CHAPTER XV
CONFEDERATION
"Events stronger than advocacy, events stronger than men," to repeat D'Arcy McGee's phrase, combined in 1864 to remove confederation from the field of speculation to the field of action. For several years the British government had been urging upon Canada the necessity for undertaking a greater share of her own defence. This view was expressed with disagreeable candour in the London Times and elsewhere on the occasion of the defeat of the Militia Bill of 1862. The American Civil War emphasized the necessity for measures of defence. At the time of the Trent seizure, Great Britain and the United States were on the verge of war, of which Canada would have been the battleground. As the war progressed, the world was astonished by the development of the military power of the republic. It seemed not improbable, at that time, that when the success of the North was assured, its great armies would be used for the subjugation of Canada. The North had come to regard Canada as a home of Southern sympathizers and a place in which conspiracies against the republic were hatched by Southerners. Though Canada was not to blame for the use that was made of its soil, yet some ill-feeling was aroused, and public men were warranted in regarding the peril as real.
Canada was also about to lose a large part of its trade. For ten years that trade had been built up largely on the basis of reciprocity with the United States, and the war had largely increased the American demand for Canadian products. It was generally expected, and that expectation was fulfilled, that the treaty would be abrogated by the United States. It was feared that the policy of commercial non-intercourse would be carried even farther, the bonding system abolished, and Canada cut off from access to the seaboard during the winter.[14]
If we add to these difficulties the domestic dissensions of Canada, we must recognize that the outlook was dark. Canada was then a fringe of settlement, extending from the Detroit River to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, having no independent access to the Atlantic except during the summer. She had been depending largely upon Great Britain for defence, and upon the United States for trade. She had received warning that both these supports were to be weakened, and that she must rely more on her own resources, find new channels of trade and new means of defence. The country lay in the midst of the continent, isolated from the west, isolated in part from the east, with a powerful and not too friendly neighbour to the south. Upper and Lower Canada, with their racial differences as sharply defined as in the days of Lord Durham, regarded each other with distrust; one political combination after another had failed to obtain a working majority of the legislature, and domestic government was paralyzed. Such a combination of danger and difficulty, within and without, might well arouse alarm, rebuke faction and stimulate patriotism.
The election of 1863 was virtually a drawn battle. The Reformers had a large majority in Upper Canada, their opponents a like majority in Lower Canada, and thus not only the two parties, but the two provinces, were arrayed against each other. The Reform government, headed by Sandfield Macdonald and Dorion, found its position of weakness and humiliation intolerable, and resigned in March, 1864. The troubled governor-general called upon A. T. Fergusson Blair, a colleague of Sandfield Macdonald, to form a new administration. He failed. He called upon Cartier with a like result. He finally had a little better success with Sir E. P. Taché, a veteran who had been a colleague of Baldwin, of Hincks, and of Macdonald. Taché virtually restored the Cartier-Macdonald government, taking in Foley and McGee from the other side. In less than three months, on June 14th, this government was defeated, and on the very day of its defeat relief came. Letters written by Brown to his family during the month preceding the crisis throw some light on the situation.
On May 13th he writes: "Things here are very unsatisfactory; no one sees his way out of the mess—and there is no way but my way—representation by population. There is great talk to-day of coalition—and what do you think? Why, that in order to make the coalition successful, the imperial government are to offer me the government of one of the British colonies. I have been gravely asked to-day by several if it is true, and whether I would accept. My reply was, I would rather be proprietor of the Globe newspaper for a few years than be governor-general of Canada, much less a trumpery little province. But I need hardly tell you, the thing has no foundation, beyond sounding what could be done to put me out of the way and let mischief go on. But we won't be bought at any price, shall we?" On May 18th he writes that he has brought on his motion for constitutional changes, and on May 20th that it has carried and taken Cartier and Macdonald by surprise. "Much that is directly practical may not flow from the committee, but it is an enormous gain to have the acknowledgment on our journals that a great evil exists, and that some remedy must be found."
On June 14th Mr. Brown, as chairman of a committee appointed to consider the difficulties connected with the government of Canada, brought in a report recommending "a federative system, applied either to Canada alone, or to the whole British North American provinces." This was the day on which the Taché government was defeated. On the subject of the negotiations which followed between Mr. Brown and the government, there is a difference between the account given by Sir John Macdonald in the House, and accepted by all parties as official, and a letter written by Mr. Brown to a member of his family. The official account represents the first movement as coming from Mr. Brown, the letter says that the suggestion came from the governor-general. It would seem likely that the idea moved gradually from informal conversations to formal propositions. The governor had proposed a coalition on the defeat of the Macdonald-Dorion government, and he repeated the suggestion on the defeat of the Taché-Macdonald government; but his official memorandum contains no reference to constitutional changes. It would seem that there was a great deal of talk of coalition in the air before Brown made his proposals, and perhaps some talk of offering him an appointment that would remove him from public life. But the Conservative ministers were apparently thinking merely of a coalition that would break the dead-lock, and enable the ordinary business of the country to proceed. Brown's idea was to find a permanent remedy in the form of a change in the constitution. When he made his proposal to co-operate with his opponents for the purpose of settling the difficulties between Upper and Lower Canada, his proposal fell upon minds familiarized with the idea of coalition, and hence its ready acceptance. On his part, Mr. Brown was ready to abate certain party advantages in order to bring about constitutional reform. Mr. Ferrier, in the debate on confederation, says that it was he who suggested that the proposal made by Mr. Brown to Mr. Pope and Mr. Morris should be communicated to the government. Ferrier gives a lively account of the current gossip as to the meeting between Brown and the ministers. "I think I can remember this being said, that when Mr. Galt met Mr. Brown he received him with that manly, open frankness which characterizes him; that when Mr. Cartier met Mr. Brown, he looked carefully to see that his two Rouge friends were not behind him, and that when he was satisfied they were not, he embraced him with open arms and swore eternal friendship; and that Mr. Macdonald, at a very quick glance, saw there was an opportunity of forming a great and powerful dependency of the British empire.... We all thought, in fact, that a political millennium had arrived."
In a family letter written at this time Mr. Brown said: "June 18th, past one in the morning. We have had great times since I wrote you. On Tuesday we defeated the government by a majority of two. They asked the governor-general to dissolve parliament, and he consented; but before acting on it, at the governor's suggestion, they applied to me to aid them in reconstructing the government, on the basis of settling the constitutional difficulties between Upper and Lower Canada. I refused to accept office, but agreed to help them earnestly and sincerely in the matter they proposed. Negotiations were thereupon commenced, and are still going on, with considerable hope of finding a satisfactory solution to our trouble. The facts were announced in the House to-day by John A. Macdonald, amid tremendous cheering from both sides of the House. You never saw such a scene; but you will have it all in the papers, so I need not repeat. Both sides are extremely urgent that I should accept a place in the government, if it were only for a week; but I will not do this unless it is absolutely needed to the success of the negotiations. A more agreeable proposal is that I should go to England to arrange the new constitution with the imperial government. But as the whole thing may fail, we will not count our chickens just yet."