title="{31}"/> common, and distracted the politics of a province which needed nothing so much as peace and unity of action.

The central figures in this storm of controversy were George Brown and John A. Macdonald, easily the first personages in their respective parties. The two were antipathetic. Their dispositions were as wide asunder as the poles. Brown was serious, bold, and masterful. Macdonald concealed unrivalled powers in statecraft and in the leadership of men behind a droll humour and convivial habits. From the first they had been political antagonists. But the differences were more than political. Neither liked nor trusted the other. Brown bore a grudge for past attacks reflecting upon his integrity, while Macdonald, despite his experience in the warfare of party, must often have winced at the epithets of the Globe, Brown's newspaper. During ten years they were not on speaking terms. But when they joined to effect a great object, dear to both, a truce was declared. 'We acted together,' wrote Macdonald long after of Brown, 'dined in public places together, played euchre in crossing the Atlantic and went into society in England together. And yet on the day after he resigned we resumed our old positions and ceased to speak.'[1] To imagine that of all men those two should combine to carry federation seemed the wildest and most improbable dream. Yet that is what actually happened.