And yet, on balance, George Brown had personally lost ground. He was quite well enough aware of it to wonder again whether this was not the time to retire from politics. Once, near the turn of the year, he sat down to draft a letter announcing his withdrawal, and addressed it to his colleague Oliver Mowat. “My dear Mowat,” he began, “I need not remind you of my determination to retire from parliamentary life at the earliest possible moment, and that for the last three years nothing has prevented my doing so except the fear that new combinations might result from my retirement highly injurious to the cause we have so much at heart. I think, however, that the moment has come when I may retire, not only without fear of that danger, but with the probability that my doing so may largely conduce to secure the great ends we have been fighting for. You must have observed that throughout their whole tour in Upper Canada the one end and aim of the members of the administration has been to excite personal hostility to myself and revive the feelings inspired by the fierce party contests of past years….”127 But he left the draft unfinished, his mind still not made up.
As an alternative, a tired, uncertain, and discouraged Brown asked Luther Holton what he would say to his own running off to Europe to be absent for the coming session – a purely temporary withdrawal. His friend quite understood: “The temptation to allow those who are ceaselessly denouncing you as the great obstacle to the success of the party to try their hands is I admit very strong, but they are a mere handful.” A leader could simply not leave his followers “like sheep without a shepherd”. Unless, said Holton more sharply, “you were to assume your definite retirement from public life, which of course you do not and must not think of”.128
And there it was. Nevertheless, as 1861 began, Brown still had the defeat of his essential policy, the Toronto Convention scheme, hanging over him, the dissensions in his party to reckon with, and the shortcomings in his own course of leadership to face. He still might experience grave financial difficulties if business did not definitely recover, since his own resources were so obviously stretched thin. Finally, his health was again unsettled; he was worn and worried. The Liberal leader was in serious trouble, and trouble could yet become disaster.
CHAPTER TWO
Captain on the Side-lines
1
“Looking southward, we see no streak of blue sky; all is gloomy, dark, threatening. A fierce civil war, unlike anything ever experienced on this continent, seems inevitable.”1 So judged the Globe in January of 1861, as with awed fascination it watched the slow, inexorable movement of the United States to apparent self-destruction. There was little else in the papers for weeks: Canadians, Brown among them, were tensely conscious of the storm so near. Abolitionist sympathies strong in Canada, close business connections, ties of family and friendship: all linked them with the mounting tragedy in the republic; and they were no less concerned about their own future in North America. As the Globe expressed it, “There is little danger that the tide of war will overflow its legitimate boundaries and deluge us. But who can tell what questions will arise, what international difficulties will spring up during a long civil war among thirty-two millions of people in our immediate vicinity?”2
Brown watched the deadly pattern unfolding month by month and week by week: in November of 1860, the election of the Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in the face of the implacable hostility of Southern slave interests; in December, the secession of slave-holding South Carolina; in January, four more states seceding; and, early in February, the creation of a southern Confederacy to which other slave states would soon adhere. At times there were lulls in the progress of what the Globe had already begun to call the “second American Revolution”.3 Then there were brief moments of hope for negotiation, for settlement or compromise, or at any rate for the peaceful parting of two American republics. But the quick-rising hopes soon faded, and seldom did Brown himself believe in them.
Secession, he saw, was a revolutionary right: it could only be maintained by arms. The North would not and could not let the Southern states withdraw from the sovereign entity of the Union; the South would have to fight to gain its independence.4 Besides, there was another reason why the Confederacy should not be permitted to go its own way: “The existence of a professedly Christian and civilized nation of men-stealers is a disgrace not only to America but to the whole world, and however strong the measures which the men of the North take for breaking it down, they will confer an inestimable benefit on the human race at large.”5
Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, however, did not bring the violent outbreak feared. Again for a moment there was relief, talk of a revival of goodwill; and then came a seeming doldrum period, the kind a later age would miscall “phoney war”. Yet, though the guns did not sound until the Confederate assault on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour on April 12, nothing for two months before made their explosion less inevitable. For Brown and the Globe, convinced since early January that war would come, this was an interlude that altered nothing. There was sure to be a long and brutal conflict when the adversaries were ready.6 Meanwhile, there was another question at home to be considered.
The decennial census of the United Province of Canada was under way. Soon there should be certain proof of Upper Canada’s claim to a far greater rate of growth than Lower Canada during the past decade. The census of 1851 had shown the western section of the union to have the larger population, and everything since then had indicated that its lead had steadily increased. That lead, of course, had been the basis of western demands for representation according to population, both as a practical necessity and a moral right. Nevertheless, it had been possible for Canada East to argue that the West’s apparent greater rate of growth was a passing phenomenon and no reason for a fundamental change in the constitution; that the next census would show a different situation; or at least that there should be no change in the equal division of parliamentary seats until the census of 1861 confirmed whether the western section really did contain a notably larger population. Now the time for the crucial count had at last arrived. It was only to be expected that as local returns started to come out in February the press of both sections would teem with estimates and predictions, counterestimates and refutations.
The Globe itself was emphatic on the outcome of the census: the West’s predominance was a foregone conclusion. Even early in January, when preparations for counting heads were just beginning, Brown’s paper had confidently declared: “It is evident that we are rapidly approaching a solution of the differences between Upper and Lower Canada. The census settles the question.”7 It would be impossible to deny the right of representation by population any longer – and this was “the keystone of the Reform arch, as well as the lever by which the structure is to be raised”.8
It seemed that Brown was bringing out and dusting off his old solution for the troubles of the Canadian union, now that the Toronto Convention plan of dual federation had failed in parliament. To a considerable extent he was. “Rep by pop” had a simplicity and a direct appeal that was lacking in the more complicated and less comprehended concept of federation. Besides, there was the census to give it new opportunity and well-nigh irresistible argument. Furthermore, it had been winning converts among Upper Canada Conservatives, as they came to share the western Reformers’ disgust with a union dominated by Lower Canadian interests – though they would not go so far as to turn towards George Brown as a result. It was evident that right-wing Tories, especially, were reverting