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 hundred and
seventy-two times. The air was stimulating, and Brown's contribution
to the debate was not of a character to turn away wrath.
Smarting under Brown's attack, Macdonald suddenly gave a new turn to
the debate. He charged that Brown, while acting as a member and
secretary of a commission appointed by the Lafontaine-Baldwin
government to inquire into the condition of the provincial
penitentiary, had falsified testimony, suborned convicts to commit
perjury, and obtained the pardon of murderers to induce them to give
false evidence. Though the assembly had by this time become accustomed
to hard hitting, this outbreak created a sensation. Brown gave an
indignant denial to the charges, and announced that he would move for
a committee of inquiry. He was angrily interrupted by the
solicitor-general, who flung the lie across the House. The
solicitor-general was a son of the warden of the penitentiary who had
been dismissed in consequence of the report of the commission.
Macdonald was a strong personal friend of the warden, and had
attempted some years before to bring his case before the assembly.
Brown promptly moved for the committee, and it was not long before he
presented that tribunal with a dramatic surprise. It was supposed that
the report of the penitentiary committee had been burned, and the
attack on Brown was made upon that supposition. When Mr. Brown was
called as a witness, however, he produced the original report with all
the evidence, and declared that it had never been out of his
possession "for one hour." The effect of this disclosure on his
assailants is shown in a letter addressed to the committee by
VanKoughnet, Macdonald's counsel: "Mr. Macdonald," he said, "had been
getting up his case on the assumption and belief that these minutes
had been destroyed and could not be procured, and much of the labour
he had been allowed to go to by Mr. Brown for that purpose would now
be thrown away; the whole manner of giving evidence, etc., would now
be altered."
The graver charges of subornation of perjury etc., were abandoned, and
Macdonald's friends confined themselves to an attempt to prove that
the inquiry had been unfairly conducted, that the warden had been
harshly treated, and the testimony not fairly reported. It was a
political committee with a Conservative majority, and the majority,
giving up all hope of injuring Brown, bent its energies to saving
Macdonald from the consequences of his reckless violence. The Liberal
members asked for a complete exoneration of Mr. Brown. A supporter of
the government was willing to exonerate Brown if Macdonald were
allowed to escape without censure. A majority of the committee,
however, took refuge in a rambling deliverance, which was sharply
attacked in the legislature. Sir Allan MacNab bluntly declared that
the charge had been completely disproved, and that the committee ought
to have had the manliness to say so. Drummond, a member of the
government, also said that the attack had failed. The accusers were
willing to allow the matter to drop, and as a matter of fact the
report was never put to a vote. But Mr. Brown would not allow them to
escape so easily. Near the close of the session he made a speech which
gave a new character to the discussion. Up to this time it had been a
personal question between Brown and his assailants. Brown dealt with
this aspect of the matter briefly but forcibly. He declared that not
only his conduct but the character of the other commissioners was
fully vindicated, and that a conspiracy to drive him from public life
had signally failed. Conservative members had met him and admitted
that there was no truth in the charges, but had pleaded that they must
go with the party. Members had actually been asked to "pair" off on
the question of upholding or destroying his character, before they had
heard his defence.
From these personal matters he returned to the abuses that had been
discovered by the commission. A terrible story of neglect and cruelty
was told. These charges did not rest on the testimony of prisoners.
They were sustained by the evidence of officers and by the records of
the institution. "If," said the speaker, "every word of the witnesses
called by the commissioners were struck out, and the case left to rest
on the testimony of the warden's own witnesses and the official
records of the prison, there would be sufficient to establish the
blackest record of wickedness that ever disgraced a civilized
country." Amid applause, expressions of amazement and cries of
"Shame!" from the galleries, Brown told of the abuses laid bare by the
prison commission. He told of prisoners fed with rotten meal and bread
infested with maggots; of children beaten with cat and rawhide for
childish faults; of a coffin-shaped box in which men and even women
were made to stand or rather crouch, their limbs cramped, and their
lungs scantily supplied with air from a few holes. Brown's speech
virtually closed the case, although Macdonald strove to prove that
the accounts of outrages were exaggerated, that the warden, Smith, was
himself a kind-hearted man, and that he had been harshly treated by
the commissioners.
In a letter written about this time, Macdonald said that he was
carrying on a war against Brown, that he would prove him a most
dishonest, dishonourable fellow, "and in doing so I will only pay him
a debt that I owe him for abusing me for months together in his
newspaper."[10] Whatever the provocation may have been, the personal
relations of the two men were further embittered by this incident.
Eight years afterwards they were members of the coalition ministry by
which confederation was brought about, and Brown's intimate friend,
Alexander Mackenzie, says that the association was most distasteful to
Brown, on account of the charges made in connection with the prison
commission. That the leaders of the two parties were not merely
political opponents but personal enemies must have embittered the
party struggle; and it was certainly waged on both sides with fury,
and with little regard either for the amenities of life or for fair
play.
His work on the commission gave Brown a strong interest in prison
reform. While the work of the commission was fresh in his mind he
delivered an address in the Toronto Mechanics' Institute, in which he
sketched the history of prison reform in England and the United
States, and pointed out how backward Canada was in this phase of
civilization. He pleaded for a more charitable treatment of those on
whom the prison doors had closed. There were inmates of prisons who
would stand guiltless in the presence of Him who searches the heart.
There were guilty ones outside. We cannot, he said, expect human
justice to be infallible; but we must not draw a hard and fast line
between the world inside the prison and the world outside, as if the
courts of justice had the divine power of judging between good and
evil. In Canada, he said, we have no system of reforming the prisoner;
even the chaplain or the teacher never enters the prison walls.
"Children of eight and ten years of age are placed in our gaols,
surrounded by hundreds of the worst criminals in the province." He
went on to describe some of the evils of herding together hardened
criminals, children, and persons charged with trifling offences. He
advocated government inspection of prisons, a uniform system of
discipline, strict classification and separation, secular and
religious instruction, and the teaching of trades. The prisoner should
be punished, but not made to feel that he was being degraded by
society for the sake of revenge. Hope should be held out to those who
showed repentance. The use of the lash for trifling offences against
discipline was condemned. On the whole, his views were such as are
now generally accepted, and he may be regarded as one of the pioneers
of prison reform in Canada.
The habit of personal attack was further illustrated in the charge,
frequently made by Mr. Brown's enemies, that he had been a defaulter
in Scotland. The _North American_ had printed this accusation during
its fierce altercation with the _Globe_, but the editor, Mr.
Macdougall, had afterwards apologized, and explained that it had crept
into the paper during his absence and without his knowledge. In the
session of 1858, a Mr. Powell, member for Carleton, renewed the attack
in the House, and Mr. Brown made a reply of such compelling human
interest that not a word can be added or taken away. He said: "This is
not the first time that the insinuation has been made that I was a
defaulter in my native city. It has been echoed before now from the
organs of the ministry, and at many an election contest have I been
compelled to sit patiently and hear the tale recounted in the ears of
assembled hundreds. For fifteen years I have been compelled to bear in
silence these imputations. I would that I could yet refrain from the
painful theme, but the pointed and public manner in which the charge
has now been made, and the fear that the public cause with which I am
identified might suffer by my silence, alike tell me that the moment
has come when I ought to explain the transaction, as I have always
been able to explain it, and to cast back the vile charge of
dishonesty on those who dared to make it. That my father was a
merchant in the city of Edinburgh, and that he engaged in disastrous
business speculations commencing in the inflated times of 1825 and
1826, terminating ten years afterwards in his failure, is undoubtedly
true. And it is, unhappily, also true, that he did hold a public
office, and that funds connected with that office were, at the moment
of his sequestration, mixed up with his private funds, to the extent,
I believe, of two thousand eight hundred pounds. For this sum four
relatives and friends were sureties, and they paid the money. Part of
that money has been repaid; every sixpence of it will be paid, and
paid shortly. Property has been long set aside for the payment of that
debt to its utmost farthing. My father felt that while that money
remained unpaid there was a brand on himself and his family, and he
has wrought, wrought as few men have wrought, to pay off, not only
that, but other obligations of a sacred character. Many a bill of
exchange, the proceeds of his labour, has he sent to old creditors who
were in need of what he owed. For myself, sir, I have felt equally
bound with my father; as his eldest son I felt that the fruits of my
industry should stand pledged until every penny of those debts was
paid and the honour of my family vindicated. An honourable member
opposite, whom I regret to hear cheering on the person who made the
attack, might have known that, under the legal advice of his
relative, I long ago secured that in the event of my death before the
accomplishment of our long-cherished purpose, after the payment of my
own obligations, the full discharge of those sacred debts of my father
should stand as a first charge on my ample estate. Debts, sir, which I
was no more bound in law to pay than any gentleman who hears me. For
the painful transaction to which I have been forced to allude, I am no
more responsible than any gentleman in this assembly. It happened in
1836; I was at that time but seventeen years of age, I was totally
unconnected with it, but, young as I was, I felt then, as I feel now,
the obligation it laid upon me, and I vowed that I should never rest
until every penny had been paid. There are those present who have
known my every action since I set foot in this country; they know I
have not eaten the bread of idleness, but they did not know the great
object of my labour. The one end of my desire for wealth was that I
might discharge those debts and redeem my father's honour. Thank God,
sir, my exertions have not been in vain. Thank God, sir, I have long
possessed property far more than sufficient for all my desires. But,
as those gentlemen know, it is one thing in this country to have
property, and another to be able to withdraw a large sum of money from
a business in active operation; and many a night have I laid my head
on my pillow after a day of toil, estimating and calculating if the
time had yet arrived, when, with justice to those to whom I stood
indebted, and without fear of embarrassment resulting, I might venture
to carry out the purpose of my life. I have been accused of being
ambitious; I have been charged with aspiring to the office of prime
minister of this great country and of lending all my energies to the
attainment of that end; but I only wish I could make my opponents
understand how infinitely surpassing all this, how utterly petty and
contemptible in my thoughts have been all such considerations, in
comparison with the one longing desire to discharge those debts of
honour and vindicate those Scottish principles that have been
instilled into me since my youth. The honourable member for Cornwall
[John Sandfield Macdonald] is well aware that every word I have spoken
to-night has been long ago told him in private confidence, and he
knows, too, that last summer I was rejoicing in the thought that I was
at last in a position to visit my native land with the large sum
necessary for all the objects I contemplated, and that I was only
prevented from doing so by the financial storm which swept over the
continent. Such, sir, are the circumstances upon which this attack is
founded. Such the facts on which I have been denounced as a public
defaulter and refugee from my native land. But why, asked the person
who made the charge, has he sat silent under it? Why if the thing is
false has he endured it so many years? What, sir, free myself from
blame by inculpating one so dear! Say 'It was not I who was in fault,
it was my father'? Rather would I have lost my right arm than utter
such a word! No, sir, I waited the time when the charge could be met
as it only might be fittingly met; and my only regret even now is that
I have been compelled to speak before those debts have been entirely
liquidated. But it is due, sir, to my aged father that I explain that
it has not been with his will that these imputations have been so long
pointed at me, and that it has only been by earnest remonstrance that
I have prevented his vindicating me in public long ere now. No man in
Toronto, perhaps, is more generally known in the community, and I
think I could appeal even to his political opponents to say if there
is a citizen of Toronto at this day more thoroughly respected and
esteemed. With a full knowledge of all that has passed, and all the
consequences that have flowed from a day of weakness, I will say that
an honester man does not breathe the air of heaven; that no son feels
prouder of his father than I do to-day; and that I would have
submitted to the obloquy and reproach of his every act, not fifteen
years, but fifty--ay, have gone down to the grave with the cold shade
of the world upon me, rather than that one of his gray hairs should
have been injured."
Public opinion was strongly influenced in Mr. Brown's favour by this
incident. "The entire address," said a leading Conservative paper next
day, "forms the most refreshing episode which the records of the
Canadian House of Commons possess. Every true-hearted man must feel
proud of one who has thus chivalrously done battle for his gray-haired
sire. We speak deliberately when asserting that George Brown's
position in the country is at this moment immeasurably higher than it
ever previously has been. And though our political creed be
diametrically antipodal to his own, we shall ever hail him as a credit
to the land we love so well."
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Pope's _Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald_, p. 161.