'who would do credit to the British Parliament.'] always ignore the
hardships of their pioneer life, and forget to do justice to their
possession, at all events, of good common-sense and much natural
acuteness, which enabled them to be of use in their humble way, under
the guidance of the few who were in those days the leaders of public
opinion. These leaders were generally men drawn from the Bar, who
naturally turned to the legislative arena to satisfy their ambition and
to cultivate on a larger scale those powers of persuasion and argument
in which their professional training naturally made them adepts. With
many of these men legislative success was only considered a means of
more rapidly attaining the highest honours of their profession, and
consequently they were not always the most disinterested guides in the
political controversies of the day; but, nevertheless, it must be
admitted that, on the whole, the Bar of Canada, then as now, gave the
country not a few men who forgot mere selfish considerations, and
brought to the discussion of public affairs a wide knowledge and
disinterested zeal which showed how men of fine intellect can rise above
the narrower range of thought peculiar to continuous practice in the
Courts. As public questions became of larger import, the minds of
politicians expanded, and enabled them to bring to their discussion a
breadth of knowledge and argumentative force which attracted the
attention of English statesmen, who were so constantly referred to in
those times of our political pupilage, and were by no means too ready to
place a high estimate on colonial statesmanship. In the earlier days of
our political history some men played so important a part in educating
the people to a full comprehension of their political rights that their
names must be always gratefully remembered in Canada. Papineau, Bedard,
DeValliere, Stuart, Neilson, Baldwin, Lafontaine, Howe, Wilmot,
Johnstone, Uniacke, were men of fine intellects--natural-born teachers
of the people. Their successors in later times have ably continued the