in central bodies to acquire increased power. In the United States a federal party had advocated a strong central government, and excuses were always being sought to add to its glory and influence. On the other side was a democratic party, championing State rights. "In Canada, too, we may expect to see federation followed by the rise of two parties, one fighting for a strong central government, the other, like Mr. Brown, contending for State rights, local control, and the limited authority of the central power." One of the arguments for federation was that it provided for bringing in the North-West Territory. That implied an expensive federal government for the purpose of organizing the new territory, building its roads, etc. "Is this federation," he asked, "proposed as a step towards nationality? If so, I am with you. Federation implies nationality. For colonial purposes only it would be a needless incumbrance."

This speech, with its accurate forecast of the growth of the central power, produced such an impression that the federalists amended their resolution, and proposed, instead of a general government, "some joint authority" for federal purposes. This concession was made by William Macdougall, one of the secretaries and chief figures of the convention, who said that he had been much impressed by Sheppard's eloquence and logic. The creation of a powerful, elaborate and expensive central government such as now exists did not form part of the plans of the Liberals either in Upper or Lower Canada at that time.

Brown, who spoke towards the close of the convention, declared that he had no morbid fear of dissolution of the union, but preferred the plan of federation, as giving Upper Canada the advantage of free trade with Lower Canada and the free navigation of the St. Lawrence. One of his most forcible passages was an answer to Sheppard's question whether the federation was a step towards nationality. "I do place the question on grounds of nationality. I do hope there is not one Canadian in this assembly who does not look forward with high hope to the day when these northern countries shall stand out among the nations of the world as one great confederation. What true Canadian can witness the tide of emigration now commencing to flow into the vast territories of the North-West without longing to have a share in the first settlement of that great, fertile country? Who does not feel that to us rightfully belong the right and the duty of carrying the blessings of civilization throughout those boundless regions, and making our own country the highway of traffic to the Pacific? But is it necessary that all this should be accomplished at once? Is it not true wisdom to commence federation with our own country, and leave it open to extension hereafter if time and experience shall prove it desirable? And shall we not then have better control over the terms of federation than if all were made parties to the original compact, and how can there be the slightest question with one who longs for such a nationality between dissolution and the scheme of the day? Is it not clear that the former would be the death blow to the hope of future union, while the latter will readily furnish the machinery for a great federation?"

The resolutions adopted by the convention declared that the legislative union, because of antagonisms developed through differences of origin, local interests, and other causes, could no longer be maintained; that the plan known as the "double majority" did not afford a permanent remedy; that a federal union of all the British North American colonies was out of the range of remedies for present evils; that the principle of representation by population must be recognized in any new union, and that "the best practical remedy for the evils now encountered in the government of Canada is to be found in the formation of two or more local governments, to which shall be committed the control of all matters of a local or sectional character, and some joint authority charged with such matters as are necessarily common to both sections of the province."

The hopes that had been aroused by this convention were disappointed, or rather deferred. When Brown, in the following session of the legislature, brought forward resolutions in the sense of those adopted by the convention, he found coldness and dissension in his own party, and the resolutions were defeated by a large majority. Subsequently Mr. Brown had a long illness, retired from the leadership, and spent some time in England and Scotland. In his absence the movement for constitutional change was stayed. But "events stronger than advocacy," in Mr. McGee's words, were operating. Power oscillated between the Conservative and Reform parties, and two general elections, held within as many years, failed to solve the difficulty. When federation was next proposed, it had become a political necessity.



CHAPTER XIV

LAST YEARS OF THE UNION

In 1860, Mr. Brown contemplated retiring from the leadership of the party. In a letter to Mr. Mowat, he said that the enemies of reform were playing the game of exciting personal hostility against himself, and reviving feelings inspired by the fierce contests of the past. It might be well to appoint a leader who would arouse less personal hostility. A few months later he had a long and severe illness, which prevented him from taking his place in the legislature during the session of 1861 and from displaying his usual activity in the general election of the summer of that year. He did, however, accept the hard task of contesting East Toronto, where he was defeated by Mr. John Crawford by a majority of one hundred and ninety-one. Mr. Brown then announced that the defeat had opened up the way for his retirement without dishonour, and that he would not seek re-election. Some public advantages, he said, might flow from that decision. Those whose interest it was that misgovernment should continue, would no longer be able to make a scapegoat of George Brown. Admitting that he had used strong language in denouncing French domination, he justified his course as the only remedy for the evil. In 1852 he could hardly find a seconder for his motion in favour of representation by population; in the election just closed, he claimed fifty-three members from Upper Canada, elected to stand or fall by that measure. He had fought a ten years' battle without faltering. He advocated opposition to any ministry of either party that would refuse to settle the question.

The Conservative government was defeated, in the session following the election, on a militia bill providing for the maintenance of a force of fifty thousand men at a cost of about one million dollars. The American Civil War was in progress; the Trent affair had assumed a threatening appearance and it was deemed necessary to place the province in a state of defence. The bill was defeated by the defection of some French-Canadian supporters of the government. The event caused much disappointment in England; and from this time forth, continual pressure from that quarter in regard to defence was one of the forces tending towards confederation.

John Sandfield Macdonald, who was somewhat unexpectedly called upon to form a ministry, was an enthusiastic advocate of the "double majority," by which he believed the union could be virtually federalized without formal constitutional change. Upper Canadian ministers were to transact Upper Canadian business, and so with Lower Canada, the administration, as a whole, managing affairs of common interest. Local legislation was not to be forced on either province against the wish of the representatives. The administration for each section should possess the confidence of a majority of representatives from that section.

Brown strongly opposed the "double majority" plan, which he regarded as a mere makeshift for reform in the representation, and he was in some doubt whether he should support or oppose the Liberal ministers who offered for re-election. He finally decided, after consultation with his brother Gordon, "to permit them to go in unopposed, and hold them up to the mark under the stimulus of bit and spur."

In July 1862, Mr. Brown sailed for Great Britain, and in September he wrote Mr. Holton that he had had a most satisfactory interview with the Duke of Newcastle at the latter's request. They seem to have talked freely about Canadian politics. "His scruples about representation are entirely gone. It would have done even Sandfield [Macdonald] good to hear his ideas on the absurdity of the 'double majority.' Whatever small politicians and the London Times may say, you may depend upon this, that the government and the leaders of the Opposition perfectly understand our position, and have no thought of changing the relations between Canada and the mother country. On the contrary, the members of the government, with the exception of Gladstone, are set upon the Intercolonial Railway and a grand transit route across the continent." He remarked upon the bitterness of the British feeling against the United States, and said that he was perplexed by the course of the London Times in pandering to the passions of the people.

The most important event of his visit to Scotland was yet to come. On November 27th he married Miss Anne Nelson, daughter of the well-known publisher, Thomas Nelson—a marriage which was the beginning of a most happy domestic life of eighteen years. This lady survived him until May, 1906. On his return to Canada with his bride, Mr. Brown was met at Toronto station by several thousand friends. In reply to a complimentary address, he said, "I have come back with strength invigorated, with new, and I trust, enlarged views, and with the most earnest desire to aid in advancing the prosperity and happiness of Canada."

It has been seen that the Macdonald-Sicotte government had shelved the question of representation by population and had committed itself to the device of the "double majority." During Mr. Brown's absence another movement, which he had strongly resisted, had been gaining ground. In 1860, 1861, and 1862, Mr. R. W. Scott, of Ottawa, had introduced legislation intended to strengthen the Roman Catholic separate school system of Upper Canada. In 1863, he succeeded, by accepting certain modifications, in obtaining the support of Dr. Ryerson, superintendent of education. Another important advantage was that his bill was adopted as a government measure by the Sandfield Macdonald ministry. The bill became law in spite of the fact that it was opposed by a majority of the representatives from Upper Canada. This was in direct contravention of the "double majority" resolutions adopted by the legislature at the instance of the government. The premier had declared that there should be a truce to the agitation for representation by population or for other constitutional changes. That agitation had been based upon the complaint that legislation was being forced upon Upper Canada by Lower Canadian votes. The "double majority" resolutions had been proposed as a substitute for constitutional change. In the case of the Separate School Bill they were disregarded, and the premier was severely criticized for allowing his favourite principle to be contravened.

Mr. Brown had been absent in the sessions of 1861 and 1862, and he did not enter the House in 1863 until the Separate School Bill had passed its second reading. In the Globe, however, it was assailed vigorously, one ground being that the bill was not a finality, but that the Roman Catholic Church would continually make new demands and encroachments, until the public school system was destroyed. On this question of finality there was much controversy. Dr. Ryerson always insisted that there was an express agreement that it was to be final; on the Roman Catholic side this is denied. At confederation Brown accepted the Act of 1863 as a final settlement. He said that if he had been present in 1863, he would have voted against the bill, because it extended the facility for establishing separate schools. "It had, however, this good feature, that it was accepted by the Roman Catholic authorities, and carried through parliament as a final compromise of the question in Upper Canada." He added: "I have not the slightest hesitation in accepting it as a necessary condition of the union." With confederation, therefore, we may regard Brown's opposition to separate schools in Upper Canada as ended. In accepting the terms of confederation, he accepted the Separate School Act of 1863, though with the condition that it should be final, a condition repudiated on the Roman Catholic side.

The Sandfield Macdonald government was weakened by this incident, and it soon afterwards fell upon a general vote of want of confidence moved by Mr. John A. Macdonald. Parliament was dissolved and an election was held in the summer of 1863. The Macdonald-Dorion government obtained a majority in Upper but not in Lower Canada, and on the whole, its tenure of power was precarious in the extreme. Finally, in March, 1864, it resigned without waiting for a vote of want of confidence. Its successor, the Tache-Macdonald government, had a life of only three months, and its death marks the birth of a new era.



CHAPTER XV

CONFEDERATION

"Events stronger than advocacy, events stronger than men," to repeat D'Arcy McGee's phrase, combined in 1864 to remove confederation from the field of speculation to the field of action. For several years the British government had been urging upon Canada the necessity for undertaking a greater share of her own defence. This view was expressed with disagreeable candour in the London Times and elsewhere on the occasion of the defeat of the Militia Bill of 1862. The American Civil War emphasized the necessity for measures of defence. At the time of the Trent seizure, Great Britain and the United States were on the verge of war, of which Canada would have been the battleground. As the war progressed, the world was astonished by the development of the military power of the republic. It seemed not improbable, at that time, that when the success of the North was assured, its great armies would be used for the subjugation of Canada. The North had come to regard Canada as a home of Southern sympathizers and a place in which conspiracies against the republic were hatched by Southerners. Though Canada was not to blame for the use that was made of its soil, yet some ill-feeling was aroused, and public men were warranted in regarding the peril as real.