. Robert Baldwin, was a man who was not only
incapable of falsehood or meanness to gain his ends, but who was to the
last degree intolerant of such practices on the part of his warmest
supporters. If intellectual greatness cannot be claimed for him, moral
greatness was most indisputably his. Every action of his life was marked
by sincerity and good faith, alike towards friend and foe. He was not only
true to others; but was from, first to last true to himself. His useful
career, and the high reputation which he left behind him, furnish an apt
commentary upon the advice which Polonius gives to his son Laertes:--
"This above all, to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
To our thinking there is something august in the life of Robert Baldwin.
So chary was he of his personal honour that it was next to impossible to
induce him to pledge himself beforehand, even upon the plainest question.
Once, when addressing the electors at Sharon, some one in the crowd asked
him if he would pledge himself to oppose the retention of the Clergy
Reserves, "I am not here," was his reply, "to pledge myself on any
question.
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