At this point the militia commission made public its report. It called for an active force of 50,000 men, a reserve of the same number, and, moreover, accepted the principle of draft or conscription when necessary to secure the requisite contingents from country districts. Canadians generally were surprised, even startled, by the size of the scheme, and its recognition of a principle that they regarded as both alien and ineffective. Publishing the report on April 10, the Globe was still more emphatic. It could not believe that the government could contemplate a bill on this cumbersome basis, and, above all, load such heavy new expenses on debt-burdened Canada. It might do for the British exchequer, but for the empty provincial treasury it was “totally indefensible”, far beyond the country’s capabilities and duty.126 Plainly, the militia legislation would have a hard time, especially when a critical phase in Canadian-American relations had passed, and there was no longer the sense of imminent war abroad.
Nevertheless, on May 2, John A. Macdonald brought in the required Militia Bill, doubling in another post as the new Minister of Militia Affairs. He was suavely and carefully vague on details, on precise costs; but, under relentless opposition probing, the government had to admit that the first year of the scheme alone would cost close to half a million dollars.127 The country was startled anew; the bill made little progress. The Globe gleefully reported that it had “stuck in the mud”.128 Meanwhile, the by-elections for the new western ministers were held, and one of them, James Patton, was defeated. This came partly through the intervention of George Brown who, urged by his party, briefly stepped off the side-lines to speak in the campaign.129 A weak and battered ministry was in its last extremity. And, if it fell, the Militia Bill would be only the occasion, not the cause.
It did fall. On May 20, when Macdonald moved the second reading of the Militia Bill, the ministry lost the vote without debate, 61 to 54.130 Essentially it lost because a group of Bleus abandoned it to vote with the opposition, themselves convinced that the scheme was excessive, extravagant, and wrong in principle – but also probably resenting the inroads rep by pop had made in western ministerial ranks.131 Edward Watkin of the Grand Trunk was at the House the next day, when the Liberal-Conservative government resigned, and just afterwards buttonholed a furious ex-premier, George Etienne Cartier, to express his regret. Replied Cartier with eyes flashing and fists clenched: “Well, I have saved the honour of my country against those Grits and Rouges – traitres, traitres.”132 But, Watkin noted, “Mr. J. A. Macdonald, afterwards, took the matter very quietly, merely remarking that the slightest tact might have prevented the occurrence.”133 Whatever the case, both the passionate and the politic were out of office at last. It remained to be seen what new combination could be put together to run the province.
7
It might appear that the most likely way to form a new administration would be to call on the leader of the largest Liberal group in opposition, Michael Foley. But Foley, who had only been awarded the leadership after Mowat and McDougall had both refused it, had pretty conclusively proved his incapacity for command during the session, and ended in violent, open quarrels with his colleagues.134 Yet it still seemed strange when the Governor-General instead approached Sandfield Macdonald, that temperamental, stiff-necked individualist who was, as he rather prided himself, a kind of political Ishmaelite in Upper Canada Reform. Nevertheless, perhaps his very isolation would make it easier for a new combination to gather around him. In any event, he was more than willing to try.
Certainly the Lower Canada opposition would not have joined readily with any thoroughgoing Grit Liberal, and whole-hearted advocate of rep by pop. And Sandfield Macdonald, of course, was not only an Upper Canada Reformer of undoubted seniority and standing, but also a tireless champion of his own pet scheme for keeping the existing union operating – the double majority principle. There was another possible explanation for his choice, a more Machiavellian one: that Cartier and John A. Macdonald, as retiring ministers, had advised the governor to call on Sandfield partly in an attempt to head off rep by pop, and partly in the expectation that he would have to call in Conservatives to fill out the Upper Canadian half of his ministry – so that, to all intents and purposes, the old Coalition rule would return once more.
Thoughts such as these must have run through George Brown’s mind when on Wednesday, May 21, he learned by telegraph of Sandfield’s opening negotiations at Quebec with Foley, McDougall, and Louis Sicotte for Lower Canada.135 In the two days following, the Montreal Telegraph Company’s line flashed a series of important messages back and forth between Quebec and Globe headquarters in Toronto. McDougall wired his former leader and old master on the journal, asking for advice. Should he enter a cabinet formed “on opposition principles?”136 Brown, waiting for more news, which was coming through in snatches from the Globe’s Quebec reporter, J. K. Edwards, hedged carefully, not yet certain of what this new ministry might mean. He could not advise McDougall on his own decision, he wired back; yet if reliable Reformers should compose the cabinet, and “policy on the representation question is satisfactory, I will cordially support the government”.137
But then came a telegram from Edwards, giving both the settled list of ministers and a statement of the proposed government’s policy received direct from Sandfield Macdonald.138 McDougall, Foley, Howland, and Adam Wilson were all going in – and had agreed that representation by population would be dropped! Swiftly Brown cancelled his pledge of support. “Are you all mad there? ” he telegraphed incredulously.139 McDougall returned: “Not mad. If get fair play can make great reforms. Have done best possible as friends here believe you could not do more except allow corruptionists return. Do you advise this? Party after full discussion unanimously agree we ought to go in.”140
The next few days brought a clearer picture, as Brown’s Liberal associates at Quebec sent him long and rather defensive letters, all hastening to explain to the man who was still the party overlord – and controller of the potent Globe - the reasons why they had set aside their chief party principle. There had been an Upper Canada Reform caucus on May 23, which had approved the new ministry, or at least conceded it “a fair and liberal trial”.141 This, it seemed, was as far as the confused and reluctant Grits would go. It was a close vote, and far from the “unanimous” agreement that McDougall had breezily indicated. Summing up by mail, Edwards reported: “The party generally are surprised at McDougall and feel he has given them a hard dose to swallow, and their only reason for going into it is because they think anything is better than the late government.”142
That, moreover, was the line taken by Oliver Mowat in writing to the Globe owner immediately after the caucus. Brown had confidence in Mowat. Foley had always been willing to enter a “moderate” Liberal government, constitutional reform or no, while Howland and Wilson were weak enough to be swayed in that direction. As for McDougall, inherently hasty and overoptimistic, he was simply doing what he had done years before, when in 1851 he had pushed the original Clear Grits into a futile combination with moderate Hincksites in a mistaken belief that once in power they could achieve “great reforms”. Yet if the competent, substantial Mowat – rather stuffy perhaps, but wholly sound on rep by pop – could in any way accept this new and clearly retrogressive ministry, then possibly Brown might also swallow it.
Decidedly, Mowat was far from happy over the Sandfield Macdonald-Sicotte administration. “On R by P,” he noted gravely, “the new cabinet has a worse policy than the old.”143 The former at least had made it an open question, while this one would vote