rtful to the best interests of
the province and entailing an enormous expense to sustain the hosts of
teachers that so prodigal a system of public instruction must
inevitably entail."

This, however, was not the only question at issue between Mr. Brown
and the Roman Catholic Church. It happened, as has been said above,
that on his first entry into parliament, the place of meeting was the
city of Quebec. The Edinburgh-bred man found himself in a Roman
Catholic city, surrounded by every evidence of the power of the
Church. As he looked up from the floor of the House to the galleries
he saw a Catholic audience, its character emphasized by the appearance
of priests clad in the distinctive garments of their orders. It was
his duty to oppose a great mass of legislation intended to strengthen
that Church and to add to its privileges. His spirit rose and he grew
more dour and resolute as he realized the strength of the forces
opposed to him.

It would be doing an injustice to the memory of Mr. Brown to gloss
over or minimize a most important feature of his career, or to offer
apologies which he himself would have despised. The battle was not
fought with swords of lath, and whoever wants to read of an
old-fashioned "no popery" fight, carried on with abounding fire and
vigour, will find plenty of matter in the files of the _Globe_ of the
fifties. His success in the election of 1857, so far as Upper Canada
was concerned, and especially his accomplishment of the rare feat of
carrying a Toronto seat for the Reform party, was largely due to an
agitation that aroused all the forces and many of the prejudices of
Protestantism. Yet Brown kept and won many warm friends among Roman
Catholics, both in Upper and in Lower Canada. His manliness attracted
them. They saw in him, not a narrow-minded and cold-hearted bigot,
seeking to force his opinions on others, but a brave and generous man,
fighting for principles. And in Lower Canada there were many Roman
Catholic laymen whose hearts were with him, and who were themselves
entering upon a momentous struggle to free the electorate from
clerical control. In his fight for the separation of Church and State,
he came into conflict, not with Roman Catholics alone. In his own
Presbyterian Church, at the time of the disruption, he strongly upheld
the side which was identified with liberty. For several years after
his arrival in Canada he was fighting against the special privileges
of the Anglican C