Double Shuffle."

In the debate on confederation. Senator Ferrier said that a political
warfare had been waged in Canada for many years, of a nature
calculated to destroy all moral and political principles, both in the
legislature and out of it. The "Double Shuffle" is so typical of this
dreary and ignoble warfare and it played so large a part in the
political history of the time, that it has been necessary to describe
it at some length. But for these considerations, the episode would
have deserved scant notice. The headship of one of the ephemeral
ministries that preceded confederation could add little to the
reputation of Mr. Brown. His powers were not shown at their best in
office, and the surroundings of office were not congenial to him. His
strength lay in addressing the people directly, through his paper or
on the platform, and in the hour of defeat or disappointment he turned
to the people for consolation. "During these contests," he said some
years afterwards, "it was this which sustained the gallant band of
Reformers who so long struggled for popular rights: that, abused as we
might be, we had this consolation, that we could not go anywhere among
our fellow-countrymen from one end of the country to the other--in
Tory constituencies as well as in Reform constituencies--without the
certainty of receiving from the honest, intelligent yeomanry of the
country--from the true, right-hearted, right-thinking people of Upper
Canada, who came out to meet us--the hearty grasp of the hand and the
hearty greeting that amply rewarded the labour we had expended in
their behalf. That is the highest reward I have hoped for in public
life, and I am sure that no man who earns that reward will ever in
Upper Canada have better occasion to speak of the gratitude of the
people."

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Speech to Toronto electors, August, 1858.

[12] Pope's _Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald_, Vol. I., pp. 133, 134.

[13] Dent's _Last Forty Years_, Vol. II., pp. 379, 380.

CHAPTER XI

AGAINST AMERICAN SLAVERY

In his home in Scotland Brown had been imbued with a hatred of
slavery. He spent several years of his early manhood in New York, and
felt in all its force the domination of the slave-holding element.
Thence he moved to Canada, for many years the refuge of the hunted
slave. It is estimated that even before the passage of the Fugitive
Slave Law, there were twenty thousand coloured refugees in Canada. It
was customary for t