In Profile: George Brown (Part II)

Brown, who opposed such interventions in the economy, also believed, rightly as it turned out, that Hincks would compromise on issues of political reform to gain Canada East’s support in the provincial legislature for government railroad subsidies.  As Hincks confirmed Brown's suspicions the Globe turned away from the government and declared an independent path for reform.  Which as Brown wrote was the “one course for the opponents of priestcraft and state churchism.”

Winning a seat in the legislature in 1851 as an independent reformer, Brown's next crusade was against the very structure of the provincial government.  When the provinces of Lower and Upper Canada had been united in 1841 they were each granted equal representation in the lower elected house of the legislature. 

In 1841, however, the population of Canada East was substantially larger than that of Canada West.  The French speaking population's lack of electoral equality was designed by the colonial office to ensure English speaking Canada West's supremacy.  By 1851 the English speaking population had grown rapidly enough to surpass in size that of the predominately French speaking Canada East.  This, ironically, gave the French speaking population the political upper hand in the legislature.  Brown, who had arrived in the province after the unification of 1841, opposed this arrangement both on the grounds of being undemocratic, and as giving too much power to the Catholic Church in Canada West's affairs.

Calling for representation by population (rep. by pop.), Brown gradually became the leader of the more radical reform factions within the Canada West legislature (While in theory Canada West and Canada East had one legislature in practice the two regions' members usually sat and voted separately).  Opposing the Hincks ministry, an opposition that became even more intense when Hincks joined forces with the corrupt Hamilton businessman and conservative politician Sir Allan Napier MacNab, Brown sought alliances with the Clear Grits, and even an understanding with the Rouges, Canada East's own, if small, reform faction. 

In 1855 the government, in the last days of the legislative session at Quebec City, introduced and passed a bill supporting separate religious schools for the province. Given the slow communication and transportation systems of the time many members from Canada West had already left for home when the bill was introduced.  Such legislative tactics enraged reformers in Canada West and calls for dissolution of the union became louder.  George Brown, the businessman as well as politician, understood the need and value of economic union, and the vital strategic need for the St. Lawrence River system to remain under the control of the same government.  It was through his editorials in the Globe that he was able to largely quiet the agitation for dissolution, and ensure support for his proposals of Rep. By Pop.

The MacNab government fell within months largely due to MacNab's own personal incompetence as well as his imminent bankruptcy.  His replacement as leader of the conservative forces of Canada West was John A. MacDonald, who held a grudge against George Brown for his work on the prison reforms committee of 1848-1849.  In his report Brown had focused a great deal of attention on Kingston Penitentiary's then warden, Henry Smith.  Smith was a long time family friend of MacDonald, and in a series of debates surrounding the formation of the new ministry he accused Brown of falsifying witness statements and tampering with evidence.  A quickly formed legislative committee cleared Brown of all charges, but the two men's mutual contempt for each other now hardened into near vendetta.

Brown's efforts at uniting the various reform factions within Canada West came to fruition in early 1857.  J.M.S. Careless describes the event:

The convention held on 8 Jan. 1857 brought together 150 Brownites, Clear Grits, and Liberals who had formerly followed Hincks. It readily adopted a platform that marked successful Reform reunion and included representation by population, annexation of the North-West, national non-sectarian education, and free trade. It was Brown’s platform; he dominated the proceedings and his friends the central party structure. He had remade the party in a Brownite image. Its opponents still might dub it “Clear Grit” – and “Grits” the Brownite Liberals would long be termed. But the old Clear Grit radicalism of American elective democracy had really been submerged within Victorian British parliamentary Liberalism.

Historians cite this convention as the birth of the modern Liberal Party at both the provincial (Ontario) and federal levels.  Keep the above paragraph in mind as you read Paul Tuns’ new book on Jean Chrétien, Legacy of Scandal. 

The elections of 1858 gave George Brown's Liberals a strong majority in Canada West, but the conservative leader in Canada East, George-Etienne Cartier had been able to defeat the Rouge reform elements and as such the MacDonald-Cartier government stood.  After a legislative defeat over making Ottawa the permanent capital of the province the MacDonald-Cartier ministry, whose overall majority had become tiny after Brown's gains at the recent poll, resigned.  The Governor-General called for George Brown to form the new government. 

Caught in a politically impossible situation Brown hesitantly agreed to the Governor-General's request.  Brown knew that he lacked an overall majority and his government would almost certainly be defeated in the legislature.  However MacDonald had mocked Brown as being incapable of ever forming a government because of his inability to secure support in French speaking Canada East (if this is beginning to sound ever so familiar to our readers in B.C. and Alberta, now you know the historical precedent.) 

Brown, and his French-Canadian ally Antoine Dorion, worked to build an able cabinet in hopes that they could soon call an election and win an overall majority.  The Governor-General, Sir Edmund Head, however refused dissolution after the ministry was defeated in the legislature.  In total Brown was in office about two days.  This would be his only experience at holding real power in government.  The "Short Ministry," as the crisis became known, evolved into a kind of joke that Brown never quite shook off.

In 1859 Brown became convinced of the inability of the Liberal Party, or indeed any reform minded party, of winning government under the current constitutional arrangement.  His solution was a federal union that he hoped would eventually embrace all of British North America with rep. by pop. for the federal legislature.  This would allow Canada West, predominately English speaking and liberal, and Canada East, predominately French speaking and conservative, to each have their own legislature.

His efforts however were limited by ill health and financial problems.  With the outbreak of the American Civil War he, because of his strong abolitionism, strongly supported the northern cause.  Closer to home Brown continued his campaign against the influence of the government backed Grand Trunk Railway, and its support for the MacDonald-Cartier ministry.

In 1862, moved by mid-life nostalgia and worsening health, George Brown returned to Scotland.  Using his reform credentials and business contacts he secured meetings with many of the leading members of the newly formed British Liberal Party, then in government under Lord Palmerston.  To his surprise he was told bluntly that with the coming of free trade Britain no longer needed much of her empire, and that many British politicians regarded their colonies as dead weights - "mill stones around the neck."  The North American colonies were seen by official circles with particular concern because of their possibility in provoking a war with the United States.
Returning to Toronto later that year the newly married Brown received a tremendous reception.  The couple was accompanied by a torch lit procession from Union Station to their home.  Upon arrival Brown spoke a few words calling for a broader Canadian union and hinted that partisan quarrels would have to be put aside to accomplish such a task.

By 1863 the political situation in the Canadas had degenerated almost completely.  No ministry, either Conservative or Liberal, could hold together, and a series of governments headed by John Sandfield MacDonald, a Liberal, and John A. MacDonald, exchanged power to little avail.  Acting as a private member Brown, newly returned to the legislature, moved for a committee to be formed to find a solution to the impasse.  Appointed the committee's head Brown ensured that its report, handed down in June of 1864, showed “a strong feeling” in favour of “a federative system.” 

The third, and final, installment of this series on George Brown will be posted tommorrow.