Meanwhile, however, the clamour of Conservatives against their own ministerial leaders continued to rise: a most enjoyable and heartening spectacle for Brown. The Globe exploited it to the full, condemning Orangemen for their traditional rowdyism while conceding their legal position in Canada; censuring the Colonial Secretary’s high-handedness, but largely forgiving it on grounds of ignorance; and reserving the chief blame for Macdonald and Co. who, as the responsible ministers in the province, should have foreseen the inevitable situation in Upper Canada and given full and proper advice to the Crown.112
Yet even in these circumstances Brown did not change his fundamental stand on the Orange Order. He had always held it a disorderly, disruptive force that made for sectarian violence, not religious liberty, and did the cause of Protestantism far more harm than good.113 He had said so even during the height of his campaign against Roman Catholic power in the early fifties. Now, however, it was still possible to repudiate Orange excesses in the Globe as “utterly indefensible”, and yet point out why the troubles had occurred, and, above all, to inveigh against the government’s failure to prevent them – through incompetence, spinelessness, and total disregard for the interests of Upper Canada. It was an old trumpet call; but the enemy had suffered a severe blow. They were faltering badly, in fact, and Brown knew it.114
This was the auspicious moment to take to the public platform again. Before the Prince had left the province, within a few days of his Toronto visit, the Liberal leader was off to Galt to address a major Reform demonstration there. There were flags, bands, and a gala parade on that sparkling early autumn day, for this was a major party occasion.115 Brown rose to it with his best soul-stirring oratory, denouncing all the evils of misgovernment and the failings of the union, and calling once again for the Convention remedy of federation. But as he held forth, someone in the audience broke in to question his alliance with D’Arcy McGee, the Lower Canadian Roman Catholic Irish leader – a query doubtlessly inspired by the wave of Protestant anger sweeping Upper Canada at the contrast in the official treatment accorded Roman Catholic organizations in the East and the Orange Order in the West. Brown’s reply was prompt and plain. He paid warm tribute to McGee’s abilities, emphatically declaring, “I would rather a thousand times act with Mr. McGee than the dough-faced Protestants that misrepresent Upper Canada! ”116 Clearly the Orange furore was not going to lead him to any out-and-out campaign for “Protestant union”.
McGee responded gratefully when he heard of the Galt speech: “I have to thank you for the exceedingly kind mention you there made of myself. Its boldness was worthy of you, and its kindness far more than I invited.”117 For his own part, Brown told Luther Holton: “The Galt affair … has done much good already. I owe that fellow who cried ‘What about McGee?’ something handsome. It was the very chance I have been seeking for a long while. I hope I have done McGee justice – I intended to do it as handsomely as possible, for indeed he is a noble fellow and deserves a generous return.”118 He admitted that his own inclination was to “pitch right into the mêlée on the Protestant side – but some of our friends are weak brethren, and I do not wish, if it can be avoided, to weaken McGee’s position.”119 In short, for the sake of the party, he still hoped to keep ties with eastern Liberalism through his likeable Roman Catholic ally. He rather expected that the western Conservatives would themselves try to “get up a great Protestant cry”, but did not fear it; nor “the Orange game of John A.”, who was working manfully by this time to redeem himself with his outraged Orange supporters.120
Truly, the tide seemed to have swung back to Reform that autumn. Orangemen massing at St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto, early in October, proved they were not yet mollified. They flatly denounced the Liberal-Conservative government, while the Globe beamed.121 Moreover, in the elections under way that month for a portion of the Legislative Council seats, Reformers made increasing headway in Upper Canada. Malcolm Cameron, for one, gained a Council place, while the Lambton seat he thus vacated in the Assembly was taken shortly afterwards by an old Sarnia friend of Brown’s, Hope Mackenzie, Alexander’s brother. Meanwhile, the harvest was good; business looked more encouraging, and Brown went down to Both well for several busy weeks.
But now the Conservative ministers launched a counter-offensive. Led by John A. Macdonald, they opened an extensive speaking tour across the West. It was a sign of the Conservatives’ alarm that they thus took to stumping the country, a practice they had previously regarded as rather low and Liberal, if not downright radical and republican. Brown’s answer was a counter-offensive of his own. If the ministers were going to invade the West beyond Toronto, his prime domain, he would foray eastward into the more Tory half of Upper Canada. On through November the opposing stump campaigns went noisily forward: Brown in Napanee and Kingston, Macdonald in Brantford, London, and other western points. Of course, they also switched back and forth to repair damage. Brown dashed up to London, for example, and Macdonald down to Kingston in his turn.
The Liberal leader’s own best effort came in Kingston on the night of November 22, speaking deep in enemy country, and to an audience in Kingston’s massive limestone City Hall that was notably full of Orangemen. He took a lighter vein, but talked up boldly, as he compared himself to a Presbyterian minister preaching in the Vatican (“by invitation of its inmates”), and brightly observed, “In the West we look upon Kingston as the Ultima Thule of political hopelessness!”122 He did not expect them to vote out Macdonald, he said frankly: Kingstonians were only aroused now because “your own toes have been trodden on”. Yet this should simply bring home to them how much the government had ignored the basic interests and feelings of Upper Canada. And while Orangemen had not been on the side of civil and religious liberty thus far, they now might recognize how these had suffered under a Conservative ministry subservient to Lower Canadian masters for the past six years. He won a vote of approval at the end, probably given more for his manner than his message. But that in itself was satisfying.
By December, however, George Brown was running down, tired not only by the exertions of his campaign, but by the weight of business problems besides. “I have twenty times more on my hands than one man ought to have,” he told Alexander Mackenzie, “and some six or eight Tory counties have invited me to speak.”123 Again it appeared that he had not really regained all his old stamina after his period of exhaustion in 1859; and 1860 had proved trying enough itself. Still, the Conservatives had by this time closed their campaign, so that he could also call a halt. But here business affairs intervened once more, to keep him from a rest. He had to go down to New York for the Globe in the second week in December, and was detained there for the rest of the month, only arriving back in Toronto in early January of 1861.124
One unfortunate consequence was that he was too late to attend a particularly large Liberal rally in Norfolk County, graced by the chief men of the party and designed to counter whatever effect the Cartier-Macdonald ministers might have had in the West. Michael Foley, who had arranged the Norfolk gathering, sent him a tart note of complaint. Brown returned a stiff and far from apologetic reply.125 Their relations had evidently not improved much since their open clash at the last parliamentary session.
The party leader had other invitations to address public meetings throughout the opening weeks of 1861, far more than he could hope to accept.126 Reform constituencies were holding gatherings of their own across Upper Canada, trying to sustain the tide that had been running against the ministry in the months before. Yet now, it seemed, that tide was ebbing, without any significant achievement, for now the angers roused in Upper Canada during the royal visit had lost their force, and the Conservative leaders had largely managed to quiet