ance of the connection with the mother country as political
friends; those who are against it as political opponents.... I believe
that our party are hostile to annexation. I am at all events hostile
to it myself, and if I and my party differ upon it, it is necessary we
should part company. It is not a question upon which a compromise is
possible."[47]

Loyalty so strong as this seems natural in a Whig like Baldwin, but one
associates agitation and radicalism with other views. The progressive,
when he is not engaged in decrying his own state, often exhibits a
philosophic indifference to all national prejudice--he is a
cosmopolitan whose charity begins away from home. There were those
among the Canadian Radicals who were as bad friends to Britain as they
were good friends to the United States, but the Clear-Grit party up to
confederation was true to Britain, largely because their leader, after
1850, was George Brown, and because Brown was the loyalest Scot in
Canada. Brown was in a sense the most remarkable figure of the time in
{341} his province. Fierce in his opinions, a vehement speaker, an
agitator whose best qualities unfitted him for the steadier work of
government, he committed just those mistakes which make the true
agitator's public life something of a tragedy, or at least a
disappointment. But Brown's work was done out of office. His
passionate advocacy of the policy of Abraham Lincoln and the abolition
of slavery kept relations with the United States calm through a
diplomatic crisis. He it was who made confederation not possible, but
necessary, by his agitation for a sounder representation. His work as
opposition leader, and as the greatest editor known to Canadian
journalism, saved Canadian politics from becoming the nest of jobs and
corruption which--with all allowance for his good qualities--John A.
Macdonald would have made them. Never before, and certainly never
since his day, has any Canadian influenced the community as Brown did
through _The Globe_. "There were probably many thousand voters in
Ontario," says Cartwright,[48] "especially among the Scotch settlers,
who hardly read anything except their _Globe_ and their Bible, and
whose whole political creed was practically dictated to them {342} by
the former." Now that influence was exerted, from first to last, in
favour of Britain. In his maiden speech in parliament Brown protested
against a reduction of the governor's salary, and on the