George Brown Was Born to Argue Principle

Canadian political figures have generally skirted the discussion of ideas and doctrine by wide platitudes. Not George Brown, however, the journalist-politician and Clear Grit Liberal leader of the Confederation era – he was born to argue principle. In his powerful Toronto Globe, the most widely circulated newspaper in British North America, he had the ideal instrument for expressing his mind, and for over three decades, from the first Globe issue in 1844 to his death in 1880, it presented a massive documentation of the thinking of George Brown.

--J.M.S. Careless, "The Political Ideas of George Brown," in Careless at Work: Selected Canadian Historical Studies (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1990), 67.