tation as to
1,400,000. So George Brown, speaking from his place in Parliament, and
using, at the same time, his extraordinary and unequalled influence as
editor of _The Globe_, flung himself into the fray, seeking, as his
motion of 1857 ran, "that the representation of the people in
Parliament should be based upon population, without regard to a
separating line between Upper and Lower Canada."[14] His thesis was
too cogent, and appealed too powerfully to all classes of the Upper
Canada community, to be anything but irresistible. Even Macdonald,
whose political existence depended on his alliance with the French,
knew that his rival had made many converts among the British
Conservatives. "It is an open question," he wrote of representation by
population, in 1861, "and you know two of my colleagues voted in its
favour."[15]

Yet nothing was better calculated to rouse into wild agitation the
quiescent feeling of French nationalism. The attempt of Durham and his
successors to end, by natural operation, the separate {312} existence
of French nationality was now being renewed with far greater vigour,
and with all the weight of a normal constitutional reform. If George
Brown was hateful to the French electorate because of his Protestant
and anti-clerical agitation, he was even more odious as the statesman
who threatened, in the name of Canadian autonomy, the existence of old
French tradition, custom, and right. It was in answer to this twofold
difficulty that Canadian statesmen definitely thought of Confederation.
There were many roads leading to that event--the desire of Britain for
a more compact and defensible colony; the movement in the maritime
provinces for a local federation; the dream, or vague aspiration,
cherished by a few Canadians, of a vaster dominion, and one free from
petty local divisions and strifes. But it was no dream or imperial
ideal which forced Canadian statesmen into action; it was simply the
desire, on the one hand, to give to the progressive west the increased
weight it claimed as due to its numbers; and on the other, to safeguard
the ancient ways and rights of the French community. From this point
of view, it was George Brown, the man who preached representation by
population in season and out of season, who actually forced {313}
Canadian statesmen to have resort to a measure, the details of which he
himself did not at first approve; and the argument used to drive the
point home was not imp