George Brown - free ebook by John Lewis

THE MAKERS OF CANADA

EDITED BY DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT, F.R.S.C., PELHAM EDGAR, Ph.D. and WILLIAM DAWSON LE SUEUR, B.A., LL.D., F.R.S.C....

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EDITION DE LUXE

This edition is limited to Four Hundred Signed and Numbered Sets, of which this is...

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JOHN LEWIS

EDITION DE LUXE TORONTO MORANG &amp; CO., LIMITED 1906 Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada in the year 1906 by Morang &amp; Co., Limited, in the Department of Agriculture...

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PREFACE

The title of this series, "Makers of Canada," seemed to impose on the writer the obligation to devote special attention to the part played by George Brown in fashioning the institutions of this country. From this point of view the most fruitful years of his life were spent between the time when the Globe was established to advocate responsible government, and the time when the provinces were confederated and the bounds of Canada extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The ordinary political c

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CHAPTER I

FROM SCOTLAND TO CANADA George Brown was born at Alloa, a seaport on the tidal Forth, thirty-five miles inward from Edinburgh, on November 29th, 1818. His mother was a daughter of George Mackenzie, of Stornoway, in the Island of Lewis. His father, Peter Brown, was a merchant and builder. George was educated at the High School and Southern Academy in Edinburgh. "This young man," said Dr. Gunn, of the Southern Academy, "is not only endowed with high enthusiasm, but possesses the faculty of creatin

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CHAPTER II

METCALFE AND THE REFORMERS The Browns arrived in Canada in the period of reconstruction following the rebellion of 1837-8. In Lord Durham's Report the rising in Lower Canada was attributed mainly to racial animosity—"two nations warring in the bosom of a single state"—"a struggle not of principles but of races." The rising in Upper Canada was attributed mainly to the ascendency of the "family compact"—a family only in the official sense. "The bench, the magistracy, the high offices of the episco

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CHAPTER III

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT In England, as well as in Canada, events were moving towards self-government. With the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1840 disappeared the preference to Canadian wheat. "Destroy this principle of protection," said Lord Stanley in the House of Lords, "and you destroy the whole basis upon which your colonial system rests." Loud complaints came from Canada, and in a despatch from Earl Cathcart to the colonial secretary, it was represented that the Canadian waterways had been impr

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CHAPTER IV

DISSENSION AMONG REFORMERS Within the limits of one parliament, less than four years, the Baldwin-Lafontaine government achieved a large amount of useful work, including the establishment of cheap and uniform postage, the reforming of the courts of law, the remodelling of the municipal system, the establishment of the University of Toronto on a non-sectarian basis, and the inauguration of a policy by which the province was covered with a network of railways. With such a record, the government ha

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CHAPTER V

THE CLERGY RESERVES The clergy reserves were for many years a fruitful source of discontent and agitation in Canada. They had their origin in a provision of the Constitutional Act of 1791, that there should be reserved for the maintenance and support of a "Protestant clergy" in Upper and Lower Canada "a quantity of land equal in value to a seventh part of grants that had been made in the past or might be made in the future." It was provided also that rectories might be erected and endowed accord

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CHAPTER VI

BROWN'S FIRST PARLIAMENT In the autumn of 1851 parliament was dissolved, and in September Mr. Brown received a requisition from the Reformers of Kent to stand as their candidate, one of the signatures being that of Alexander Mackenzie, afterwards premier of Canada. In accepting the nomination he said that he anticipated that he would be attacked as an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church; that he cordially adhered to the principles of the Protestant reformation; that he objected to the Roman Catho

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CHAPTER VII

RISE OF BROWN'S INFLUENCE The condition of parties in the legislature was peculiar. The most formidable antagonist of the Reform government was the man who was rapidly rising to the leadership of the Reform party. The old Tory party was dead, and its leader, Sir Allan MacNab, was almost inactive. Macdonald, who was to re-organize and lead the new Conservative party, was playing a waiting game, taking advantage of Brown's tremendous blows at the ministry, and for the time being satisfied with a l

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CHAPTER VIII

RECONSTRUCTION OF PARTIES In June, 1854, the Hincks-Morin government was defeated in the legislature on a vote of censure for delay in dealing with the question of the clergy reserves. A combination of Tories and Radicals deprived Hincks of all but five of his Upper Canadian supporters. Parliament was immediately dissolved, and the ensuing election was a mêlée in which Hincks Reformers, Brown Reformers, Tories and Clear Grits were mingled in confusion. Brown was returned for Lambton, where he de

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CHAPTER IX

SOME PERSONAL POLITICS After the burning of the parliament buildings in Montreal the seat of government oscillated between Quebec and Toronto. Toronto's turn came in the session of 1856. Macdonald was now the virtual, and was on the point of becoming the titular, leader of the party. Brown was equally conspicuous on the other side. During the debate on the address he was the central figure in a fierce struggle, and some one with a turn for statistics said that his name was mentioned three hundre

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CHAPTER X

THE "DOUBLE SHUFFLE" By his advocacy of representation by population, by his opposition to separate schools, and his championship of Upper Canadian rights, Mr. Brown gained a remarkable hold upon the people. In the general elections of 1857 he was elected for the city of Toronto, in company with Mr. Robinson, a Conservative. The election of a Liberal in Toronto is a rare event, and there is no doubt that Mr. Brown's violent conflict with the Roman Catholic Church contributed to his victory, if i

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CHAPTER XI

AGAINST AMERICAN SLAVERY In his home in Scotland Brown had been imbued with a hatred of slavery. He spent several years of his early manhood in New York, and felt in all its force the domination of the slave-holding element. Thence he moved to Canada, for many years the refuge of the hunted slave. It is estimated that even before the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, there were twenty thousand coloured refugees in Canada. It was customary for these poor creatures to hide by day and to travel by

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CHAPTER XII

BROWN AND THE ROMAN CATHOLICS That the Globe and Mr. Brown, as related in a previous chapter, became associated with Lord John Russell's bill and the "no popery" agitation in England, may be regarded as a mere accident. The excitement would have died out here as it died out in England, if there had not been in Canada such a mass of inflammable material—so many questions in which the relations of Church and State were involved. One of these was State endowment of denominational schools. During Br

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CHAPTER XIII

MOVING TOWARDS CONFEDERATION To whom is due the confederation of the British North American provinces is a long vexed question. The Hon. D'Arcy McGee, in his speech on confederation, gave credit to Mr. Uniacke, a leading politician of Nova Scotia, who in 1800 submitted a scheme of colonial union to the imperial authorities; to Chief-Justice Sewell, to Sir John Beverley Robinson, to Lord Durham, to Mr. P. S. Hamilton, a Nova Scotia writer, and to Mr. Alexander Morris, then member for South Lanark

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CHAPTER XIV

LAST YEARS OF THE UNION In 1860, Mr. Brown contemplated retiring from the leadership of the party. In a letter to Mr. Mowat, he said that the enemies of reform were playing the game of exciting personal hostility against himself, and reviving feelings inspired by the fierce contests of the past. It might be well to appoint a leader who would arouse less personal hostility. A few months later he had a long and severe illness, which prevented him from taking his place in the legislature during the

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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 Wa

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CHAPTER XVI

THE QUEBEC CONFERENCE The conference was held with closed doors, so as to encourage free discussion. Some fragmentary notes have been preserved. One impression derived from this and other records is that the public men of that day had been much impressed by the Civil War in the United States, by the apparent weakness of the central authority there, and by the dangers of State sovereignty. Emphasis was laid upon the monarchical element of the proposed constitution for Canada, and upon the fact th

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CHAPTER XVII

THE CONFEDERATION DEBATE The parliament of Canada assembled on January 19th, 1865, to consider the resolutions of the Quebec conference. The first presentation of the reasons for confederation was made in the Upper Chamber by the premier, Sir E. P. Taché. He described the measure as essential to British connection, to the preservation of "our institutions, our laws, and even our remembrances of the past." If the opportunity were allowed to pass by unimproved, Canada would be forced into the Amer

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CHAPTER XVIII

THE MISSION TO ENGLAND A new turn was given to the debate early in March by the defeat of the New Brunswick government in a general election, which meant a defeat for confederation, and by the arrival of news of an important debate in the House of Lords on the defences of Canada. The situation suddenly became critical. That part of the confederation scheme which related to the Maritime Provinces was in grave danger of failure. At the same time the long-standing controversy between the imperial a

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CHAPTER XIX

BROWN LEAVES THE COALITION The series of events which gradually drew Mr. Brown out of the coalition began with the death of Sir Etienne P. Taché on July 30th, 1865. By his age, his long experience, and a certain mild benignity of disposition, Taché was admirably fitted to be the dean of the coalition and the arbiter between its elements. He had served in Reform and Conservative governments, but without incurring the reproach of overweening love of office. With his departure that of Brown became

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CHAPTER XX

CONFEDERATION AND THE PARTIES We are to consider now the long-vexed question of the connection of Mr. Brown with the coalition of 1864. Ought he to have entered the coalition government? Having entered it, was he justified in leaving it in 1865? Holton and Dorion told him that by his action in 1864, he had sacrificed his own party interests to those of John A. Macdonald; that Macdonald was in serious political difficulty, and had been defeated in the legislature; that he seized upon Brown's sugg

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CHAPTER XXI

CANADA AND THE GREAT WEST Very soon after his arrival in Canada, Mr. Brown became deeply interested in the North-West Territories. He was thrown into contact with men who knew the value of the country and desired to see it opened for settlement. One of these was Robert Baldwin Sullivan, who, during the struggle for responsible government, wrote a series of brilliant letters over the signature of "Legion" advocating that principle, and who was for a time provincial secretary in the Baldwin-Lafont

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CHAPTER XXII

THE RECIPROCITY TREATY OF 1874 Mr. Brown's position in regard to reciprocity has already been described. He set a high value upon the American market for Canadian products, and as early as 1863 he had urged the government of that day to prepare for the renewal of the treaty. He resigned from the coalition ministry, because, to use his own words, "I felt very strongly that though we in Canada derived great advantage from the treaty of 1854, the American people derived still greater advantage from

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CHAPTER XXIII

CANADIAN NATIONALISM It will be remembered that after the victory won by the Reformers in 1848, there was an outbreak of radical sentiment, represented by the Clear Grits in Upper Canada and by the Rouges in Lower Canada. It may be more than a coincidence that there was a similar stirring of the blood in Ontario and in Quebec after the Liberal victory of 1874. The founding of the Liberal and of the Nation , of the National Club and of the Canada First Association, Mr. Blake's speech at Aurora, a

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CHAPTER XXIV

LATER YEARS In the preceding chapters it has been necessary to follow closely the numerous public movements with which Brown was connected. Here we may pause and consider some incidents of his life and some aspects of his character which lie outside of these main streams of action. First, a few words about the Brown household. Of the relations between father and son something has already been said. Of his mother, Mr. Alexander Mackenzie says: "We may assume that Mr. Brown derived much of his ene

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CHAPTER XXV

CONCLUSION The building in which the life of the Hon. George Brown was so tragically ended, was one that had been presented to him by the Reformers of Upper Canada before confederation "as a mark of the high sense entertained by his political friends of the long, faithful and important services which he has rendered to the people of Canada." It stood upon the north side of King Street, on ground which is now the lower end of Victoria Street, for the purpose of extending which, the building was d

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