The Makers of Canada: George Brown

George Brown was born at Alloa, a seaport on the tidal Forth, thirty-five miles inward from Edinburgh, on November 29th, 1818. His mother was a daughter of George Mackenzie, of Stornoway, in the Island of Lewis. His father, Peter Brown, was a merchant and builder. George was educated at the High School and Southern Academy in Edinburgh. "This young man," said Dr. Gunn, of the Southern Academy, "is not only endowed with high enthusiasm, but possesses the faculty of creating enthusiasm in others." At the risk of attaching too much significance to praise bestowed on a school-boy, it may be said that these words struck the keynote of Brown's character and revealed the source of his power. The atmosphere of the household was Liberal; father and son alike hated the institution of slavery, with which they were destined to become more closely acquainted. "When I was a very young man," said George Brown, denouncing the Fugitive Slave Law before a Toronto audience, "I used to think that if I ever had to speak before such an audience as this, I would choose African Slavery as my theme in preference to any other topic. The subject seemed to afford the widest scope for rhetoric and for fervid appeals to the best of human sympathies. These thoughts arose far from here, while slavery was a thing at a distance, while the horrors of the system were unrealized, while the mind received it as a tale and discussed it as a principle. But, when you have mingled with the thing itself, when you have encountered the atrocities of the system, when you have seen three millions of human beings held as chattels by their Christian countrymen, when you have seen the free institutions, the free press and the free pulpit of America linked in the unrighteous task of upholding the traffic, when you have realized the manacle, and the lash, and the sleuth-hound, you think no more of rhetoric, the mind stands appalled at the monstrous iniquity, mere words lose their meaning, and facts, cold facts, are felt to be the only fit arguments." Again, as George grew to manhood, the struggle which ended in the disruption of the Church of Scotland was approaching its climax, and the sympathies of the Brown household were with those who declared that it "is the fundamental law of this Church that no pastor shall be intruded on any congregation contrary to the will of the people."