[liOURixoT] CANADA DURING THE VICTORIAN ERA 33 



the aid of his faithful friend and colleag-uc, Sir John Macdonald would 

 have been helpless time and again, and could never have carried out his 

 national schemes. 



With the names of Sir John Macdonald and Sir George Cartier, who 

 did so much by their broad statesmanship to settle sectional difficulties, 

 and lay the foundations of Confederation, must be also intimately asso- 

 ciated that of Mr. George Brown, for many ^^ears a prominent journalist 

 in Upper Canada, and the leader of the JKadical section of the Liberal 

 party. The pertinacity with which he pressed the claims of the upper 

 province to larger i-epresentation in the Canadian legislature ; and the 

 violence with which his newspaper The Globe attacked the institutions of 

 French Canada, more than once excited sectional passion to a high pitch, 

 and rendered government almost impossible. But by his readiness at 

 last to cooperate with Sir John Macdonald and Sir George Cartier in the 

 bringing about of Confederation, Mr. Brown shoAved he had statesman- 

 like conceptions of his duty at a national crisis, and placed his name in 

 the front rank of the eminent public men who have done so much for 

 Canada in the Yictorian Era. 



Happily for the present Dominion, there were also at the head of 

 affairs in the maritime provinces "men of large national ideas and signal 

 ability ; and while mistakes were undoubtedly made in the case of Nova 

 Scotia, where the majority of the people for a time resented the haste 

 with which their province was forced into the Union of 1867, yet one 

 may now hesitate to dwell on the errors of judgment of those exciting 

 times, thirty-two years ago, and may well urge that it might have been 

 a far greater mistake had the Unionists of Nova Scotia delayed in seizing 

 the opportunity of consolidating the provinces and preventing the perils 

 to which they were exposed by remaining isolated from each other, at a 

 time when they were subject to Fenian raids and the unfriendliness of 

 the dominant party in the United States. 



Of the distinguished men who brought about Confederation at so 

 critical a period in Canadian affairs, nearly all have joined the ranks of 

 the Great Majority. Sir Charles Tupper, who has filled many important 

 positions in the councils of his country, and Avas premier of Nova Scotia 

 from 1864 to 1867, and Sir Oliver Mowat, so long the discreet Premier of 

 Ontario, still remain in active political life. Sir Hector Langevin, 

 Senators Dickey and A. A. Macdonald, Hon. Peter Mitchell, and Hon. 

 William McDougall complete the list of the survivors of the Quebec 

 Convention of 186-1.' The encouraging success, which has so far attended 



1 The following are the names of the statesmen who took part in the Quebec 

 convention : 



Canada.— Hon. Sir Etienne Taché, M.L.C., Premier; Hon. John A. Macdonald, 

 M.P.P., Attorney-General of Upper Canada ; Hon. Geo. Etienne Cartier, M.P.P., 

 Attorney-General of Lower Canada ; Hon. Geo. Brown, M.P.P., President of Execu- 



Sec. II., 1897. 3. 



