2nd. To investigate and report upon the best means of organizing the militia, and providing an efficient and economical system for the defence of the province.
3rd. To prepare a bill or bills on the above subjects, to be submitted to parliament at its next session.
The commission performed its duties with dispatch, and on April 25 Macdonald presented to parliament the fruit of its labours in the form of a bill to promote the more efficient organization of the militia of Canada. On the motion for the second reading he spoke at length concerning the reasons which made this legislation necessary. The measure had been carefully thought out, and was well adapted to the requirements of the time. It entailed, however, the expenditure of a large sum of money, and on this ground was unpopular with a certain number of Cartier's followers. On May 20 the vote on the second reading, which was taken without debate, resulted in the rejection of the bill by a majority of seven. This defeat was entirely due to defection among the Lower Canadians. Of the Upper-Canadian members the Government had a majority of seven votes.
Cartier was succeeded as prime minister by John Sandfield Macdonald, whose ally from Lower Canada was L. V. Sicotte. Sandfield Macdonald, a steadfast opponent of the proposal of representation by population, was, of course, eminently distasteful to George Brown. To the Rouges this presented no difficulty. Dorion and his friends took office in the new Government. The double-majority principle was laid down as a binding rule. Its purport was that no Ministry should be held to possess the confidence of parliament unless it could command a majority from both the French and the English sections of Canada. The rule speedily proved unworkable in practice. The Macdonald-Sicotte Government was not of long duration. It had many difficulties to contend with. A reconstruction of the Cabinet in May 1863 was followed by a general election. This, however, did not improve matters for the Government. The parties in the new House were almost equally divided. The Ministry lingered on a few months, and, without waiting for a formal vote of no confidence, at last resigned on March 21, 1864.
Sir Étienne Pascal Taché.
From a portrait in the John Ross Robertson Collection,
Toronto Public Library
The Liberal-Conservatives came back to office, though not to power, under Sir Étienne Taché, who had received the honour of knighthood since last we heard of him. In less than three months his Government met defeat by a majority of two votes in the Assembly. Thus within three years four Ministries had been defeated, and two general elections had failed to break the deadlock which threatened to make government impossible in Canada.
The man responsible above all others for this deplorable state of things was he who for years past had not ceased in the columns of his paper and from his place in parliament to set one section of Canada against the other; who laboured to stir up racial and religious strife; who habitually gave to the people of Upper Canada a distorted view of the national characteristics and the religious belief of their fellow-countrymen in Lower Canada. The result was that the Union formed only twenty-three years before, the Union about which such high hopes had been entertained, was on the point of breaking up. The actual impasse which had now been reached seems to have opened George Brown's eyes to the effects of his course, and to have convinced him that the time had arrived when a cessation of the old feuds was absolutely necessary to the carrying on of the queen's government in Canada. Impelled by a sense of patriotism and, we may well believe, at the expense of his personal feelings, he now joined hands with Macdonald and Cartier for the purpose of carrying the great scheme of Confederation. This, and this alone, promised deliverance from the unhappy deadlock that impeded the progress of the country.
Since there is promised a separate account of the great work of Confederation in another volume of the present Series, I do not propose to do more here than allude to it briefly. It is known that immediately after the defeat of the Taché-Macdonald government in June 1864, Brown said to several supporters of the Administration, among them Alexander Morris and John Henry Pope, that the present crisis should be utilized to settle for ever the constitutional difficulties between Upper and Lower Canada. He assured them of his willingness to co-operate for this end. Macdonald quickly responded to the overture, and the next day he and Galt met Brown in the St Louis Hotel, Quebec. It is worthy of note that at this interview Macdonald and Galt proposed, as a remedy for existing ills, a federal union of all the British North-American provinces. Brown, on the other hand, while theoretically commending the idea, did not regard it as within the region of practical politics, but viewed its adoption as 'uncertain and remote.' His remedy was 'Parliamentary Reform, based on population, without regard to a separating line between Upper and Lower Canada.' This was simply his old friend 'Representation by Population' under another name. When assured that it would be impossible to carry such a measure, Brown agreed that the Government should negotiate for a confederation of all the provinces. If this failed, they should then introduce the federal principle for Canada alone, while providing for the future incorporation of the Maritime Provinces and the North-West. On this understanding Brown, with two Reform colleagues, Oliver Mowat and William M'Dougall, entered the Cabinet. The members of the reorganized Government lost no time in applying themselves to the great object of the coalition. It so happened that, while Canadian statesmen were thus considering the question of a union of British North America, the thoughts of public men in the provinces by the Atlantic—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—were turned in the direction of a union of these provinces. A convention was about to meet at Charlottetown to discuss the subject. The Canadian Government determined to take advantage of this opportunity, and eight members of the Ministry repaired to Charlottetown, where they were hospitably received and were invited by the conference to express their views. They unfolded the benefits to be derived from the larger scheme with such effect that the conference agreed to adjourn and to reassemble at Quebec. The Quebec Conference met on October 10, 1864, and continued in session until the 28th of the same month. The deliberations resulted in seventy-two resolutions. These were adopted by the Canadian legislature at its next session, and formed the basis of the deliberations of the conference which assembled in the Westminster Palace Hotel, London, on December 4, 1866, under the presidency of Macdonald, for the purpose of drafting the British North America Act. These several steps, however, were not reached without the overcoming of many obstacles. The Rouge party led by Dorion was hostile to the whole project, as were Sandfield Macdonald and a few Upper-Canadian Reformers. The people of New Brunswick pronounced against the scheme at the polls before the question had been laid before their legislature. The legislature of Prince Edward Island emphatically declined a union 'which it believed would prove politically, commercially, and financially disastrous to the rights and interests of its people.' George Brown quarrelled with his colleagues and left the Cabinet, which thereafter experienced a renewal of his vehement opposition.[[5]] Negotiations regarding reciprocity with the United States engaged the attention of the Ministry during the early part of the year 1866. Scarcely had they been disposed of when a series of Fenian attacks along the Canadian frontier caused much concern, and added largely to the cares of Macdonald, who as minister of Militia Affairs was at that time responsible for the defence of the country. His labours were incessant, his responsibility heavy, and his discouragements not a few; but with inflexible determination and rare patience he eventually surmounted all the difficulties, and on July 1, 1867, witnessed the birth of the new Dominion. From that time forth the responsibilities of his position, though greatly enlarged, were more easily borne. The sense of dependence on one province for support was no longer felt. The enlargement of the arena and the inclusion of many new men of marked ability into Canadian public life tended to assuage somewhat the old-time bitterness of political strife. Perhaps more than all, the unification of the office of prime minister came as an unspeakable relief. From 1841 to 1867 the office of first minister was what might be called in commission, that is to say, there was a prime minister for each section of Canada. If an Upper Canadian were called upon to form a Ministry, his chief colleague from Lower Canada shared with him much of the authority, and also a good deal of the prestige and honour, of the office. Were a Lower Canadian summoned, his principal Upper-Canadian colleague was associated with him in the leadership of the Government. Thus Canada had the administrations of Baldwin-LaFontaine, Hincks-Morin, Taché-Macdonald, Macdonald-Cartier, Cartier-Macdonald, and others. This dual authority was perhaps necessary at the time, but it had been attended by many inconveniences, and the confederation of the provinces afforded a fitting opportunity to bring it to an end. The governor-general, Lord Monck, when confiding the duty of forming the first Dominion Cabinet to Macdonald, addressed him in these terms: