government resigned, and just afterwards buttonholed a furious ex-premier, George Etienne Cartier, to express his regret. Replied Cartier with eyes flashing and fists clenched: “Well, I have saved the honour of my country against those Grits and Rouges – traitres, traitres.”132 But, Watkin noted, “Mr. J. A. Macdonald, afterwards, took the matter very quietly, merely remarking that the slightest tact might have prevented the occurrence.”133 Whatever the case, both the passionate and the politic were out of office at last. It remained to be seen what new combination could be put together to run the province.
7
It might appear that the most likely way to form a new administration would be to call on the leader of the largest Liberal group in opposition, Michael Foley. But Foley, who had only been awarded the leadership after Mowat and McDougall had both refused it, had pretty conclusively proved his incapacity for command during the session, and ended in violent, open quarrels with his colleagues.134 Yet it still seemed strange when the Governor-General instead approached Sandfield Macdonald, that temperamental, stiff-necked individualist who was, as he rather prided himself, a kind of political Ishmaelite in Upper Canada Reform. Nevertheless, perhaps his very isolation would make it easier for a new combination to gather around him. In any event, he was more than willing to try.
Certainly the Lower Canada opposition would not have joined readily with any thoroughgoing Grit Liberal, and whole-hearted advocate of rep by pop. And Sandfield Macdonald, of course, was not only an Upper Canada Reformer of undoubted seniority and standing, but also a tireless champion of his own pet scheme for keeping the existing union operating – the double majority principle. There was another possible explanation for his choice, a more Machiavellian one: that Cartier and John A. Macdonald, as retiring ministers, had advised the governor to call on Sandfield partly in an attempt to head off rep by pop, and partly in the expectation that he would have to call in Conservatives to fill out the Upper Canadian half of his ministry – so that, to all intents and purposes, the old Coalition rule would return once more.
Thoughts such as these must have run through George Brown’s mind when on Wednesday, May 21, he learned by telegraph of Sandfield’s opening negotiations at Quebec with Foley, McDougall, and Louis Sicotte for Lower Canada.135 In the two days following, the Montreal Telegraph Company’s line flashed a series of important messages back and forth between Quebec and Globe headquarters in Toronto. McDougall wired his former leader and old master on the journal, asking for advice. Should he enter a cabinet formed “on opposition principles?”136 Brown, waiting for more news, which was coming through in snatches from the Globe’s Quebec reporter, J. K. Edwards, hedged carefully, not yet certain of what this new ministry might mean. He could not advise McDougall on his own decision, he wired back; yet if reliable Reformers should compose the cabinet, and “policy on the representation question is satisfactory, I will cordially support the government”.137
But then came a telegram from Edwards, giving both the settled list of ministers and a statement of the proposed government’s policy received direct from Sandfield Macdonald.138 McDougall, Foley, Howland, and Adam Wilson were all going in – and had agreed that representation by population would be dropped! Swiftly Brown cancelled his pledge of support. “Are you all mad there? ” he telegraphed incredulously.139 McDougall returned: “Not mad. If get fair play can make great reforms. Have done best possible as friends here believe you could not do more except allow corruptionists return. Do you advise this? Party after full discussion unanimously agree we ought to go in.”140
The next few days brought a clearer picture, as Brown’s Liberal associates at Quebec sent him long and rather defensive letters, all hastening to explain to the man who was still the party overlord – and controller of the potent Globe - the reasons why they had set aside their chief party principle. There had been an Upper Canada Reform caucus on May 23, which had approved the new ministry, or at least conceded it “a fair and liberal trial”.141 This, it seemed, was as far as the confused and reluctant Grits would go. It was a close vote, and far from the “unanimous” agreement that McDougall had breezily indicated. Summing up by mail, Edwards reported: “The party generally are surprised at McDougall and feel he has given them a hard dose to swallow, and their only reason for going into it is because they think anything is better than the late government.”142
That, moreover, was the line taken by Oliver Mowat in writing to the Globe owner immediately after the caucus. Brown had confidence in Mowat. Foley had always been willing to enter a “moderate” Liberal government, constitutional reform or no, while Howland and Wilson were weak enough to be swayed in that direction. As for McDougall, inherently hasty and overoptimistic, he was simply doing what he had done years before, when in 1851 he had pushed the original Clear Grits into a futile combination with moderate Hincksites in a mistaken belief that once in power they could achieve “great reforms”. Yet if the competent, substantial Mowat – rather stuffy perhaps, but wholly sound on rep by pop – could in any way accept this new and clearly retrogressive ministry, then possibly Brown might also swallow it.
Decidedly, Mowat was far from happy over the Sandfield Macdonald-Sicotte administration. “On R by P,” he noted gravely, “the new cabinet has a worse policy than the old.”143 The former at least had made it an open question, while this one would vote “all intentions inexpedient on the subject”. Still, the issue for the moment, as Mowat saw it, was whether to sustain a cabinet drawn entirely from the opposition or to allow the old gang back. At the least, he expected such disclosures now from the investigation of the public accounts as would ruin the prestige of the former lot forever. Furthermore, he held that “no govt. to carry R. by P. could just now be formed”.144 Rep by pop would not die, he said; he and other Grits had explicitly informed the new ministers that they would press it unyieldingly. All in all, this was the only possible choice in a choice of evils: to accept a régime of the moderates for the present.
Correspondents other than Mowat argued more positively in favour of the Macdonald-Sicotte ministry. From the Upper House, Fergusson Blair (who had changed his name from simpler days when he was A. J. Fergusson, and George Brown’s first follower in parliament) expressed his confidence that on everything but the representation question the government would prove excellent – “and the reign of corruption be brought to a close”.145 But probably Brown paid more attention to his old Lambton agent, Alexander Mackenzie, who, while still “a full private of recent standing” in parliament, had zealously identified himself as “an out-and-outer”.146 Mackenzie would accept the new Reform cabinet, bad as it was, because he believed that Sandfield Macdonald’s original aim had been to bring Conservatives into a coalition with him. “I am tolerably well satisfied,” he asserted, “that the only part of the plan which failed was the introduction of the intended Tory constituent.”147 Hence it was necessary to stand by the present set in office, and watch Sandfield like a hawk.
With this Brown had to rest for the moment. He did not question the integrity of those who approved the new ministry, though he continued to doubt their judgment. The Globe still condemned the abandoning of rep by pop, refusing to believe that better arrangements could not have been made if Upper Canadians had held to their principles.148 Particularly it attacked “the monstrous doctrine” of the double majority set forth in the new cabinet’s official statement of policy.149 This viewed the union as a sort of bastard federation, wherein the particular affairs of each section would be managed in parliament by its own sectional majority, and no local legislation would be forced on either Canada against the majority vote of its own representatives. Perhaps the end was right; but the method was wrong. It offered the worst of two worlds: neither a true federation nor yet a real legislative union. Apart from that, the principle was clumsy and impractical, for it could well require a government to base itself on two antagonistic sectional majorities: Grits and Bleus, for instance – a position of paralysis, to say the least.
In any event, Brown had not
