ever have brought about either the union of the jarring
provinces, or established the principles of popular government. It is
not apparent how half a dozen {68} irreconcilable little factions could
have combined to thwart the sullen determination of John Neilson's
French-Canadian party to wreck the Union. There was a crying need for
intervention by a true statesman from without, who, with his eyes
unblinded by local prejudices and passions, could take his stand above
all parties, and, in benevolent despotism, lead them into concerted
action for their own good and the good of the country. Equally clamant
was the need of information and instruction. Sometimes Canadians are
inclined to write the tale of the building of the nation as if that
splendid fabric were all the work of their own hands, as if 'our own
arm had brought salvation unto us.' This is manifest fallacy. Without
a Durham to diagnose the malady and a Sydenham to apply the remedy, the
condition of the body politic must have been past cure. At least, no
other physicians could avail. Now, it was a matter of treatment and
careful nursing, and being instructed, we were capable of following the
doctor's orders.

The Reform leaders were very unlike each other in character and
antecedents. Robert Baldwin was the son of William Warren Baldwin,
whose father (also a Robert Baldwin) {69} belonged to the humbler class
of landed gentry in Ireland. Tempted, like so many others of his
class, by the bait of cheap land, he came to Canada to 'farm.' His son
William studied medicine at Edinburgh, became a doctor, and, with Irish
powers of adaptation, soon exchanged physic for the more profitable
pursuit of law. Robert the grandson was born in York (now Toronto) in
1804. He became one of 'Johnny' Strachan's pupils at the Grammar
School, achieving in time the distinction of being 'head boy'; after
which he studied law in the old, leisurely, articled-clerk system, and
finally became his father's partner. An opportune legacy enabled his
father to buy a large property outside 'muddy York,' on which, in
accordance with hereditary landholding instinct, he endeavoured to
establish his family, after the old-world fashion. A broad
thoroughfare in Toronto preserves the name of Baldwin's ambition,
'Spadina.'

Like his father, Robert Baldwin was a Moderate Reformer. He entered
public life (1829) in his native town as draftsman of a petition to
George IV in what was known as