e pointed out that the application had been delayed five
months after the publication of the article. He contended that
Wilkinson was not prejudiced by the _Globe_ article and had no
standing in the case. In a lengthy affidavit he entered into the whole
question of the expenditure of the two parties in the election of
1872, including the circumstances of the Pacific Scandal. He repeated
on oath the statement made in the article that his letter was not
written with corrupt intent; that the subscription asked for was for
legitimate purposes and that it was part of a fund amounting to only
three thousand seven hundred dollars for the whole province of
Ontario. He boldly justified the article as provoked by Mr. Justice
Wilson's dictum and by the use that would be made of it by hostile
politicians. The judge had chosen to intervene in a keen political
controversy whose range extended to the Pacific Scandal; and in
defending himself from his enemies and the enemies of his party, Brown
was forced to answer the judge. He argued that to compel an editor to
keep silence in such a case, would not only be unjust to him, but
contrary to public policy. For instance, the discussion of a great
public question such as that involved in the Pacific Scandal, might be
stopped upon the application of a party to a suit in which that
question was incidentally raised.

The case was presented with his accustomed energy and thoroughness,
from the point of view of journalistic duty, of politics and of
law--for Mr. Brown was not afraid to tread that sacred ground and
give extensive citations from the law reports. His address may be
commended to any editor who may be pursued by that mysterious legal
phantom, a charge of contempt of court. The energy of his gestures,
the shaking of the white head and the swinging of the long arms, must
have somewhat startled Osgoode Hall. The court was divided, the
chief-justice ruling that there had been contempt, Mr. Justice
Morrison, contra, and Mr. Justice Wilson taking no part in the
proceedings. So the matter dropped, though not out of the memory of
editors and politicians.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Mackenzie's _Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown_, p. 119.

CHAPTER XXV

CONCLUSION

The building in which the life of the Hon. George Brown was so
tragically ended, was one that had been presented to him by the
Reformers of Upper Canada before confederation "as a mark of the high
sense entertained b