behind the renewed demand for rep by pop. There should have been a string of powerful Globe editorials for reprinting throughout the satellite party papers, and more of his glowing speeches at Reform meetings to rouse the electors and keep their representatives in line. That, at least, had been the usual practice. But it was markedly absent this time. For the leader was seriously ill; he could not fulfil commitments. The Globe gradually lost way. George Brown’s health had finally collapsed from constant strain. He had gone down with pleurisy at the very moment when his leadership was most required.17
His health had been declining for some weeks, and still he forced himself to work at the Globe office. But, on March 2, he had to take to bed and admit to “severe indisposition” – which rapidly became far worse.18 “The disease,” he said later, “had fastened on me long before it became fully developed, and was undoubtedly caused by the great exertions I had to make to put my house in order – for there was no mercy.”19 He had had to strive so long and hard with financial problems, had never been really free of them since the onset of the depression in 1857. And, in the last year, there had been the costly outlay on the Globe, the mortgaging of Bothwell for the $20,000 loan, the slander that this had roused, and the further strain put on his credit and his feelings through the purposeful attacks on his business reputation.
Political troubles and his recent busy speaking tour had scarcely lightened George Brown’s load. Moreover, at the close of navigation the outlook for the Canadian lumber trade had been gloomy in the extreme, for the American market had seemed to freeze with panic in the mounting secession crisis – a matter of particular concern to the owner of the Bothwell mills. With the approach of spring, however, and gathering military preparations, trade had begun to come to life again; in fact, there would soon be a rising war-time market in the northern states. Furthermore, Brown’s expensive improvements in the Globe, by now seemed to be justifying themselves: at all events, by April of 1861 that paper was apologizing for temporary delays in delivery caused by a forty-per-cent increase in circulation.20 And so its proprietor shortly could give thanks “that I was not driven to my bed until the ship was safe inside the breakers in comparatively smoother waters than it has known for years”.21
But by that time all the damage had been done. Luther Holton put it simply: “You have spent so much of your apparently exhaustless energy that you have overwrought the machine.”22 At forty-two, Brown, worn out with business worry and with the outpouring of vitality on so many projects, had finally broken a constitution that had once seemed indestructible. Of course, he had been ill before. But never for so long, or with such lasting effect.
2
For two months and more he lay in the quiet house on Church Street, solicitously tended by his elderly parents, his sister Isabella, and sister-in-law Sarah, while physicians consulted over him and friends called by to learn of his condition. The actual peak of his illness passed fairly early, and when the severe inflammation had subsided Brown briefly felt that he would be up and doing in a few days. Yet this, he found, “was only the buoyancy of fever; as it lowered, my utter prostration soon appeared.”23 He was prescribed the proper nourishing foods, but could not digest them. He had to go on a debilitating Victorian regimen of “stimulants”, and continued terribly weak, subject to a racking cough that would not leave him. At length, by early May, the patient had improved enough to drive out in the carriage for an hour a day in the mild spring air. Still, his weakness was such that when after nine weeks he tried to put pen to paper, it was – he said – “like the scrawl of an old man of eighty”.24
Gradually strength returned, until he was able to bear the fatigue of a journey to Clifton Springs, a highly regarded health resort near Rochester, to take its water-cure and convalesce for a week or two further – though he would later claim that “fresh air, beefsteaks and London porter set me up”.25 Early in June he could at last go back to the Globe office for light duties, while still not fully recovered.26 And in the meantime he had missed the entire parliamentary session.
The House had no less missed him. It had been a dull, inconsequential sitting. One Liberal comrade wrote to him from Quebec: “Your absence has in a party sense been useful. It has demonstrated to all that you are a political necessity, and not a ‘governmental impossibility’! Even ministerialists admit that the House is without interest when it is without Brown.”27 Representation by population had certainly been debated; and while it had been lost, 67 to 49, the wholly Upper Canadian vote supporting it had included a number of Conservatives. Hence the government had wisely declared that the principle was not a “cabinet question”, thus allowing their followers to go two ways upon it, and avoiding for themselves the consequences of a nasty split. But in the absence of the senior member for Toronto no one had effectively exploited the situation. In fact, the best speech on rep by pop was made by Premier Cartier, a five-hour oration that decisively and defiantly rejected it, despite Upper Canada’s now admitted lead of more than a quarter of a million people. Cartier condemned the proposal utterly, both as principle and practice, declaring in one fervent passage that “the codfish of Gaspé Bay should also be represented, as well as the 250,000 Clear Grits of Western Canada”:28 a highly quotable remark that did not endear him to Upper Canadian Liberals, though it well might to their newspaper editors.
Otherwise, the session mainly showed the ineptitude of the Reform opposition, once more demonstrating that if some of the party could not do with Brown, none could do without him. They were an oddly uncertain group, deprived of the man they had come so greatly to rely on. William McDougall, who was still writing for the Globe, when he could, reported back to the invalid in Toronto to reveal the indecision and weakness of the rather chastened bunch of Grits in parliament.29 “There is no one on our side,” he lamented, “who will really go into a fight of this kind with vigour and skill. Mowat is too wishy-washy and besides is friendly to John A. personally. Connor might be inclined to work to pay him off for his attack … but he is not well posted and too indolent.…”30 Then there was the lack of leadership: “I have tried to push out Mowat, but he is afraid – wants the leadership put to commission.” Accordingly, a “sort of committee of safety” of four or five had been recommended, though McDougall personally preferred to accept Dorion as nominal leader.31
In any case, Michael Foley was out of the running, although by a good speech on the address he had “re-established himself somewhat in the confidence of the party”. There was still the suspicion that he would intrigue with the unpredictable Sandfield Macdonald – besides a problem of his recurrent drinking bouts.32 Mowat also wrote, reporting that Foley’s drinking had grown “very bad”, adding a bit piously: “Poor fellow, he is always so mortified afterwards.”33
Still further, there was no effective critic of the ministry’s vulnerable financial policies; in Brown’s absence, Finance Minister Galt would have it all his own way. The party, said McDougall dolefully, had “no man of commercial training combined with political knowledge and speaking talent, but yourself”.34 If there were men like William Howland with the requisite business background, they lacked force in talking to the House; Holton would have been invaluable, but was still out of parliament – and so on.35 The dismal picture might have given Brown the satisfaction of seeing how much he was needed; but it was small comfort for him, fretting helplessly in Toronto, to watch the whole session being thrown away.
And then, early in June, parliament was dissolved and a general election called. Reformers wanted George Brown; his Toronto constituency besought him to run again. He would have to go into the battle weak and unready as he was, with a party that he had not been able to pull together again, and, indeed, that had never fully recovered from the defeats and dissensions of the previous year. He had seldom entered an election campaign under less favourable auspices.
On June 7, the Toronto Reform Association called a general meeting in the Mechanics’ Institute
