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concluded that “sectional equality” was a high-sounding phrase that masked an unscrupulous advantage for Canada East over CanadaWest. He had his own ugly phrase for it: “French domination,” and later simply “French Canadianism.”
    The fight between sectional equality and rep-by-pop lasted for a decade, and the survival of the union was always at stake. If French Canada would not accept rep-by-pop, would Canada West’s reformers tolerate sectional equality for the sake of the union? Some would, to Brown’s fury and frustration. John A. Macdonald, embattled-but-ever-resourceful leader of the small band of Upper Canadian conservatives, gleefully built his “Liberal–Conservative” party by drawing union-minded reformers, like Francis Hincks, into his coalitions with Cartier’s Lower Canadian conservative
bleus
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    But other reformers were actually more radical than Brown in their attack on sectional equality and on other institutions of the union. Brown himself had dubbed them the “Clear Grits.” If the union itself had to be sacrificed in order to bring in the rep-by-pop principle, the Clear Grits were ready to kill the union.
    Even more than George Brown and his fierce parliamentary liberalism, the Clear Grits constitute a demolition of the legend that “democracy” was unknown to mid-nineteenth-century Canadians. Even today, enacting their platform would constitute a radical remaking of Canadian politics. In the 1850s, their victory would have produced a constitutional earthquake. The Clear Grits – “all sand and no gravel, clear grit all the way through” – intended to scrape away all the undemocratic and unegalitarian elements of their society to produce a pure democracy in Upper Canada. Like George Brown, they were eager to sweep away religious privilege and the injustices suffered by Canada West in the union. But they went much farther than Brown.
    The Clear Grits attacked privilege of every other kind, too. Brown wanted the Queen to be a symbolic ruler, but still a revered one. The Clear Grits would replace the monarchy with a directly elected head of government. Brown had extolled parliamentary rule. Clear Grits proposed that every public official, from the governor down to localjudges and officials, should be directly elected and wield power directly. They believed public institutions must be cheap, simple, efficient, and as local as possible: every man should be his own lawyer as well as his own political representative. They wanted legislators limited to fixed two-year terms. They had not brought themselves to admit the equality of women, but they would give a vote (and a secret ballot) to every adult male.
    Of course, Clear Grits were rep-by-pop campaigners, for they were fierce partisans of the unfettered rule of the majority. Indeed, they were ready to be western separatists rather than compromise with the French Canadians of Canada East. Ready to junk British parliamentary traditions, they were also willing to consider annexation to the United States more favourably than dependence upon Catholic Quebec. But the radicalism of the Clear Grits did not mean they were fanciful, impractical theorists. They drew on close-by examples from the United States, but they also reflected British radicalism. Many British emigrants who had gladly left behind a Britain of privilege and inequality were ready to listen.
    Clear Grits celebrated the sturdy self-reliance and innate egalitarianism of the farmers who had been the main supporters of rebellion in 1837, and the romance of 1837’s lost cause became part of Clear Grit appeal. Upper Canada was a land of farmers, and farmers’ votes were the essential source of electoral success. If the farmers of Upper Canada drifted into Clear Grit thinking, reform-minded politicians would have to consider drifting with them.
    Brown had a moment when the constitutional dynamite of the Clear Grits – “organic change” was his shorthand for it – did attract