force in what I said – that sooner or later my views must be carried out, and (I gather from what Sandfield has let fall bit by bit) strongly advised him to throw himself into the hands of Dorion and myself.”99
Whether or not this last conjecture was correct, it was apparent that the burly, likeable Monck – so different from the prim, pedantic Head – had made a conquest. It was one of much importance, for Brown had gained a confidence in this governor’s understanding of Canada’s needs that would further affect his own course in politics. It seemed evident, too, that Monck had made a very different assessment of the potentialities of the short-lived Brown-Dorion government of 1858 than Head had done; and that was both vastly encouraging and pleasantly soothing to a still-felt wound. At any rate, from this moment on, Brown with good cause believed in Monck’s recognition of the necessity for constitutional reform.
The governor was willing; Sandfield was willing; the problem now was to reconstruct the government in order to carry out reform. A meeting was arranged between the premier and Brown, Mowat, Dorion, and Holton. The group foregathered. “I took the lead,” said Brown, “as amicus curiae.”100 At first all went well, as he asked for Dorion to have carte blanche in Lower Canada, and for a thorough change in the Upper Canadian half of the ministry – though Sandfield Macdonald here won an agreement that McDougall must be kept in, lest he “create a row and damage the administration from the start”. Various policies were rapidly settled, until at length they came to the critical question of rep by pop. Sandfield again professed his own willingness to concede it, but hit shrewdly at the crucial point: “I will do whatever Dorion and Holton say they can carry the elections with.”
“Very good.” [So Brown recorded it.] “What say you, Dorion?” “I say that it can be made an open question, but nothing more can be done without destroying us in Lower Canada.” They were at the old stumbling-block again, the old barrier to reform of the union. Brown did his best. “I put the matter in every way – urged and hotter urged, but to no avail. They would not budge.” The meeting was adjourned to give everyone time to consider, while Sandfield warned ominously that if the negotiations failed he would “make the same offer elsewhere – and it will be accepted”. Dorion equally declared that, if agreement broke down, “he and his friends would feel at liberty to form combinations with any other party in U.C.” “Certainly – we never thought otherwise,” replied George Brown.
Fair words – but he was facing a new crisis, a new threat of Reform disunity and collapse. Again he recognized reality. It was better to have rep by pop once more an open question than to leave the Grits in isolation, confronting some new party combination in power. He decided to bow to the terms set by Dorion and Holton in their own realistic appraisal of the Lower Canadian situation. “I became perfectly satisfied,” he told his brother, “that we ought to accept. We would have in the L.C. section the men most friendly to Rep by Pop. If it cannot be got from them, it can be got from none.” Besides, although the Grits might sweep Upper Canada in the coming elections, what good would it do if they had no friends in the East? “Who should we look to to help us in L.C.? Recollect that many of our best friends are frightened at (I had almost said tired of) the policy of coercion.”
Here was a remarkable admission from the once unyielding champion of Upper Canadian sectionalism, who earlier had held that it would be sufficient to unite all Upper Canada behind the demand for representation by population in order to overawe Lower Canada and force her to give way. Now he acknowledged the need for Lower Canadian help – that coercion could not be enough. Truly he had changed! Yet there was another reason, besides, for hopefully accepting half a loaf: “This is not to be forgotten, that the Governor is thoroughly with us – and this is half the battle.”101
Now arrangements for the reconstructed ministry could be speedily concluded. By May 16, the Sandfield Macdonald-Dorion cabinet had been announced. Dorion had brought in a completely new eastern section, consisting of himself and Holton, Thibaudeau, Letellier de St. Just, Huntington, and Drummond. In the West, Foley and Wilson were dropped, while Howland now became Receiver-General. He was replaced as Minister of Finance by Holton, who would now leave the Council and seek re-election to the House: a man of much stronger character and speaking power, and one whose reputation as a leading business man stood at least as high as Howland’s. The other western ministers, besides Sandfield Macdonald and McDougall, were Mowat, Fergusson Blair, and Lewis Wallbridge. It was a definite shift leftward of the moderates.
About the only serious loss in the change was D’Arcy McGee, whose strong advocacy of the Intercolonial had weakened his ties with Dorion while his renewed efforts for separate schools had loosened them with Brown. Brown, however, continued to hold his personal regard for McGee, though the latter felt bitter enough at being excluded from Dorion’s section of the cabinet. As for the real cabinet-maker, George Brown, he was thankfully back in Toronto now, entirely persuaded that “my course has been right throughout”.102 That much had not changed, at any rate.
7
At last there was a strong Liberal ministry – full of real Reformers, both East and West. Now everything depended on the elections. If they could carry them, then the problems of the union might finally be ended. Justice could be brought to Upper Canada, security to Lower. That was Brown’s great hope, as he went up to South Oxford to begin his own campaign for re-election.
His nomination speech in Ingersoll’s Town Hall on May 19 showed his wider concern for both Canadas, as he frankly told his audience of western Grits: “It was perfectly impossible to make representation by population a cabinet question and carry the elections in Lower Canada.”103 He succeeded in convincing them, too, for this time the Reformers of South Oxford supported him without division from the start.
The Conservatives put up a man against him, Dr. Cook, who had been a Hincksite member for the constituency from 1854 to 1857. Yet he was so slight a threat that Brown even took time to tour through North Oxford as well, on behalf of Hope Mackenzie, the Grit candidate there. Indeed, it was like the strenuous old days, as he campaigned on horseback into the back concessions, or talked till two in the morning at one meeting, then drove till broad daylight for the next, trying to snatch some sleep in a swaying, bouncing carriage, half frozen in the unseasonably cold night.104 But in the end victory came easily. When the polls closed on June 16, Brown had received nearly ten times his opponent’s votes.105 Hope Mackenzie swept North Oxford as well. The tide was running strongly with the Grits.
That was evident throughout Upper Canada. When all the returns were made, by July 4, it appeared that Reformers had taken some forty seats in the West, Liberal-Conservatives only twenty-two.106 All the old Grit stalwarts had been returned, and more added. Toronto, for example, had been recaptured from the Tories, and now was represented by John Macdonald and A. M. Smith, two wealthy Liberal business men. The triumph of Reform, the rout of John A. Macdonald, was above all a vote for representation by population, the great theme of the Upper Canada campaign. But it also reflected the West’s acute dissatisfaction with Macdonald Conservatism, which had had nothing more to offer but another round in the threadbare game of ins and outs. Whatever the rep-by-pop protestations of individual Conservatives, their leaders had merely proposed to put the old Coalition back in office to sustain the inequitable union of the Canadas; and that union had just given renewed proof of the inequity that enabled an over-represented Lower Canada to impose laws on Upper Canada by the passage of the Scott Act. Under these circumstances indignant Upper Canadians had pinned their hopes for relief on the Reform party, which Brown had kept united. Grit Liberalism, in consequence, had never looked more close-knit, confident, and powerful.
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