that Brown and his friends had brought punishment on themselves by their thoughtless occupancy of office which they could not continue to hold, and which yet made reelection necessary. It is also true that when Macdonald led his men, after their brief retirement, into power once more, he had law on his side when he evaded the need for re-election by a general 'shuffle round' of offices, and a reshuffle into the old places-all within twenty-four hours. No doubt the law read that a minister who'shall resign his office, and within one month after his resignation accept any other of the said offices, shall not thereby vacate his seat'; but no politician who cared for the honour of his party would have induced his cabinet to perform the sorry farce; and the episode goes far to justify the taunts of lack of principle and of honour which his opponents flung so freely at the great liberal-conservative leader. But, after all, the supreme question was, 'By what machinery shall Canada at once maintain a union, and yet give to either side its due recognition?'

Brown and his 'Grits' had at first a ready answer, 'Representation by population'; and, no doubt, had Durham's vision of the future of Canada been realizable, a measure of representation by population, introduced by politicians less vocal and more tactful than Brown, might have satisfied all longings. But the idea was quite impracticable. It swamped the French vote without granting any kind of compensation to French nationality. It would have been a species of terms dictated by a triumphant Protestant West to a defeated and humiliated Catholic East. No man recognized the practical limitations of the idea so directly, if also so unconsciously, as George Brown; for in the leading articles of the Globe for Monday, August 2, 1858, written in his brief moment of power, there is a vagueness and verbosity curiously unlike Brown's usual point and strength-he knew that his favourite measure was impossible of support in its native baldness. The Toronto gathering in 1859 gave more convincing evidence that the prophet of representation by population found his burden inconvenient when the day for action came. The importance of the great agitation, and

its real value, proceeded from the reality of the difficulty at which it pointed. As a suggested remedy it lacked the first elements of practical usefulness.

The other early answer was the 'double majority,' an expedient which at least created fewer points of friction than representation by population. But the policy of the double majority was too futile to be accepted by any responsible politicians, or to be practised long without having its impossibility revealed. Head never proved himself so sound a statesman as when he wrote, 'I have told Colonel Taché that I expect the government formed by him to disavow the principle of a "double majority."' It was the chief practical exponent of the policy, John Sandfield Macdonald, who, in the irony of fate, reduced his own theory to a final absurdity. That ministry of caretakers,' the Macdonald-Sicotte, later the Macdonald-Dorion administration, had, if it really did possess any principles, the practice of the double majority as its distinctive ideal. R. W. Scott and the separate schools applied the necessary test, and as the ministry reeled out of the struggle, intact, but with its fundamental principle annihilated, even 'double majority' men realized that their maxim would not work in real life. It cut at the very roots of cabinet unity; it introduced a new complexity into a cabinet system already complex enough; and it made the life of every administration dependent on stray currents and twists in political opinions, to the elimination of all solidity and permanence.

It was at this stage that the true solution of the difficulty became plain: Confederation, with the local differences safeguarded by local assemblies, and the general balance readjusted in a joint or general parliament. With the constitutional aspects of the question the present chapter does not profess to deal, but only with its relation to political movements before 1867.

THE CONFEDERATION MOVEMENT

The question of Confederation as a practical solution to existing difficulties entered Canadian politics with Galt's

action in 1858. No doubt the idea had often been expressed in books and speeches at an earlier date. Pre-Rebellion leaders like Robinson and Sewell had given it very concrete expression; the Durham Report may be quoted as one of the sources; Macdonald's British American League had made the idea the chief plank in its platform. Russell and Grey had speculated on Confederation as a means of raising the tone of Canadian politics; and the action of the Maritime Provinces, and more particularly Nova Scotia, some years earlier, preparatory to a smaller scheme, had its due influence on the western colony. But in politics an idea dates from the day when some responsible politician makes a definite proposal, and is prepared to stand or fall by his measure. There are many putative 'Fathers of Confederation,' but Galt gave it definite place in the programme of a recognized political party. On October 22, 1858, Head wrote to Lytton :

Early last session Mr Galt, then unconnected with the ministry, put on the votes a notice for the consideration of it [Confederation]. . . . I found him and several of the gentlemen about to assume office, deeply impressed with the idea that in some such union alone, could be found the ultimate solution of the great questions which had been made a ground of agitation by Mr Brown and his friends at the general election, viz. the existing equality of representation of Upper and Lower Canada, and the alleged injustice inflicted on the former by such equality.

Thereafter, events moved as quickly as might be expected in an agitation which involved so many different interests, and where the British ministers were necessarily in ignorance of the needs of the case and the appropriateness of the solution. Galt's first move came to nothing, thanks chiefly to British immobility. Then came Brown's great Toronto Conference of 1859. The policy there elaborated passed into parliament in the following session. As some still count Brown one of the 'chief founders of Confederation,' it is well to state his position as defined in these years.

In the motion of April 16, 1860, he held

that the existing Legislative Union . . . has failed to realize the anticipations of its promoters, has resulted in a heavy debt, burdensome taxation, great political abuses, and universal dissatisfaction; and it is the natural conviction of this assembly, from the antagonism developed through difference of origin, local interests, and other causes that the Union, in its present form, can no longer be continued with advantage to the people.

But Brown was unwilling to await the slow solution of a combined movement of all the British North American provinces. That, in the language of the conference, 'would be no remedy for our present difficulties'; and he proposed a minor movement, with full representation given to local feeling, and some' joint authority' acting in place of a federal government. In other words, Brown and his friends were open enemies to the practical proposal for a general union. In clear contradistinction are the decisive support of Confederation by Galt, and the unqualified approval of John A. Macdonald: 'The only feasible scheme which presents itself to my mind as a remedy for the evils complained of, is a confederation of all the provinces.'

As time advanced the British government saw more and more clearly how greatly it stood to gain by the Union. The action of the United States over the Trent affair, the growing alienation between Britain and the Northern States, after 1861, and the Fenian plans for the invasion of Canada, which kept British consuls and diplomatists busy throughout 1865 and 1866, all forced on the mother country the truth that a united British North America was a much more available imperial asset than the straggling and dislocated units. of the status quo.

With the separate conferences this chapter has not specially to deal; the issue is rather the relation of Confederation to Canadian party politics, and one may pass at once to the crucial years 1864 and 1865. By 1864 the party difficulty had reached the expected impasse. Liberal-conservatism under the guidance of Macdonald, Taché and Cartier had done its best with the existing material, and had registered its comparative failure in 1862. But no opposi

tion could attempt what the one adequately organized party had found itself too weak to perform. The Sandfield Macdonald ministries simply registered new failures, and when even Sandfield Macdonald gave up in 1864, and the liberal-conservatives once more found themselves in a minority of two, the final crisis had been reached.

Then occurred what is perhaps the most important episode in modern Canadian politics. Events had been surely making very plain the truth, that for Canada to play at British party politics was a serious error, since the old British opinions had long since grown unreal, old British party names become mere nicknames, and the local divisions of the Canadian parliament as hurtful as they were needlessly exciting. Let it be once more asserted-Canada had need, not of parties, but of a collective and representative administration which would take all the sound propositions of all groups, and weld them into a great national administrative policy. And foremost among the propositions of such a party must be, not a measure granting representation by population in all its bald simplicity, nor yet a sanction to the double majority principle, but a statesmanlike bill uniting Canada and the other provinces on a federal basis.

In the events which followed the government defeat of June 14, 1864, it is hard, perhaps unnecessary, to allocate the honours, for all concerned acted as true-hearted Canadian patriots-Morris and Galt in negotiating for the meeting, Brown for consenting to what was the most heroic act of self-restraint and of patriotic moderation in his career, Macdonald and Cartier for seeing clearly the exact terms on which the coalition should be made, and for proclaiming Confederation as the one true goal for Canadian politicians.

Between Friday, June 17, and the following Wednesday the plans along which modern Canada was to progress were made, and a government both liberal and conservative, strongly tinged with Upper Canadian feeling, and yet equally fair to the French-Canadian population, came into existence, to secure a scientific government for a great self-governing dominion. It is true, of course, that Brown was not at first willing to accept the larger scheme, but he and his party