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Brown as a force in its relation to other forces, and to the events of
the period of history covered by his career.

A quarter of a century has now elapsed since the death of George Brown
and a still longer time since the most stirring scenes in his career
were enacted. We ought therefore to be able to see him in something
like his true relation to the history of his times. He came to Canada
at a time when the notion of colonial self-government was regarded as
a startling innovation. He found among the dominant class a curious
revival of the famous Stuart doctrine, "No Bishop, no King;" hence the
rise of such leaders, partly political and partly religious, as Bishop
Strachan, among the Anglicans, and Dr. Ryerson, among the Methodists,
the former vindicating and the latter challenging the exclusive
privileges of the Anglican Church. There was room for a similar
leader among Presbyterians, and in a certain sense this was the
opportunity of George Brown. In founding first a Presbyterian paper
and afterwards a political paper, he was following a line familiar to
the people of his time. But while he had a special influence among
Presbyterians, he appeared, not as claiming special privileges for
them, but as the opponent of all privilege, fighting first the
Anglican Church and afterwards the Roman Catholic Church, and
asserting in each case the principle of the separation of Church and
State.

For some years after Brown's arrival in Canada, those questions in
which politics and religion were blended were subordinated to a
question purely political--colonial self-government. The atmosphere
was not favourable to cool discussion. The colony had been in
rebellion, and the passions aroused by the rebellion were always ready
to burst into flame. French Canada having been more deeply stirred by
the rebellion than Upper Canada, racial animosity was added there to
party bitterness. The task of the Reformers was to work steadily for
the establishment of a new order involving a highly important
principle of government, and, at the same time, to keep the movement
free from all suspicion of incitement to rebellion.

The leading figure of this movement is that of Robert Baldwin, and he
was well supported by Hincks, by Sullivan, by William Hume Blake and
others. The forces were wisely led, and it is not pretended that this
direction was due to Brown. He was in 1844 only twenty-six years of
age, and his position at first was that of a