All this was true. Still, what should he do about politics – about the deep sectional discord in the Canadian union that still demanded remedy, the inept moderate Liberal government that hoped to find the solution in the futile double-majority principle; the inflated talk of an Intercolonial Railway, egged on by Grand Trunk interests, and the pressing need, instead, to acquire the North West before the Americans thrust into it? And what of the campaign for reform of the union that Brown had led in parliament for nearly a decade? Could he really withdraw now, before these issues had been settled, the answers gained? Could he work as effectively for them from the outside?
In a sense, duty and determination pushed him forward while inclination and contentment held him back. But there was more to it than this. Brown, after all, had been deeply involved in active politics for years and he had unswervingly pursued a certain set of goals: reform of the union, justice for Upper Canada, north-west expansion. He was still too involved, whatever he might think and say – still too intent on seeing these goals achieved – to leave the uncompleted work to other hands. He had a good idea of his own value, and he had his characteristic single-minded concentration on ends. He felt that he was still needed. Not even Anne and all his devotion to their marriage could overcome that innermost conviction. Hence, almost against his will, as the opening weeks of 1863 passed by, he became more and more persuaded that he should stand for re-election to parliament.
There was no real self-deception here. George Brown sincerely did not want to leave so much that he prized for so much that he detested. Yet the feeling of urgent need impelled him, especially as he saw the Macdonald-Sicotte government making ready to meet the legislature with little more to offer than a more limited Militia Bill and their hopeless double-majority notion. If there was any self-deception in his thinking, it might have been in his growing conviction that he would be indispensable to the Reform cause in parliament under such a fumbling régime. Yet was his conviction wrong?
On February 12, the day parliament opened, Brown wrote to Holton: “I confess I view the position of our party with some alarm – more alarm than I have felt in ten years. Ministers may get their supporters to vote down rep by pop, or they may treat their voting on that question with indifference – but the country will not do so.… Divisions will spring up – in every store and bar room of Upper Canada the contest will be waged … one set will be pitted against the other – and when the election comes, the result will be seen. I have no desire to enter parliament. On the contrary, nothing but the strongest sense of duty would tempt me into it at present – but sometimes when I think of the gulf before us, I am almost tempted to wish myself once more in the House.”56
Hastily he added: “A little reflection, however, soon brings me back stronger than ever for quiet and happiness.”57 But Holton, who had now returned to parliament himself, having been elected to the upper chamber, at once answered, expressing his own anxiety to see Brown in the Assembly “at the earliest possible moment”, and reported on a movement at Quebec to secure him an immediate nomination in South Oxford.58 This Liberal seat had been vacated through Skeffington Connor’s appointment to the judicial bench. Leading Reformers in the constituency had already written to urge Brown to run. He had declined, but evidently on the ground that he knew “less of South Oxford perhaps than of any county west of Belleville” – hardly an indication that he was against the very idea of running.59 “Were I desirous of going in,” he mused, “I suppose I could do so by stumping the county.… A little stumping would, I dare say, make the thing sure enough.”60 In reality he had almost decided already as he weighed the challenging situation in the riding: the fact that he knew only Ingersoll in South Oxford (which had been Francis Hincks’s old stamping-ground), although North Oxford had been familiar territory to him since his electioneering there back in 1847.61
And so Brown’s resolution to stay out of parliament finally broke down. Pushed by his own feelings, pulled by the insistence of his political associates, he accepted a requisition signed by more than a thousand Liberals of South Oxford. The Globe announced his decision on February 26. Anne wisely did not stand in the way, however much she must have regretted the move. Nevertheless, her husband took up the candidacy assuring her that this was only a temporary return, and he meant it: “I am into it for this struggle.”62 He would stay to resolve the issues to which he was committed. As ever, he was in politics for a purpose, not for a career.
In any event, his returning to political life under these conditions, and with this attitude, still further indicated that a much more detached Brown would sit in parliament. He would sit there with one eye on the clock, waiting for debates to end, writing letters to Anne at his desk in the chamber and thinking of home, repeatedly restless for the business of the session to be wound up. Moreover, he intended to remain a semi-independent back-bencher, or at least to function in the House apart from the front-bench Liberal leaders. In other words, if Brown did feel obliged to return to parliament, he had still not given up the idea he had expressed to Holton; of seeking rather to “accomplish through others what the country wants, than be a prominent participant myself”.63 If this could be done at all, assuredly the old George Brown, the urgent, authoritarian commander of other years, could not have managed it. But perhaps the new one might bring it off – and then be able to escape joyfully from public duty, back to Anne and home.
5
“My Dearest Anne: Well, I am fairly into it – and I do assure you I wish I were once more quietly home in Church Street by your side. I find a wonderful change in my feelings about all this since the olden time. I am persuaded that had I stayed out of it for a year longer I would never have returned.”64 It was a note scribbled from Ingersoll on the night of February 25, as Brown’s by-election campaign got under way. His only adversary was Warden Bodwell – a Reformer himself, for the constituency was so solidly Reform – a locally prominent politician whose main hope of winning rested on the appeal of the resident against the outsider. Of course, the moderates, some Conservatives, and the old anti-Brown friends of Hincks backed Bodwell. Their chances did not seem bright, however, when at the nomination meeting their own man endorsed Brown’s twohour speech on the state of public affairs and, somewhat overawed, chiefly pleaded that he was the local choice.65
The campaign that followed was swift, by no means bitter, and hardly in doubt for a moment. “It is very pleasant to find how kind every one is to me,” Brown remarked. “Not a harsh word except for coming to drive out Bodwell – and Bodwell himself is compelled to say all sorts of kind things.”66 He gave his best none the less: up till two in the morning and off at seven in chill but clear weather, to talk here, move on eight miles and talk there: at Norwich and Woodstock, Otterville and Tillsonburg. He thought the outcome safe enough. “Twist and turn it every way, I don’t think it possible he can beat me.”67 Still, he asked Anne to pass on word to Gordon that the Globe should talk moderately about the contest. “We will crow when victory is won.”68
The polls came on March 5 and 6, and from the start Brown commanded a sure majority.69 When the official declaration was held at Hillman’s Corners a few days later, the member-elect again struck the note of conciliation. He was specially gratified, he said, by the “kindly feeling which has been manifested throughout”.70 He thanked those Conservatives who had voted for him, moreover, proclaiming it a sign that “Upper Canadians were coming to a right sense of their position, and would not permit partisanship to prevent a settlement of the great questions now under discussion”.71 There was a victory banquet at the Royal Hotel in Ingersoll that night.72 Then he went back to Toronto, where Anne was fretting for his return.