His funeral at the General Cemetery was attended by most of the leading Liberals of the town, and by great crowds of admirers. Charles Vince, who was so soon to follow him, delivered a very eloquent address over the open grave, in which he said, "For the firmness with which he maintained his convictions, and for the zeal and ability with which he advocated them, he will always have a name and a place in the history of his native town, if not in the history of his country. To the honour of his memory it will be said that he held his opinions honestly; laboured for them diligently; devoted great gifts and rare energy to their promotion; and amply proved his sincerity, and won the crown of the conscientious, by the things that he suffered."
It is, in my opinion, not very creditable to the Liberal party in the town that George Edmonds has no public memorial. The generation passing away may remember his face and figure; but before it goes, it has a duty to its successors to perform. That duty is to leave some lasting memorial, in the shape of a statue, bust, or portrait, of the man, who, sacrificing his own freedom, helped thereby to gain for his countrymen liberty of thought, liberty of speech, and liberty to carry on in the future the beneficent policy which he advocated with, so much eloquence and perseverance.
With reverent pen and loving spirit, I sit down to write of one whose sunny smile brightened every circle upon which it shone; whose massive intellect and clear mental vision discovered subtle truths and deep symbolic meanings in common things; whose winning and graphic eloquence made these truths and meanings clear to others, showing them that not a blade of grass springs by the roadside, nor an insect flutters for a day in the gladdening light of the spring-time, but has its lesson, if men will but search for it, of tender mercy and fatherly care. His broad and catholic spirit was wide enough to embrace within his friendship men of widely divergent thought and belief. His life was one long and eloquent lesson to us all. If ever man deserved the blessing following the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me," that man was Charles Vince, for of him, more emphatically than can be said of most of us, it may be recorded that "he went about doing good."