http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/encyclopedia/GeorgeBrownsRoleinConfederation.html
CHAPTER XVIII.
MR. BROWN'S WORK IN ACHIEVING RELIGIOUS EQUALITY AND
COLONIAL UNION.—CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. RYERSON.
Although not in office, no one rejoiced more over the accomplishment of confederation than Mr. Brown. No political objects lay nearer his heart than the union of all the British provinces and perfect religious equality. Both objects were now accomplished. No church could lay claim to any superiority in the eye of the law ; no man could say that he was not represented in parliament. Every one could feel proud of being a citizen of a new colonial nation, about to work out its destiny in co-partnership with the motherland. To use Mr. Brown's eloquent words :
“The history of old Canada, with its contracted bounds and limited divisions of Upper and Lower, East and West, has been completed, and this day a new volume has been opened ; New Brunswick and Nova Scotia uniting with Ontario and Quebec to make the history of a greater Canada, already extending from the ocean to the head waters of the great lakes, and destined ere long to embrace the larger half of the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Let us gratefully acknowledge the hand of the Almighty disposer of events in bringing about this result, pregnant with so important an influence on the conditions and destinies of the inhabitants of these provinces, and of the teeming millions who in ages to come will people the Dominion from ocean to ocean, and give it its character in the annals of time. Let us acknowledge too, the sagacity, the patriotism, the forgetfulness of selfish and partisan considerations, on the part of our statesmen, to which under Providence are due the inception of a project of a British American confederation, and the carrying of it to a successful issue. Without much patient labour, a disposition to make mutual concessions, and an earnest large minded willingness to subordinate all party interests to the attainment of what would be for the lasting welfare of the whole people of British America, the result we celebrate this day would never have been achieved. It has taken just three years to accomplish, not certainly an unreasonable period of time for a work of such magnitude.”
Mr. Brown might indeed say that, chiefly by his own labour, the work of his life had been accomplished. Deeply attached to the mother country as a matter of interest as well as sentiment, neither the blunders of British governors or colonial ministers, nor the ridiculous assumptions of leaders of the governing class at home, that colonists were unequal to the task of working responsible government, for a moment shook his ardour for the continuance of good relations with the empire, or his faith in the possibility of the permanence of a union mutually beneficial. He felt that, with a central government possessing wider powers and more extensive application, the chances of any collision were more remote ; that the desire to interfere in strictly American business, not involving the interests of the empire, would be reduced to a minimum. As an Ontario citizen he frequently referred with great satisfaction to the freedom of action obtained by the provinces. Ontario could now, unhampered by the less progressive province, take an independent course in developing the vast re-sources of the country, and adjust taxation to suit its own interests. The immediate acquisition of the North-West Territories, to attain which he had done so much, he looked forward to with great pleasure, as affording a large and almost limitless field for the enterprise of Canadians to fully develop. The removal of matters relating to education from the domain of Dominion political discussion, and the limitation of the powers of local governments to maintain the systems of education as they existed at the time of the union, so far as sectarian schools were concerned, was peculiarly welcome to Mr. Brown, who had at one time incurred some odium in one quarter for the strong ground he had always taken in favour of a non-sectarian system. This was one of the questions he was bound to deal with and settle when he formed his government in 1858. It was one of the difficult points which had to be dealt with in the confederation compact. The settlement might not be exactly all that he desired, or that his opponents on the education question demanded, but it was loyally accepted by all at the time as a fair compromise. The effects of the long and sometimes bitter controversy did not, however, at once disappear. Some disputes were afterwards brought before the Dominion parliament, and some local irritation prevailed for a time in some provinces. In Ontario the last incident in that connection occurred in a correspondence between Mr. Brown and Dr. Ryerson. The controversy respecting Lord Metcalfe's struggle for absolutism necessarily involved sharp comment from the Globe on Dr. Ryerson's course as his principal—we will not say defender, but apologist. The disputes concerning the establishment of separate schools, which continued for many years, also resulted, ultimately, in the Globe blaming Dr. Ryerson for allowing himself to be made the instrument in ministers' hands in ex-tending and perpetuating a system which he had frequently denounced as unsound ; and charging him with being substantially rewarded by the minister for yielding when principle, opinions and duty counselled him to resist. An article in the Globe of December 8th, 1858, reviewing the question and the superintendent's various opinions on it, provoked a lengthy reply from Dr. Ryerson, addressed to Mr. Brown personally. Mr. Brown, while not admitting the authorship of the article, replied in person ; both letters were published in the same number of the Globe. This reply was a severe one, but as the severity consisted chiefly in references to former expressions of opinions by Dr. Ryerson, and in references to questions of !fact which had transpired in the committees of parliament, the doctor had no special ground of complaint. This was the only occasion on which Mr. Brown was personally brought into contact with Dr. Ryerson, and that was caused by the doctor addressing him in person, and introducing matter which had no connection with the subject of separate schools, such as accusing Mr. Brown with forming a political alliance with Thomas D'Arcy McGee. The chief superintendent was bold enough, while at the head of the school system, to express himself freely on political topics and even to publish electioneering pamphlets. He was a hard hitter, but preferred to give blows rather than take them; he was never known to turn the other cheek to the smiter. Nevertheless, so impatient was he of contradiction, that he was disposed to regard those who did controvert his opinions, and did so in decided and severe terms, as personal enemies. An acknowledgment of his admitted services in the cause of education, to use the language of Mr. Brown's letter, would not alone satisfy the pugnacious superintendent. An amusing proof of this disposition was shown in the terms of a letter he wrote to Mr. Brown in 1868 ; which, however, while showing the disposition referred to, was tempered by an offer of forgiveness. The following are copies of the letter and Mr. Brown's reply, which are published to show the views held by Mr. Brown of the Globe's battles with Dr. Ryerson :
To the HON. GEORGE BROWN.
TORONTO, March 24, 1868.
DEAR SIR,—I desire on this, the 65th anniversary of my birth, to assure you of my hearty forgiveness of the personal wrongs which I think you have clone me in past years, and of my forgetfulness of them, so far at least as involves the least unkindness or unfriendliness of feeling.
To express free and independent opinions on the public acts of public men ; to animadvert severely upon them, when considered unavoidable, is both the right and duty of the press ; nor have I ever been discourteous or felt any animosity towards those who have condemned my official acts or denounced my opinions. Had I considered that you had done nothing worse in regard to myself, I should have felt and acted differently from what I have done in regard to you—the only public man in Canada with whom I have not been on speaking and personally friendly terms. But while I wish in no way to influence your judgment or proceedings in relation to myself, I beg to say that I cherish no other than those feelings of good-will towards you with which I hope to—as I soon must—stand before the Judge of all the earth, imploring as well as granting forgiveness for all the wrong deeds done in the flesh.
Yours very sincerely.
(Signed,) E. RYERSON.
The following reply was sent by Mr. Brown. The writer is not aware whether it was followed up by any further correspondence.
TORONTO, 24th March, 1868.
Sir,—I have received your letter of this day and note its contents. I am entirely unconscious of any “personal wrong” ever done you by me, and had no thought of receiving “forgiveness” at your hands. What I have said or written of your public conduct or writings has been dictated solely by a sense of public duty, and has never, I feel confident, exceeded the bounds of legitimate criticism, in view of all attendant circumstances. What has been written of you by others in the columns of the Globe has been always restrained within the limits of fair criticism towards one holding a position of public trust.
As to your personal attacks upon myself—those who pursue the fearless course of a public journalist and politician, as I have done for a quarter of a century, cannot expect to escape abuse and misrepresentation, and assuredly your assaults on me have never affected my course towards you in the slightest degree. Your series of letters printed in the Leader newspaper some years ago were not, I am told, conceived in a very Christian spirit. But I was ill at the time they were published, and have never read them. Your dragging my name into your controversy with the Messrs. Campbell, in a matter with which I had no concern whatever, was one of those devices unhappily too often resorted to in political squabbles to be capable of exciting more than momentary indignation.
I am, Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
GEORGE BROWN.
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/brownconfederation.shtml
George Brown and Confederation
by J. M. S. Careless
MHS Transactions Series 3, Number 26, 1969-70 season
I am exceedingly pleased to address the Manitoba Historical Society on the occasion of Sir John A. Macdonald's birthday, although my pleasure is mixed with some trepidation when I note that at these anniversary celebrations you have previously heard such distinguished exponents of Sir John as John Diefenbaker and Donald Creighton. I feel a little like a man with a solo banjo act following the Hallelujah Chorus. I am none the less grateful to be allowed equal time, so to speak, for George Brown, Macdonald's old foe, but vital partner in the building of Canadian Confederation. And I feel that if Sir John were present tonight (and who is to say he is not?), he would greet this exposition of George Brown's part with his customary good humour and genial urbanity. He might even ask Brown out for a drink afterward - and the latter now might take it.
Incidentally, it is only one of a number of misapprehensions about Brown that he was a teetotaller. He enjoyed good wine, especially champagne; and I have drunk from his own whisky decanter. It is true, however, that he took a dark view of excess; whereas Macdonald knew that sometimes nothing succeeds like excess, as when he told a political audience that he knew they preferred John A. drunk to George Brown sober any time. But I am not here to draw comparisons between Brown and Macdonald. My task is rather to try to explain and evaluate the former's role in the achievement of a Canadian transcontinental federal union without, I hope, retreading too much of the well-worn ground of the Confederation story.
Thus I want to treat Brown in the light of several major questions that inevitably arise. Was he a nation-builder at all, or a narrow sectionalist who perhaps did "one good thing" in backing the Confederation movement, as his opponents would assert? How important, indeed, was his contribution to the political accomplishment of Con-federation? And what was the personal motivation that led Brown to join forces with Macdonald in the government coalition that carried through the scheme for federal union between 1864 and 1867? Was there some sort of blinding flash of nationalism or patriotism in the Upper Canadian Liberal leader which he later regretted and got over, or was there a consistency in the man throughout? These are the kind of questions I hope to illuminate as I proceed, beginning first with the problem of Brown as sectionalist or nationalist or both.
There is, indeed, little doubt about his sectionalism. He stood essentially for the rights of Upper Canada in the 1850s and '60s, against what he and his Clear Grit Reform followers held was the unjust domination of the existing union of the two Canadas by Lower Canadian and French Canadian forces. He wanted "rep by pop" to give the western Upper Canadian section a preponderance of parliamentary seats. He denounced the Grand Trunk Railway "octopus" centred on Montreal, and attacked the economic power of the eastern section over Upper Canada, as well as the power of French Catholic interests to shape policy on separate schools for the western half of the union. Mind, much of what he then upheld has been echoed in later eras of Canadian history; and we certainly find it still respectable in our present union to champion sectional or provincial interests against "unjust" dominance from without. In fact, Brown was championing the rights of the then West, the pure West of Upper Canadian wheat farmers and the rising, ambitious centre of Toronto, against the wicked machinations of eastern bankers, railway magnates and their hireling politicians. It sounds a lot like Manitoba and Winnipeg in a later day!
Does Canadian history simply repeat itself as it spreads across the continent? I sometimes think that Premier Bennett of British Columbia, who so successfully combined righteous fundamentalism in the interior with regional business allies to resist the effete East, has more than a little in common with George Brown's conjunction of rural Grit virtue and aspiring Toronto business to combat the powers of Montreal over his own region. At any rate, provincial or regional championship is a power stance for Social Credit in British Columbia, Liberal in Saskatchewan, Conservatives in Ontario, everybody in Quebec - and I need not go on. The point is, George Brown, as a sectionalist, is in a basic Canadian tradition.
Nor do I seek to condemn it. It expresses very real regional diversities and problems in this country, constantly needing recognition and adjustments to meet them, but not necessarily, by any means, opposed to a belief also in national interests, hopes and aspirations. So it was with Brown. He was a sectionalist; but a nationalist as well, believing that there was a common Canadian destiny to be achieved; that the problems of the parts could be met and comprehended in the whole, and the scattered colonies and empty expanses of British North America could be and should be shaped into a new nation on the continent. Listen to this editorial from the Toronto Globe of 1847, when he was twenty-eight, and this newspaper which he founded, edited and built into the most powerful paper in Canada was itself but three years old:
Love of country is the great want of Canada ... few seem to remember that we have a national character to win ... Oh for some power to fire the servile mass with nobility of thought or feeling! Oh that this mere animal contentment were exchanged for public - nay, for even private ambition! Oh for a Canadian nationality which would ameliorate the unmitigated personal selfishness which pervades the land! [1]
This youthful-sounding idealism still sounds pretty youthful (and somewhat unattained) over one hundred and twenty years later. But the hope of nationhood continued with Brown and his Globe. Listen to it again, some years later in 1864, when the project of Confederation was well in train, and the ideal of national status might be more confidently speculated upon:
The day may come when the United Provinces have so increased in population, in wealth and in influence that it may be no longer seemly that they should continue in a condition of tutelage; and we shall then be in a position to offer to Great Britain the friendship of a powerful and independent ally in compensation for the long years of protection she has exercised over us. [2]
About the same time, moreover, his paper expressed a particular attribute of Canadian nationalism, strong reaction to apprehensions about the United States, in this instance arising from Americans' concern that their own notions of expansion northwestward might be checked by the uniting of the British provinces:
We are here upon this continent with national feelings as strong and as fresh as the people of the United States. We hold that our institutions are better than theirs, and intend to keep them. We have as much right to existence as a nation as they have. [3]
This assertion of Canada's national right on the continent leads naturally to a consideration of George Brown's interest in the great North West as part of a vast, new continental union. This surely was more than sectionalism, even though he certainly expected his own city, Toronto, and section, Upper Canada, to benefit especially from bringing in the North West. His interest in that region went back at least to the early fifties, when he first began questioning the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company in the land beyond the Lakes, asserting in the Globe: "It is unpardonable that civilization should be excluded from half a continent on at best a doubtful right of ownership." [4] And in an address at Belleville in 1858, he declared:
Who cannot see that Providence has entrusted to us the building up of a great northern people fit to cope with our neighbours of the United States and advance step by step with them? It is my fervent aspiration and belief that some here tonight may live to see the day when the British American flag shall wave from Labrador to Vancouver Island and from our own Niagara to Hudson Bay. [5]
Above all, at the grand Reform Convention of 1859, when Brown brought the Grit party to adopt a scheme of federalism as the answer to the sectional problems of the existing Canadian union, he explicitly combined this proposal for constitutional change with national aims and the gaining of the North West, in a powerful speech that swept the whole Convention:
Sir, I do place the question on the ground of nationality. I do hope there is not one Canadian in this assembly who does not look forward with high hopes to the days when these northern countries shall stand out among the nations of the world as one great Confederation! What true Canadian can witness the tide of immigration now commencing to flow into the vast territories of the North West without longing to have a share in the first settlement of that great and fertile territory, and make our country the highway of traffic to the Pacific? [6]
The next year in parliament, 1860, he moved a proposal for changing the Canadian union to a federal basis: quite unsuccessfully; his own party proving divided, and uncertain of the idea as yet. But I have found in Brown's own papers what seems to be a longer fuller version of his proposal; in fact, a series of resolutions in his own handwriting which he did not actually move, perhaps because of the divisions in his own following. Marked "Resolutions of the session of 1860 on Union" they declare as follows:
Mr. Brown moves in amendment [to the Address]: A Committee of Nine be appointed to inquire and report, First, as to the expediency of changing the existing union of Upper and Lower Canada by the Subdivision of the Province into two or more divisions, each governing itself in local and sectional matters, with a general government and general legislature, in which the people shall be represented on a basis of population, for subjects of national and commercial interest. Second, as to the expediency of inviting the other British provinces to join in such a union. Third, as to the expediency of making provision for bringing within the said union such portions of the Hudson's Bay Territory as may from time to time become sufficiently settled, and Fourth, to suggest for the consideration of this house such details for carrying into effect the said union as may to the said committee seem expedient. [7]
Even though not introduced, these draft resolutions seem highly significant. To a considerable extent they foreshadow what would be done by the leaders of the Confederation movement in 1864. They indicate that George Brown was thinking about it in 1860: the Grit sectionalist was thinking nationally. Still further, they suggest the ancestry of his famous motion of 1864 for a select committee of inquiry into Canada's troubles - the committee which then did bring the federal solution squarely before parliament on a non-partisan basis, to offer the way out of growing political deadlock and repeated government crises. But this brings me specifically to Brown's role in the political achievement of Confederation. And here I can jump from his abortive effort to introduce resolutions on federation in 1860 to his position in 1863-4, by which time neither elections nor various shifts of Conservative and Liberal ministries could produce any lasting government, nor any way, indeed, of coping with the problems of a deeply divided union.
In 1863 a newly married and mellowed - George Brown took up an obviously different political line; not as a vehement party leader urging his cohorts on to parliamentary warfare, but almost as a private member (though still highly influential in Grit circles), seeking an approach to settlement of Canadian difficulties by joint investigation and negotiation instead of victory through battle. In any event, in parliament that autumn, he announced his intention of moving for a joint constitutional inquiry. Quoting the Conservatives' own government dispatch of 1858 to the Colonial Office, reporting Canada's sectional ills, he asked simply for a committee drawn from the whole House to examine those recognised ills and report on the best means of remedying them. Temperately handled, based on his opponents' own statements, the proposal was well calculated to avoid partisan heat and intransigence on either side.
Because of the political turmoil, however, with Conservatives and Liberals in virtual balance in the House, it was not until March, 1864, that he could actually move his committee of inquiry. He wrote to his devoted wife, Anne Nelson Brown, "I feel a very great desire to carry my motion. I would give a good large sum to carry it. It would be the first vote ever carried in parliament in favour of constitutional change, and even that would be some satisfaction after my long fight for it." [8]
He did carry it at last. The Select Committee that was consequently set up in May, representing all the major party factions, laboured seriously and steadily under his earnest chairmanship. At length, on June 14, it issued a progress report, declaring that, "A strong feeling was found to exist among members of the Committee in favour of changes in the direction of a federative system applied either to Canada alone or to the whole British North American provinces." [9] The Committee would have looked further, except that, the same day it reported, the latest in the series of short-lived ministries, the Macdonald-Tache Conservative regime collapsed. Canada was again in crisis. But Brown's committee had indicated the way out.
He seized upon it himself by letting his Conservative opponents know that he would work with them if they would use this very moment of crisis to find a constitutional settlement at last. It was thus through his initiative that Macdonald, Cartier and Galt opened conversations with him on constitutional changes in the union, at his room in Quebec's St. Louis Hotel. And it was highly significant that they told him, "Unless a basis can be found in the federative principle suggested by Mr. Brown's Committee [italics mine], it did not appear that anything could be settled." [10] They arrived, of course, at an agreement to try for a general British North American federal union first, and a federation of the two Canadas alone if that failed.
On June 22, 1864, this all-important decision was announced to a wildly cheering House. Now a strong majority government could at least be formed, solidly backed by the major Liberal and Conservative forces led by Brown and Cartier, as well as the smaller Upper Canadian Conservative contingent that looked to John A. Macdonald. Now the Great Coalition that achieved Confederation could take shape. And Brown had been the key initiator, whose Committee had supplied the vital proposal, whose offer to join forces for settlement had broken political deadlock, and whose support of the Confederation project, along with that of Cartier, ensured that the government which sought it would have overwhelming strength. Lord Monck, the Governor-General, who himself played no small part in promoting Confederation, later hailed George Brown as "the man whose conduct in 1864 had rendered the project of union feasible." [11] It was a thoroughly sound verdict.
But why had Brown done so? Why had he played his crucial role in making Confederation politically practicable - the point where John A. Macdonald would so successfully take it up? Plainly, this had been no momentary effusion of noble feelings, no sudden seeing of the light or transformation on the road to Damascus. It is evident that Brown's motivation ran far back in his national hopes and aspirations, as well as in his desires to settle Canada's internal problems and promote the rights of his own section. He had, moreover, been developing the line of policy he took at least since 1863. It had even been foreshadowed in 1860, and might be traced still further beyond.
Brown was, in short, a consistent, and largely uncomplicated, personality. He might indeed have prided himself too much on the sometimes limited virtue of consistency: but he was a man of forthright emotions, direct and single-minded: a good friend and a strong enemy. He was, consequently, often too rigid in politics, and so he assuredly could be outplayed - though he was still far from being a novice at political tactics. In general, he drove hard for his goals, putting first things first with firm determination. He had sought constitutional change in the Canadian union ever since the early 1850s, and by the summer of 1864 he wanted beyond everything else to get matters settled and go home. He was urged to do so by his own strong devotion to his marriage, not two years old, and his heartfelt wish to be able to drop active politics at last and be with his wife and new daughter, Margaret, born just in January, 1864.
One can see his feelings fully displayed in the warmly affectionate letters he wrote to his wife in Toronto from parliament's session at Quebec through the earlier months of 1864, when events were building towards the grand excitement of that June. "Already I long to be back with you," he wrote Anne Brown, shortly after his arrival at Quebec in February, "and will grudge every day I am kept from your side .. . Don't fail to write me every day, if only a single line to tell me you and baby are well. Tell me all about your doings and baby's, the smallest incident will be anxiously perused." [12] Again he wrote, "I hate this parliamentary work - I think what a fool I am to be here." [13] And again:
Near three o'clock and Anne's letter not come! That horrid Grand Trunk ... I have a very comfortable room indeed, with a glorious view of the St. Charles. I read a little, write a good deal, look out a little and muse about darling Anne and our little baby all the while. [14]
As the weeks went by, George Brown graphically reported to Anne the course of events that led directly to the great decisions of June, the passage of his motion, the establishment of his Select Committee, the critical negotiations with his Conservative opponents - all in terms which made very plain his ardent hope and wish to settle things at last, and his awareness that the moment was finally at hand. As he entered the negotiations he was clearly under strain. He felt "very nervous and stupid," he told Anne. "But never mind, I will try to do my duty to the country in such a manner as you my dearest Anne, will not be ashamed of." [15]
He was particularly reluctant to enter the Coalition government that was to seek Confederation, preferring to support it from the outside himself; but Macdonald and his allies quite reasonably insisted that their former Grit foe should prove his commitment by entering into the new ministry as one of three Liberal members there. Again putting first things first, and to get them done, Brown overcame his own desires to end his political burdens and his worries over sitting at the cabinet table with his former enemies. "... there was no help for it," he wrote, "and it was such a temptation to have possibly the power of settling the sectional troubles of Canada forever!" [16]
Hence, before the end of June, the new government was constituted, and it could begin to plan for negotiations with the other colonies of British America to shape a federal union. By August, 1864, Brown could happily write to his wife of the progress being made by the ministry in drafting a federal constitutional scheme:
It will be a tremendous thing if we accomplish it. I don't believe any of us appreciate its true importance, the immensity of the work we are engaged on ... There is no other instance on record of a colony peacefully remodelling its constitution - such changes have always been the work of the parent state, not of the colonists themselves. Canada is rightly setting the example of a new and better state of things. [17]
Thereafter, in September, Brown played a leading role at the Charlottetown Conference, where the representatives of the Maritimes agreed in principle to the idea of joining in union with Canada. He was no less prominent at the Quebec Conference of October, 1864, that worked out in detail the terms and structure of union. Here, in fact, he moved the key resolution that it be a federal system, with provision for the North West and British Columbia to enter also. After the Quebec meetings, he was the first to carry the proposed plan of Con-federation to England that December, for successful discussions with the imperial government. And in February of the next year, when the Quebec scheme was laid before the Canadian parliament for its approval, Brown gave one of the most effective of the speeches that have come down to us as the famed Confederation Debates:
For myself I care not who gets the credit of this scheme - I believe it contains the best features of all the suggestions that have been made in the last ten years for the settlement of our troubles, and the whole feeling in my mind now is one of joy and thankfulness that there were found men of position and influence in Canada who, at a moment of serious crisis, had nerve and patriotism enough to cast aside political partisan-ship, to banish personal considerations, and unite for the accomplishment of a measure so fraught with advantage for their common country. [18]
In the summer of 1865, he joined with Macdonald, Cartier and Galt on a major mission to England to ensure continued British support of the Confederation movement, now stalled by opposition in the Maritimes. Among other things, the mission reached agreement with the imperial authorities on the transfer of the North West to the forthcoming federal union. And that autumn he was in the Maritimes, working to advance the reviving fortunes of Confederation there. By this time, however, strains had inevitably emerged within the Canadian ministry itself, which contained two such strong-minded leaders and enduring rivals as Brown and Macdonald. The strains were overcome several times, in the interest of the great project; but Brown, chafing in double and triple harness, and no less anxious to be done with the job and off home, was increasingly approaching the point of deciding that he had definitely had enough.
Late in the fall, a contentious issue emerged in the cabinet over the manner of conducting negotiations for a new reciprocal trade agreement with the United States. Brown disagreed with Galt's and the government's approach, arguing that it gave away too much, too readily, to the Americans. He failed to change their minds, however; and when he could not, resigned from the cabinet on December 19, 1865. The issue was a real one for him; it was by no means an excuse. Yet, undoubtedly, it also arose when George Brown had become virtually ready to withdraw from the ministry, and so made this the occasion. There was thus real meaning in the telegram he sent his wife on his resignation: "Thank Providence - I am a free man once more." [19]
Confederation had not yet been achieved, but all the main lines had been set. By now the movement was well on its way to successful completion. Brown did not share in its later stages, as a new conference of Canadian and Maritime delegates met in London towards the end of 1866, and proceeded to draft the measure that was put into effect in 1867 as the British North America Act. But still a leading Liberal figure and still master of the authoritative Toronto Globe, he continued to give Confederation his cordial and powerful support. Moreover, the Act of 1867 very largely embodied the federal plan he had shared in making at the Quebec Conference, the London Conference having produced only a relatively few additions or revisions. And all the work that Brown had done earlier - that had done so much to make possible a Quebec Conference, in fact - remained as fundamental as ever to the Confederation of 1867.
In these later stages of the making of Confederation, John A. Macdonald had decisively come to the fore, becoming the real head of the Canadian Coalition government, the master politician, diplomat and statesman of the federal union finally achieved. In the earlier crucial stages, however, he had very much shared the honours with Cartier, Galt and others; but above all, with George Brown - "the man" who had made a union feasible. It is not necessary to try to apportion the honours of Confederation precisely. There is praise enough to go around all the leaders involved. Yet in any case, George Brown still stands out as nation-builder as well as sectional champion; as the man who made Confederation practical polities by bringing forward the federal principle on a joint-party basis and transforming deadlock in 1864 into a solution; and as an individual of whole-hearted, consistent purpose, who drove to get a settlement, and got it - that settlement being Confederation.
Let him, then, have the last word in a letter to his wife which he wrote, still eager for home, late at night when the Confederation Debates had just come to a triumphant conclusion:
... perhaps we should be happy that our sacrifices have had so much effect on the welfare of half a continent. Is it not so, dearest Anne? ... Could I possibly have abandoned the trust that has gradually grown up and now rests upon me? Would you not like that darling little Maggie should be able twenty years hence - when we may be gone - to look back with satisfaction to the share her father had in these great events? For great they are, dearest Anne, and history will tell the tale of them. [20]
George Brown (November 29, 1818 – May 10, 1880) was a Scottish-born Canadian journalist, politician and one of the Fathers of Confederation. A noted Reform politican, he was also the founder and editor of the Toronto Globe, which is today (having merged with other newspapers) known as the Globe and Mail.
Brown was born in Alloa, Clackmannan, Scotland, on November 29, 1818 and immigrated to Canada in 1843. He founded the Globe in 1844, which quickly became the leading Reform newspaper in the Province of Canada. In 1848, he was named secretary of a commission of inquiry to investigate alleged abuses in the provincial penitentiary at Kingston. Brown worked zealously at the task. The Brown Report, which Brown drafted early in 1849, produced copious evidence of brutality and maladministration, and the existing warden, Henry Smith, was soon removed from office.
Brown used the Globe newspaper to publish articles and editorials that attacked the institution of slavery in the southern United States. In response to the Fugitive Slave Law passed in the U.S. in 1850, Brown helped found the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. This society was founded to end the practice of slavery in North America, and individual members aided former American slaves reach Canada via the Underground Railroad. As a result, the African Canadian community enthusiastically supported Brown's political ambitions.
Brown was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada in 1851. He reorganized the Clear Grit (Liberal) Party in 1857, supporting, among other things, the separation of church and state and the annexation of the Northwest Territories. But the most important issue for George Brown was what he termed Representation by Population, or commonly known as "Rep by Pop".
From the time of the Union Act in 1841, the Canadian colonial legislature had been composed of an equal number of members from Canada East (Lower Canada, Quebec) and Canada West (Upper Canada, Ontario). At the time of union in 1841, francophone dominated Lower Canada had a larger population and it was hoped by the British colonial administration that the french in Lower Canada would be legislatively pacified by a coalition of english from Lower Canada with the Upper Canadian side. But during the 1840s and 1850s, as the population of Upper Canada grew larger than the french population of Lower Canada, the opposite became true.
For a period of 4 days in August of 1858, political rival John A. Macdonald temporarily ceded his power as premier, and Brown was the de facto premier of Canada West. The short lived administration was called the Brown-Dorion government, named after the co-premiers George Brown and A.A. Dorion.
[edit] Brown and Confederation
George Brown was a key figure in Canada's path to Confederation during the 1860s. In 1864, he led the Great Coalition with John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier. Later that year, Brown played a major role at the Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences. He resigned from the Coalition in 1865.
In 1867, Brown ran for seats in both the Canadian House of Commons and, as leader of the provincial Liberals for a seat in the Ontario legislature hopefully as Premier but failed to win election to either chamber. He was widely seen as the leader of the federal Liberals in the 1867 federal election. The Liberals were officially leaderless until 1873, but Brown was considered the party's "elder statesman" even without a seat in the House of Commons, and was regularly consulted by leading Liberal parliamentarians.
Brown was made a Senator in Ottawa in 1873.
Brown became a leading opponent of Macdonald's Conservative Party and a leader of the opposition Liberals. He lost much popularity, however, by tyrannically trying to crush a printers' strike in Toronto. He had the strikers jailed and fired. In response to these actions by his rival, Macdonald passed laws permitting trade unionism for the first time in Canada.
On March 25 1880, one of his former employees of the Globe, George Bennett, dismissed by a foreman for drunkenness, shot Brown in the leg at the Globe office in Toronto. What seemed to be a minor injury turned gangrenous, and weeks later on May 10, Brown died from the wound.
His residence, formerly called Lambton Lodge and now called George Brown House, at 186 Beverley Street in Toronto, was named a National Historic site in 1974. It is now operated by the Ontario Heritage Foundation as a conference center and offices.
Toronto's George Brown College is named for him.