Document Information

Date: 1866-01-030
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “THE POSITION OF MR. BROWN” Montreal Herald (30 January, 1866)
Other formats: Click here to view the original document (PDF).

THE POSITION OF MR. BROWN.

—Mr. Brown begins to show signs of restlessness in the unwonted state of reticence to which he seems to have been doomed by an agreement with his late colleagues before he retired from association with them. For some days past the Globe has given us indications of this feeling on the part of the ex-President of the Council. Indeed, it has by a series of well chosen extracts, and by an ingenious arrangement of capitals and suggestions, made the turn which Mr. Brown wishes to give the affair, quite clear to all who can see through a mill stone, by applying their eyes to the hole. There is only one caution which we would throw out for the use of searchers after information through these oracular announcements. It is this—that it is very easy to see the impression of facts which Mr. Brown is seeking to make on the public mind; but it has happened heretofore, that considerable difference has arisen between the account given by a Minister who has gone out, and that given of the same things by the Ministers who have stayed in. We think, therefore, that when the time comes for a full clearing up of the causes of dispute, it is likely enough that there will be great diversity as to details between the authorities from whom we are to take these points in our history, and we shall not be surprized if there should occur a very unbrotherly wrangle and calling of hard names. Certain it is, that the excessively friendly spirit which the two parties professedly cherished towards each other, is rapidly evaporating. Indeed, on the ministerial side, we doubt whether there was any great profession of love lost from the first moment of the breach, and there are signs that the scorn which was dealt out on one hand, will be answered by something like the old outcries on the other. While our Toronto contemporary the Globe, for example, affects a reticence which we think absurd, on its own account, and in its editorial columns, it is daily publishing with marked emphasis, any article which it can cull from American or Canadian papers, in which it is affirmed that Mr. Galt is ready to make unworthy concessions to the United States, or in which such concessions are condemned. There is no doubt, as we have intimated, that our first conjecture on the subject of the quarrel was in error, and that instead of Mr. Brown retiring, because he conceived his colleagues were disposed to take a course that would be annoying to the Americans, he did in fact retire, because he thought that they were willing to yield too much. The only doubt we have is whether they have really gone to the extent of offering to change our excise laws, with all the logical consequences of that step, in order to purchase a temporary measure in the shape of an Act of Congress, which may be repealed next year. That statement, which we have already commented on, is copied by the Globe from the Trade Review with the remark that, inasmuch as the editor of that paper is in New York, it is likely that he is well informed.—Now, if the concessions proposed by Mr. Galt are the same as they were before Mr. Brown left the Cabinet, it cannot under any circumstances seem likely to him that Mr. Galt should make that concession, unless it is true that he was to do so, so that this remark in the Globe can have no other meaning than as it is a confirmation of the account which it accompanies. Affecting to tell nothing of the policy of the remaining Ministry, the Globe has, of course, to keep clear of comment; but, as in the manner already pointed out, it has affirmed the truth of a borrowed suggestion, so it fills its columns with borrowed condemnations of the course which it is said is to be taken. In the same spirit it prints a number of extracts containing the conjectures which have been made of the cause of the ministerial rupture, and it heads a copy of Mr. Galt’s telegram, announcing the event to the Government of Nova Scotia, “ From a curious telegram from Mr. Galt.” But the nearest approach perhaps to a manifestation of its old spirit appeared in the number of Friday last. One of the Western papers had been repeating, what it must be confessed is now a tolerably stale piece of news, that Mr. Brown was killed at last—and no mistake this time;—on which that gentleman’s organ begs its friend to avoid any premature mourning for the supposed deceased, and goes on to give its views as to the opinions which the People of Upper Canada will form upon the subject. The leading idea in these opinions is that Representation according to Population has received an immense lift since the Hon. George’s short accession to power. The honest yeomen, sitting by their chimney sides, and reflecting upon the deeds of their political hero, will, says the Globe, believe that he went into office only to serve them, and that he has served them, by “extorting from the enemies” of Upper Canada the admission, which can never be recalled, that she is entitled to seventeen representatives more than she has, and to an addition of twelve after the census of 1871 shall have been taken. But who are the “enemies of Upper Canada,” when, a few weeks ago, she had nothing but friends? Alas! my masters, they are none others than “nos amis les ennemis,” who were burning to do justice to Upper Canada so long as Mr. Brown was their colleague; but have become as wickedly and unreasonably inimical as ever to since he has departed from their councils. What is more, notwithstanding Mr. Brown being dead—though it would appear his whilome friends would very much prefer to see him bodily in Scotland than even once more metaphorically buried in Canada—he intimates a very strong inclination adverse alike to burial and to immigration, so that those of us who live will be likely to see how far the “enemies of Upper Canada” have agreed that she is entitled to from seventeen to twenty nine more members, and how far, if they have made the admission, they are ready to act upon it. In the meantime, it is very funny to find them all enemies again.