Brown was also strongly interested in the settlements of refugees established throughout Western Canada. Under an act of the Canadian parliament "for the settlement and moral improvement of the coloured population of Canada," large tracts of land were acquired, divided into fifty acre lots, and sold to refugees at low prices, payable in instalments. Sunday schools and day schools were established. The moving spirit in one of these settlements was the Rev. William King, a Presbyterian, formerly of Louisiana, who had freed his own slaves and brought them to Canada. Traces of these settlements still exist. Either in this way or otherwise, there were large numbers of coloured people living in the valley of the Thames (from Chatham to London), in St. Catharines, Hamilton, and Toronto.
At the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, Mr. Brown moved a resolution expressing gratitude to those American clergymen who had exposed the atrocities of the Fugitive Slave Law. He showed how, before its enactment, slaves were continually escaping to the Northern States, where they were virtually out of reach of their masters. There was a law enabling the latter to recover their property, but its edge was dulled by public opinion in the North, which was rapidly growing antagonistic to allowing the free states to become a hunting-ground for slave-catchers. The South took alarm at the growth of this feeling, and procured the passage of a more stringent law. This law enabled the slave-holder to seize the slave wherever he found him, without warrant, and it forbade the freeman to shelter the refugee under penalty of six months' imprisonment, a fine of one thousand dollars, and liability to a civil suit for damages to the same amount. The enforcement of the law was given to federal instead of to State officials. After giving several illustrations of the working of the law, Mr. Brown proceeded to discuss the duty of Canada in regard to slavery. It was a question of humanity, of Christianity, and of liberty, in which all men were interested. Canada could not escape the contamination of a system existing so near her borders. "We, too, are Americans; on us, as well as on them, lies the duty of preserving the honour of the continent. On us, as on them, rests the noble trust of shielding free institutions."