Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/362

 Oxford, a seat which he retained until the confederation in 1867. On 30 June 1864 he entered the coalition ministry of Sir Etienne Pascal Tache [q. v.] as president of the council. He took part in the intercolonial conference on federation in September at Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island, and in that at Quebec in October, and proceeded to England as a delegate in 1865. He was a member of the confederate council of the British North American colonies that sat in Quebec in September I860 to negotiate commercial treaties, but on 21 Dec. he resigned office owing to his disapproval of the terms on which government proposed to renew their commercial treaty with the United States. After the conclusion of the federation in 1867 he failed to obtain election to the House of Commons, but on 16 Dec. 1873 he was called to the senate. In February 1874 he was chosen to proceed to Washington to negotiate, in conjunction with Sir Edward Thornton, a commercial treaty which should include a settlement of the fishery question. A draft treaty was drawn up but failed to obtain the sanction of the United States senate. In 1875 Brown declined the lieutenant-governorship of Ontario, and on 24 May 1879 he was gazetted K.C.M.G., but refused the honour. On 25 March 1880 he was shot at the 'Globe' office by George Bennett, a discharged employé, and died from the effects of the injury on 9 May. He was buried in the Necropolis cemetery on 12 May. Bennett was executed for the murder on 23 July.

On 27 Nov. 1862 Brown married at Edinburgh Annie, eldest daughter of Thomas Nelson of Abden House, Edinburgh. She survived him with several children. A statue was erected to him in the University Park at Toronto. In 1864 he established the 'Canada Farmer,' a weekly agricultural journal.  BROWN, HUGH STOWELL (1823–1886), baptist minister, born at Douglas, Isle of Man, on 10 Aug. 1823, was second son of Robert Brown, by his wife Dorothy (Thomson). Thomas Edward Brown [q. v. Suppl.] was his younger brother.

The father, (d. 1846), was at one time master of the grammar school in Douglas, and in 1817 became chaplain of St. Matthew's chapel in that town. An evangelical of extreme views, he never read the Athanasian Creed, and took no notice of Ash Wednesday or Lent. In 1832 he became curate of Kirk Braddan, succeeding as vicar on 2 April 1836. He learned Manx in order to preach in it, and supported a family of nine on less than 200l. a year. His boys spent the summers in collecting his tithes of hay and corn, intermittently walking five miles to Douglas grammar school, but Hugh's early education consisted chiefly in reading four or five hours daily to his father, who became almost blind. Robert Brown was found dead by the roadside on 28 Nov. 1846, and buried next day at Kirk Braddan. He wrote twenty-two 'Sermons on various Subjects,' Wellington (Shropshire) and London, 1818, 8vo; and a volume of 'Poems, principally Sacred,' London, 1826, 12mo (cf. Letters of Thomas Edward Brown, 1900, i. 13-18).

Hugh was apprenticed when fifteen to a land surveyor, and employed in tithe commutation and ordnance surveys in Cheshire, Shrewsbury, and York. In 1840 he entered the London and Birmingham Railway Company's works at Wolverton, Buckinghamshire. While earning from four to eight shillings a week he began to study Greek, chalking his first exercises on a fire-box. After three years, part of the time spent in driving a locomotive between Crewe and Wolverton, he returned home and entered King William's College at Castletown to study for the church. When his training was almost complete he felt unable to subscribe to the ordination service, and resolved to return to his trade; but in the meantime was baptised at Stony Stratford, lost his father, and received unexpectedly an invitation to preach at Myrtle Street Baptist Chapel, Liverpool. About November 1847 he was accepted by that congregation as their minister. He was then twenty-four. There he remained until his death, winning great popularity as a preacher. To his Sunday afternoon lecture, established in 1854 in the Concert Hall, Liverpool, he drew from two to three thousand working men, whom his own early experiences, added to great power and plainness of speech, with abundant humour, powerfully influenced. He anticipated the post office by opening a workman's savings bank, to which over 80,000l. was entrusted before it was wound up. In 1873 he visited Canada and the States.

Brown was president in 1878 of the Baptist 