But they did not yield gracefully or willingly. Brown’s peremptory gesture of resignation was too much like pointing a gun that one knows to be loaded. It was still more like a pistol to the head when the reassured leader asked the caucus that the general declaration that he should not resign be put in the form of a definite vote of confidence, in order to stop all further dissension. At this, Sandfield Macdonald, Foley, and Connor hotly protested, and Foley and Connor marched angrily from the room.69 Then the motion carried unanimously, even Sandfield voting for it – though the Cornwall Freeholder, his organ, ingeniously explained later that this had been tantamount to asserting that, since George Brown had got the party into such a mess, he should have the responsibility of getting them out of it!70
Now the caucus also endorsed the Convention resolutions, although Sandfield and four others voted against them, and five would still not be committed.71 If Brown had won a victory by the end of March, it had been at grave cost. The cost was not so much in party unity, for he had confirmed his policy and his leadership, and the remaining rebels were too weak to disturb either of them in parliament. Yet this forced acknowledgement could not make the moderates warm supporters in the House; inevitably, any prospects for a strong vote on federation had been sadly damaged. Furthermore, the disagreeable Reform quarrels could not be tucked from sight. The Globe itself was forced to print a full account of the goings-on at the caucus to offset the lurid reports pieced together by the ministerial papers.72 The Upper Canada Liberals had not only lost morale in the dissensions and delay: they were left acutely embarrassed as well. And there was not much chance now that any outside support would rally to them in a vote on federation – not when they had so much difficulty in getting on with it themselves.
Brown’s health had suffered under the strain.73 Apparently he had not recovered as fully from his ills of the previous year as it had appeared, and his heavy financial commitments at the Globe and Bothwell may also have been weighing on his mind. Fortunately parliament’s Easter recess intervened in early April, so that he could hope to recuperate before bringing in the resolutions at long last. When the House reassembled on April 11, however, the senior member for Toronto did not appear.74 He did not return to parliament until the eighteenth, and then he had to request that the resolutions be postponed, as he was too unwell to speak to them.75 His own condition caused only a brief further delay; but Sandfield Macdonald, Foley, and Connor sought still more postponements – while an amused and wholly confident government side urged that the famous Convention measures be introduced. There were violent moments, too, when an exasperated Brown and a defiant Foley attacked each other heatedly in debate, while Sandfield, forever armed against the world, swung fiercely and indiscriminately at both sides of the House.76 Things could hardly have gone worse.
It was not until the night of April 30 that the ill-fated resolutions finally came before the assembly, and Brown, in introducing them, rose to make one of his giant speeches.77 He spoke from eight till well past midnight, to a full house and crowded galleries. Yet somehow it was not an outstanding effort. He spread himself, as usual, on the ills of the union, but without really catching fire; and his treatment of the remedy, federation under joint authority, was almost perfunctory – general, short, and by way of a postscript. It was almost as if he himself had lost heart in the project after all the trials, frustrations, and disappointments of the past two months. He was doing his part, but as a duty; failure was foredoomed. There would be no strong vote, he could not help but see.
Indeed, the whole debate was an anticlimax, compared with the intense discussions that had raged within Upper Canada Reform. As it transpired, federation had come in under the worst auspices of delay and discord, and the government side had scarcely to take it seriously at all. The debate on the resolutions went on sporadically over several days, with few prominent speakers from ministerial ranks and a good many extraneous comments from back-benchers. For the opposition, McGee and McDougall spoke well in behalf of federation; Dorion and Mowat endorsed it; Sandfield Macdonald used the opportunity to preach the double majority again. For the government, Benjamin of North Hastings, past Grand Master of the Orange Order, really expressed the ministerial view when he condemned joint authority as government by commission and asked why a union of twenty years’ standing should be destroyed for “a miserable, juggling expression”.78 The votes taken on May 7 settled the matter conclusively: 66 to 27 against ending the present union; 74 to 32 against federation under some joint authority.79
When Brown looked more closely at the votes, he might still extract some small comfort. He had kept an Upper Canadian majority in both cases: the western vote on the two resolutions had gone in their favour 25 to 22, and 23 to 22. Ministerial boasts that Reform would lose its ascendancy in the West had not proved true, even though the division had finally been brought on by the government at a time when several Grits – who afterwards declared that they would have supported the resolutions – had been out of the House, not expecting a decision. Actually Brown had suffered very few defections. Only three Reformers, all from eastern Upper Canada, had ultimately voted against them, while Sandfield Macdonald had been markedly absent. Surprisingly enough, Foley and Connor had swallowed their anger and pride, and their speeches, to vote in favour of the measures, and so for Brown’s policies at the end.80
Nevertheless, it was equally plain that the programme of constitutional change had attracted few votes beyond Brown’s own following, and precious few indeed from Lower Canada. Only nine from the eastern section had supported federation.81 The proposal had made no headway there – no doubt because the time that might have been spent by Upper Canada Liberals in spreading better understanding eastward had been taken up in their own internal squabbles. Yet western Reformers, in reaction, would fall back still more upon themselves.82 Why, they might argue, follow a policy that presumed on eastern support, as federation did? The West must return to its own wrongs, to its own demands, and make its own reforming forces so strong that none would dare deny them.
Obviously the federation principle had failed, even while the Globe tried to put the best face on it and announced that “the great question of constitutional change has passed its first parliamentary ordeal”.83 How far was it Brown’s fault? He had hoped too much; he had acted too precipitately at the outset, in gambling on a quick introduction of the Convention’s resolutions while the enthusiasm roused by that meeting still seemed strong. It was an ineptly calculated risk and it displayed his leadership at its faultiest. Here his chief failings as a politician were all revealed: over-confidence, impatience, and imperiousness, and then sheer inability to woo and win – to persuade and conciliate instead of ordering and insisting. Brown, the strong, far-sighted director of the Convention of 1859, and Brown, the hasty, uncompromising dictator of the caucus of 1860, were two aspects of the same man.
Yet not everything was lost. The party still held together; even the malcontents were still in association. Nor could Brown be fairly blamed for their own sizeable contribution of distrust and envy, backsliding and postponement, their placing of obstacles without offering any really positive alternatives. Furthermore, the idea of federation in Reform circles was far from dead. It had been filed away, like British North American union among Conservatives, for future reference if it ever should seem feasible. And George Brown’s main share in stamping that idea on his party at the Convention, in the Address, and during the session of 1860, would be remembered long after his failure with the resolutions in that year had been forgotten. The Globe, summing up, wrote undismayed: “The joint authority will be established, and Upper Canada will become the centre, at no distant day, of a British Confederation extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Banks of Newfoundland.”84
6
However important, the constitutional problem was not Brown’s only preoccupation in parliament that hectic spring. An old concern of his, the university question, had appeared once more. The provincial