Whatever the explanation, Brown’s reply was safe enough. He would be delighted, he said, to see an understanding reached at last between the two great parties of Upper Canada to achieve rep by pop. He suggested that it might be done through both Conservatives and Reformers pledging themselves not to support any government that refused to adopt this principle, and that, when a crisis followed, whichever party was called to form a government should be sustained by the other until the principle was carried.167 Here was a simple plan for achieving constitutional reform without coalition, which he would again put forward under other circumstances two years hence. But certainly, a coalition of the parties was far from his mind.
He had left the country before Shaw could carry negotiations further. When, however, the latter did so by mail, Brown had further cause to be amazed. Now the presumed emissary reported that John A. Macdonald “was animated with the most friendly desire to co-operate with you in every possible way” – that he accepted Brown’s proposal to act with him on the basis of rep by pop or any other question – and that both partners should bring their own best followers with them, “forming therefrom one strong party”.168 Was John A. Macdonald seriously prepared to combine with his most obvious foe, and to espouse the very policy he had so vigorously opposed? Brown might reflect that this was exactly what Macdonald had done in the case of Francis Hincks and the secularization of the clergy reserves eight years before. But perhaps Shaw was exaggerating, even though he said that Macdonald had “instructed” him to make the offer.169 Or, more likely, perhaps Macdonald was merely playing his old amiable game of throwing out lines to the opposition, suggesting alliances that might never come off, but that could at least bring him information on the state of the enemy.
One thing was sure: Brown’s stiff response to Shaw, making plain that he had never for a moment considered a coalition of parties – “which I regard as demoralizing and from which I am persuaded the right feeling of the country would revolt”.170 He would not work with Macdonald inside a party combination; he would not play his game at all. In fact, he went still further. “I did not contemplate renewing friendly personal intercourse with Mr. Macdonald,” he wrote bluntly. “A public man has no right to permit his personal feelings to prevent his meeting anyone on public business in a recognized public capacity. But Mr. Macdonald has made charges against me of a character that until entirely withdrawn must debar any other than parliamentary intercourse between us.”171
The old rancorous accusations were still remembered: Macdonald’s blackening charges of perjury, falsification of records, and suborning of witnesses, which he had levied in parliament in 1856 against Brown’s conduct on the Penitentiary Commission – charges he had never retracted, although the evidence taken at the subsequent committee of inquiry had shown how groundless they were. In any case, Brown’s message ended the dubious intervention of David Shaw. The returning Scot was far too much caught up in the visit to his homeland to spend time in weighing all the implications of the strange little episode.
He landed on July 23, 1862, at Liverpool, the same port from which he had sailed for America with his father in 1837.172 He had left at eighteen, impoverished, in a crowded emigrant sailing vessel. He had returned at forty-three in a first-class mail steamer, the owner of a great newspaper and a valuable estate, a dominant figure in Canadian affairs. Meanwhile, the guns were roaring in Virginia in the York Peninsula campaign. And in Britain, the press was questioning the very worth of a colony like Canada, that had refused to pass an urgently needed militia measure, to guard against the threat that war might spread.
CHAPTER THREE
The Remaking of George Brown
1
Like any proper traveller, Brown had planned a wide itinerary for the British Isles. Thus D’Arcy McGee had furnished him with a letter to an editor friend in Dublin and listed all the sights to see there – from the grave of Daniel O’Connell to the cattle in Phoenix Park.1 But as a returning native Brown meant to spend much of his time in old surroundings; in London, where he had once worked with the city agents of his father’s firm, and, of course, in Edinburgh, the scene of his boyhood. He set out for London first. And as soon as he had reached the smoke and splendour of the metropolis he went off to Westminster to hear the House of Commons debate of July 25.2
This, however, was more than a colonial politician’s exercise in filial piety. Parliament was just then discussing the highly interesting topic of Canadian defence. The House of Lords had debated the matter a few days before, and consequently Brown had missed the remarks of the Colonial Secretary himself, the Duke of Newcastle. But, watching from the gallery in the Commons chamber, he could follow some of the leading public figures of the empire as they expressed their opinions on his province: Palmerston, the aged but thoroughly agile Liberal Prime Minister, Thomas Baring, head of one of Britain’s greatest banking firms, and Benjamin Disraeli, the skilful House leader of the Conservative opposition, supported by Sir Charles Adderley, prominent Conservative critic on imperial affairs.
Half-unknown Canada was momentarily receiving a singular amount of attention in Great Britain. For when the news of the defeat of the colony’s Militia Bill had reached England, it caused a good deal of surprise and indignation, the latter most warmly voiced in the press by the mighty London Times, selfappointed to the task of prescribing policy for Britain and the world. Heedless of the widespread view in Canada that the late Militia Bill had been ineffective, extravagant, and based on a wrong principle, The Times, with much of British opinion behind it, saw only a supine and ungrateful colony that had readily accepted some 12,000 imperial troops but would do nothing to defend itself.3 And this was a judgment that played readily into the hands of the vociferous anti-imperialist or separatist faction in Britain, which regarded colonies only as unnecessary burdens to be thrown off.
Moreover, whether separatist or not, there were sizeable elements in both British parties that objected to the heavy weight of imperial expenses and looked to see them reduced. The outcry over Canada spurred them anew to demand that self-governing colonies take on greater responsibility for their own defence. Indeed, they might easily be led to doubt the whole value of supporting dependencies that would not share properly in their own protection. It was a serious problem; and so it appeared to Brown, who hoped to see Canada grow up within the British Empire, not cut off from it, and who regarded Britain’s aid and protection as vital to British North America for some indeterminate time to come. Nevertheless, convinced as he was that the likelihood of an American war was not really great, and that the causes of such a conflict would in any case arise between Britain and the United States, he still believed that the main responsibility for defence should lie with the mother country – that a smaller Militia Bill, within Canada’s means and already projected by the Sandfield Macdonald ministry, would be a fair and sufficient recognition of the colony’s obligations.4
Brown’s real concern, in fact, was whether the British government would be swept by the passing wave of resentment against Canada into an anti-imperial frame of mind. Hence he followed the debate in the British House keenly, to hear the different viewpoints presented there. Old J. A. Roebuck, the engrained radical, was the most sweeping, as he fumed: “I want the Canadians clearly to understand that England would not be sorry to see them depart from her tomorrow.”5 Adderley, the Conservative, was hardly less sweeping as he scathingly declared that Canada wanted only the cash that the British redcoats spent, that she was indefensible, and (somewhat illogically) that she should be told to defend herself or Britain would recall the troops. But the Conservative leader, Disraeli, affirmed that he would keep Canada, while complaining that self-defence should have been made a condition of her receiving responsible