If it were necessary to seek for justification of Mr. Brown's action in leaving the ministry at this time, it might be found either in his disagreement with the government on the question of policy, or in the treatment accorded to him by his colleagues. Sandfield Macdonald and his colleagues had on a former occasion recognized Mr. Brown's eminent fitness to represent Canada in the negotiations at Washington, not only because of his thorough acquaintance with the subject, but because of his steadily maintained attitude of friendship for the North. He was a member of the confederate council on reciprocity. His position in the ministry was not that of a subordinate, but of the representative of a powerful party. In resenting the manner in which his position was ignored, he does not seem to have exceeded the bounds of proper self-assertion. However, this controversy assumes less importance if it is recognized that the rupture was inevitable. The precise time or occasion is of less importance than the force which was always and under all circumstances operating to draw Mr. Brown away from an association injurious to himself and to Liberalism, in its broad sense as well as in its party sense, and to his influence as a public man. This had better be considered in another place.
We are to consider now the long-vexed question of the connection of Mr. Brown with the coalition of 1864. Ought he to have entered the coalition government? Having entered it, was he justified in leaving it in 1865? Holton and Dorion told him that by his action in 1864, he had sacrificed his own party interests to those of John A. Macdonald; that Macdonald was in serious political difficulty, and had been defeated in the legislature; that he seized upon Brown's suggestion merely as a means of keeping himself in office; that for the sake of office he accepted the idea of confederation, after having voted against it in Brown's committee. A most wise and faithful friend, Alexander Mackenzie, thought that Reformers should accept no representation in the cabinet, but that they should give confederation an outside support. That Macdonald and his party were immensely benefitted by Brown's action, there can be no doubt. For several years they had either been in Opposition, or in office under a most precarious tenure, depending entirely upon a majority from Lower Canada. By Brown's action they were suddenly invested with an overwhelming majority, and they had an interrupted lease of power for the nine years between the coalition and the Pacific Scandal. Admitting that the interest of the country warranted this sacrifice of the interests of the Liberal party, we have still to consider whether it was wise for Mr. Brown to enter the ministry, and especially to enter it on the conditions that existed. The Lower Canadian Liberals were not represented, partly because Dorion and Holton held back, and partly because of the prejudice of Taché and Cartier against the Rouges; and this exclusion was a serious defect in a ministry supposed to be formed on a broad and patriotic basis. The result was, that while the Liberals were in a majority in the legislature, they had only three representatives in a ministry of twelve. Such a government, with its dominant Conservative section led by a master in the handling of political combinations, was bound to lose its character of a coalition, and become Conservative out and out.