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Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont film6s en commenpant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole — ♦►signitie "A SUIVRE", le symbole V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est filmd d partir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants lllustrent la mithode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 FUNERAL ORATIOI^ OfM THE ,ATE HON. THOS. D'ARCY McGEE, DELIVEKED IN THE METROrOLITAN CHURCH OF St. MARY'S, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, BY HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP, ON FRIDAY, 24tu APRIL, A. D. 18C8. HALIFAX : FEINTED BY COMPTON & CO. 1868. I v'ii'^^jijJWJii .":'W9Vl!piS-"''W"Mi i • ! '^^ 'al? FUNERAL ORATION ON THE ;, LATE HON. THOS. D'ARCY McGEE, DELIVEUED IN THE METROrOLITAN CHURCH OF St, MARY'S, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, BY HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP, ON FRIDAY, 2lTn APRIL, A, D. 18C8. HALIFAX: PEINTEO BY COMPTON & CO. 18G8. -„ji fT i)^ipipji.,i.iji;||if m } FlDZB ORATION. •'lloware the valiant fallen in battle? Jonathan slain in the. high p!ac«p? I grieve for that brother Jonathan, exceedingly l)eautiful and amiable above the love of woman. As the mother loveth her only eon bo did I love you." — 2 Kings, 1. 25. Dear Brethren, — In the first chapter of the second Book of Kingo, we read that Saul the valiant King of Israel, and Jonathan his warrior son, were slain in battle by the Philistines on the moun- tains of Gelboe. Saul, the implacable enemy of David, and Jonathan by loveliness of character as well as by in- heritance his rival to the throne, were struck down as if by a single blow; and with all the glitter of kingly grandeur to which he was so suddenly lifted up to dazzle him, instead of rejoicing, David with his big heart, burst forth into lamen- tation, tones not surpassed in graphic beauty, tenderness, and deep intensity of feeling, by any human wailings on record. It was at a moment of triumph and in the full tide of victory he first heard the disastrous news in Siceleg, and so over- powered was his manly nature, that, forgetting his triumphs and fortunes alike, he mourned his country's woe, and wept as few ever wept, for the " unreturning brave," the *' valiant fallen ones of Israel." According to the customs of the times in which they lived, David and the Warriors in his train rent their garmtats, and mourned, wept, and fasted till evening, for Saul and Jona- than and the Hosts of Israel that fell by the sword ; and so poignant was his grief, so great his horror of the catastrophe, that in the depths of his anguish he invoked maledictions, as it were, on the ensanguined spot where his dearest were so ruthlessly cloven down. " Ye mountains of Gelboe," said he, 5000 "may neitlicr flows nor rain fall on yon, nor yonr fields be grceti, nor yield firat fruits, because there were cast away the shields of the valiant, the illustrious of Israel were slain " on your hill s des. "Tell it not in Gath, . ublish it not in the streets of Ascalon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumciscd triumph. Ye daugh- ters of Israel weep over Jonathan, slain on high places. I grieve for thee, my brother Jonathan, exceedingly beautiful, and to be loved abovo the love of woman. As the mother loveth her only son, so did I love you. How are the valiant fallen, and the weapons of war broken to pieces." Such arc the heart gushings of grief and desolation poured forth from the lips of the mightiest King, and with few excep- tions, of a man of the most grandiose character in ancient or modern times. I trust I am not saying too much in stating my conviction that, after the lapse of three thousand years, these same heart throes and wailings foranother Jonathan, the great and good man for whom this service is now being of- fered up, will find a responsive echo this morningin the hearts and on the lips of millions ; and, shall I say it in all modesty, and all caution, and respect for guarded and unexaggerated truth, the second Jonathan to whom I allude was, for the last quarter of a century, Ireland's and Irishmen's best friend and ablest advocate, and that is the Honorable Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the recently murdered victim of Ottawa ; his country's martyr, the giant among his fellows, who now sleeps the cold sleep of death in Montreal, but whose great name still survives in the hearts of millions, and will continue to live on in the esteem, regard, and veneration of great and good men, centuries and centuries after his miserable assassin and all his wretched accomplices and sympathisers will have passed to their dread account, and to their congenial rotten- ness and oblivion. It is needless to say that in thus extolling the manly virtues of my dearest and ever to be lamented friend, Mr. McGee, I have not the remotest intention of preaching the panegyric of a saint. No ! to meet fairly all the charges of his enemies without blenching, I feel bound as his friend and an Arch- bishop of the Catholic Church, to frankly admit that he was not a saint in the strict sense of that term ; and who among us .SK ■ virtues ;Gee, I ryric of memies Arch- he was I ■i is? lie had his taults and his failings, and like all other pub- lic men, without exception, made some poli<-ical miaiakcs. I should bo unwilling to endorse all his teachings, and would be still more loth to accept him unreservedly as a thorough Chris- tian model. lie mav have had a failing to some limited extent as his enemies vvould have it, but his early youth and the prime of his manhood, and thank God I am able to publish it, the concluding portion of his precious and eminently useful life, were not marred by a single speck that could bring a blush to the cheek of any public man in a civilized country. Like most good men in the political arena, ho changed his opinions and his tactics, often for the better, and seldom or never for the worse. Amid the fray of party fight and the excitement of the hour, he committed what I and others in the calm of the study room deemed to be mistakes ; but they wero mistakes of head, not of heart. Now that he is gone, the world knows that the unpurchasable integrity of Thomas D'Arcy McGee was not to be tampered with, and that his big, magnanimous soul, never harbored a malignant feeling for a human being. The gigantic products of his short but eventful life, must be proof positive, even to his enemies, of ceaseless industry, and a marvellously sustained intellectual culture incompa- tible with serious faults of any kind. "Being perfected in a sho>'t space he fulfilled a long time." (Wisdom, IV. 15.) The ten or eleven hundred lectures delivered bv him in twenty years, the unnumbered pieces of matchless eloquence which he poured forth, — his immortal speeches in and out of Parliament, — his voluminous political writings, — and the many literary works in prose and poetry in his name, — and lastly, tlic blasting shock of his hideous taking oflt' before the blossoming of manhood! speak trumpet-tongued for the mo- deration and the many untold virtues of his whole life. Like O'Connell and every great and good man of our race and creed, he had enemies among his own fellow-countrymen, which, alas ! is now but too apparent. Yet if history tell truth and passing events have any significancy, a want of cohesion among Irishmen, especially where politics are concerned — a tendency to schism on all things but religion — and the unfor- tunate failing of not sympathising and co-operating heart and 6 soul with oacli other — were always, and I fear over will bo, our (liHtiuctivo national weakness, as contrasted with that of any otlier peoples. Nations as well as individuals have their foibles as well as their strong points; no people that have not a dark shade in their character, and many of them far worse than the Irish ; but proneness to party feud and to jealousy of each other, is historically and prc-cuiiiiontly ours ; and but for this, far as human eye can see, Ireland would never have been subjugated. It has pleased a kind Providence it should be otherwise, and, I am sure, for some more grandiose object than insulated political independence with all its real and poetical associa- tions. The cause and the effect are clearly before us, and no one saw them more intuitively, or felt them more keenly in his big Irish heart tlian the great one for whom we mourn to-day. He was indeed a singular exception to this rule. In him there was no lurking place for anything petty, sectional, or factious. On the contrary, amid all the vagaries of enthusi- astic youth and exuberant genius, he ever seemed to me an apostle sent to this country to roll back the tide of our invete- rate and blinding prejudices, far as one mighty man could do. His heart was bni an overflowing fountain, from which welled forth naught but geniality, sweetness, and love how- ever imperfect, for God, and Religion, and Country, and his fellow man, but above all for Irishmen without distinction of class or denomination. With singular adroitness he labored from the first day of his arrival in America, to infuse into the breasts of his countrymen a new spirit and more enlarged sympathies, thpt so they may be the better prepared for the grander and happier avenir before them in this our Trans- Atlantic home. As a stripling at the age of eighteen, he was already a man in intellect, and was destined soon to become prominent be- fore the world. Within two years he made his mark in the Irish American press, and had become so well and so favor- ably known to Irishmen at home and abroad, that, like another David, he was culled out to do battle with the Goliah of England in defence of his country and of her holy cause. For that purpose, at the age of twenty-two, he was called back from America by one of the most discriminating men of I a II t,^ 1, u*Jj\ Vf ; ,' K^ Traiis- a man ent be- in the favor- iit, like Goliah cause. 3d back men of the ago, to help in tho gigantic undertaking. The remain dor of liis career in Irehmd need not be re-told, as it is familiar to mi t of you. Like thousands of his class in tiiose days, ho had yet to acquire his dearly bought experieuco. His tomperament was too ardent, his blood too hot, his sense of tho wrongs of Ireland too stinging ; his impulses, liko those of hifl young compeers, the leaders of tho movement, wore too liberty-loving to be reined in by moderation and a common sense regard for noonday truths and patent facts, which presented insurmountable obstacles at every step. At a moment of national frenzy, in common with thousands of the best blood of the land, he withdrew from the moral force banner of his veteran chieftain — the hero of tho hundred bl )odles3 victories which alone poor Jroland in her sad condi- tion could have possibly obtained. Madly, but honorably and honestly, he rushed forth to what could not bo called a tight, but certain and inevitable death. At tho moment human foresiiirht should have failed to dis- cover any other alternative. Yet, with desperation staring him in the face, Thomas D'Arcy McGoo dared tho deed and he did it for his countrv. Bat for the accident of an accident, with the tens of thousands that preceded him he would have added his name to tho long and sanguinary roll of Ireland's martyrs. His action in this instance vva" a grave and over- whelming mistake for Ireland and himself; but, as I have said, it was the error of matured judgment, and, like all other errors, one of head not of heart. Hoar himself in reply ten years ago in the Canadian Par- liament — magnificent on this as on every other subject — and you will agree with me in feeling that not another word is needed for his thorough vindication. " Sir," said he to the charge, " I will say on tho outset that it is not true ! I am as "loyal to the institutions under which I live in Canada as any "Tory of the old or new school. My native disposition is to- " wards reverence for things old and veneration . jT tho land- " marks of the past. But when I saw in Irelana tho people " perish of famine at the race of five thousand souls a day, when " I saw women and children as well as able-bodied men perish- " ing for food under the richest government within tho most " powerful empire of the world, I rebelled. I rebelled against 8 (( (( "the pampered State Church; I rebelled against the bankrupt " aristocracy:, I rebelled against Lord John Russell, who sacri- " ficed two millions of the Irish people to the interests of the corn-buyers of Liverpool. At the age of twenty-two I threw myself into a struggle — a rash and ill-guided struggle, I " admit— against that wretched condition. I do not defend " the course then taken ; I only state the cause." What he did I am perfectly certain that I and thousands of Irishmen with me, inside and outside the sanctuary, might have done at the same age and under the same circumstances; and if we had so unfortunately committed ourselves such an apology, instead of being a blemish, would do us honor. Mr. McGee, like thousands of others, loved his country not wisely but rashly and too well. As long ae the anomalous and untiiiralleled nuisance of a State Church in Ireland is forced on a reluctant and down-irodden people, in the words of The O'Donoghue in the House of Commons last year, all Catholic Irishmen the world over will ever have the same feeling. The only difference between them is, and it is a mighty difference, that they are not agreed on the possibilitj' of redressing their country's grievances by physical force, and this is precisely the difference between Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the inexperienced, bot-headed youth in Ireland, and Mr. McGee, the profound thinker, the philosopher, the accomplished statesman in Canada. lie was right at heart and at fault in head in the first instance. Taught in the school of adversity, he soon corrected his grave mistake, and became right both ways ever after. Like all young patriots, he wildly dreamt the unattainable ; his blinding love for fatherland blotted out the sun itself from bis vision ; and but for the power of his gigantic intellect in controlling all his emotions, like thousands of others he would have lived on to the end in hopeless idiocy on thr>t one vital point whe a Ireland and all her "best intei*eats are most deeply concerned. Strange to say, afte'* all the sad expei'ience of the past, this still conti*^,ue3 to be the difference point between the two Irish parties. Knaves and dupes, and inexperienced boys, still, as of old, dreaming mad dreams of revolution against the most -colossal power the world ever saw ; and then Ireland's best, wisest, and most patriotic eons frowning it down as a \ ) e nkrupt :> sacri- of the ; threw n-gle, I defend mds of might tances; uch an itry not raalous sland is ! words ?ear, all le same it is a ssibilitj' I'ce, and r'Arcy Ireland, ler, the heart in the istake, young inding vision ; rolling PC lived whe 3 cerned. ast, this vo Irish still, as le most 's best, u as a wicked phantom, leading to oceans of bloodshed, without any other possible result but that of wholesale and inevitable national ruin. To begin and not to succeed, as we undoubtedly could not, would bo answering the behests of our direst enemies. To begin and not to succeed, is what time and again blighted the hopes of Poland's nationality and the Southern States in our own time. To be:,ln and not to succeed, is what blasted Ireland's hopes, and dyed her hill sides, her plains, and her cities with the gore of her deceived and persecuted people ten times over and over within the last seven hundred years. In various forms and under every variet^^ of pretext, resistance to English power in Ireland was resorted to under Henry the Seventh, Queen Elizabeth, the Common- wealth, William Prince of Orange, George the Third, Queen Victoria in 1848 ; and again last year, almost under my own eyes, on the occasion of my late visit to Ireland ; and oh! for my country. And what was the result? I could have wopt — I could have sunk into the earth with shame and mortification. To dignify such an insane movement with the name of rebellion would be an insult to common sense, as it would bo giving a false meaning to the expression. "With all the show of an embryo republic, and the hubbub made, and the money paid in, and the assurances given that the power of England would be speedily crushed, and her empire in ruins, there was no rebellion — no not even a decent faction fight worthy of that name. Five or six cowardly assassina- tions of Ireland's Catholic children, including my ever to be lamented friend Mr. McGee — several women and children blown up, — a few unoffending citizens of Canada shot on their own soil, are all that can be bonsted of. After all efiid and done, this is the only advance made towards the avowed object of overthrowing British power in Ireland. And it is so, not because the Irish are not brave, and in a certain sense patriotic as ever, but because the wiser and more numerous portion of them, who had something to lose, ever looked on the physical force scheme as utter madness, and most fortunately and most correctly de- cided on the better expedient of endeavouring to right their country's wrongs by other and more feasible means. 10 After the oppression of seven hundred years, thanks to God and the growing intelligence of the age, and, shall I say it, to the genius of the Catholic religion, which, I know, to a large extant is gradually permeating the upper classes in Eng- land, the dawn of practical emancipation is already upon us, and, like all the choice gifts from (lod, it comes from a com- pass point from which it was least expected. The scare of Fenianism no douht may have contributed its quota, but, like the scares of all the rebellions before it, without the change that has taken place in English public opinion it could have effected nothing. If the Fenians met the British army in the field, as they promised to do, and killed fifty thousand of their enemies, every man of sense well knows that their short-lived victories, like those of the Southern States, would have no other efiect but that of riveting their chains the more cruelly. Twenty years ago the most sanguine friends of Ireland could not have possibly anticipated the great moral victories that are being achieved in England before our own eyes. "What all the men and means of poor Ireland could never liave effected, will be soon and triumphantly accomplished, please G-od, without the shedding of one drop of human blood. Within another short year I believe the last imprint of the bond-chains of centuries will be rubbed oft'our umbs, and the Irish Catholic will be on a footing of perfect equality with every other man in the empire. Such are the two antagonistic principles of physical and moral force, the right and the wrong of the two political par- ties in Ireland, as tested and proved by the infallible criterion of palpable and unquestionable results. Physical force in Ireland always failed, for the very obvious and mathematical reason, that it was ever a question of the weaker against the stronger. Once that the strength of the weaker is tested to its utmost, and that the last of its resources is exhausted, the next move, the next effort needed and not forthcoming, is the death knell of the whole. The last man killed, the last phot fired, the last shilling expended, and then the stronger — as Russia in Poland, and the iTorth in the Southern States — is not merely in the ascendant, but is the only force in the field. The weaker is not only vanquished, but is annihilated as a force. If it survives at all, it lives only at the mercy and tol- •■V.y -TTH-.'^^.i 11 al and al par- iterion dree in latical st the sted to d, the is the st phot er — as tea — is field. as a id tol- eration of the victor. Whether right or wrong, never was there a people who fought so gallantly and so challenged the admiration of the world, as the South in the late civil war. Within three short years four or five hundred thousand of her chivalry and her manhood were hurled into bloody graves, and what is more lamentable, all this blood, instead of serving, has, I fear, only destroyed the cause for which it was poured out in oceans. ■> ' With more or less disparity in the amount of the contend- ing forcee, the result would be inevitably the sajaie in Ireland or Nova Scotia, or in any other country where the weaker would commit itself to an unequal contest, even though the experiment were tried a thousand times over. As to the question whether Ireland or England is the weaker, there can be but one opinion. In mere point of numbers, England is to Ireland as tvventy-five millions to five millions ; in point of war materials and organization, she is in the proportion of a mil- lion to almost nothing ; and as to that first great motive power and essential of all war — money — which in modern war- fare must prevail, she is as a hundred pounds to a dollar. If we had fifty millions of men in Ireland, and that we were comparatively poor as we are now, we should first turn to industry, and devote perhaps a whole century to the accun.u- latiou of wealth, before we could have the faintest hope of success against such boundless odds. It is the want of wealth that at the present moment threatens the national existence of Italy, Aue ria, and the Ottoman Empire, with armies and navies at their command, and a population at least five or six times as large as that of Ireland. If during the late rebellion the Xorth had not boundless wealth to organize and keep up a mighty army and navy, and depended only on mere numbers of population, her ill-assorted ranks, and her unpaid and starving legions, would be still north of the Potomac, with her enemies in f-ont unsubdued. Great Britain herself, with a population of over thirty millions, but without wealth, could not hold her position among nations for a single week. v • (i* f?; Why, it will be asked, in a Catholic Church, and on a sacred occasion like the present, enter into these war statistics and political disquisitions, and thereby diverge from the sub- f 12 ject under consideration? My answer is, that as an Irishman, and ranch more as an Archbishop, I feel it a bounden duty of love as well as of conscience to do all I can to disenchant a deluded remnant, and only a remnant, of our people with that pet scheme of physical force and war to the knife on England, to which they so madly adhere. Hopeless as the project muot appear to any one outside of a lunatic asylum, yet frenzied by the sense of the cruel wrongs of Ireland, and played upon and hounded on by knaves, many of them are, I believe, sincere, or they would not commit themselves to so desperate a cause at the risk of everything that man can prize. I may have a sort of sympathy for the motives of the really well-meaning, but I mourn their errors — I could cry for their disastrous mistakes. With my whole heart and soul I detest their doc- trines and condemn their blasphemous theories and practices, which have brought so many already to the gallows and to penal servitude, to the wreck of fortune, and the death of soul and body, and the blasting of all earthly and heavenly hopes. If the Bishops of Ireland and the United States had not fearlessly raised their voices to wake up that misguided people from the night-mare of death that was upon them, and to warn off the unsupsecting, from whom else could they have heard the woefully needed but unpalatable truth? Is it from secret societies, or mob orators, or a one-sided and rabid press, or from politicians, who cannot presume to dilFer with them in opinion, that these stern unyieldiug truths are to be learned ? No ! the Catholic religion teaches that it is only from that mouth that never can be gagged, that mouth that musl; speak out the whole truth of God, that all the great lessons of moral right and wrong can be infallibly ascertained. You may hear from that mouth vight and wrong in science and politics, but whenever that science or these politics trench, as Fenianism and other secret societies do, on the sacred domain of Religion, there you will find the teachings of the church infallible because Catholic — " that is always and everywhere the same." Now, far more than in ancient times, is it certain, in the words of Malachi the Prophet, (2, 7,) that the lips of the priest shall keep wisdom, and the people shall seek the law from his mouth, because he is the angel of the Lord God of Hosts. They learn the whole of God's law from the mouth II - ' ^' of fo is or raii to as 18 •ess, or em in sarned ? m that speak moral You ce and nch, as omain church where icrtain, lips of ek the d God mouth of the priest, not because he is very learned, or better in- formed, or an angel in purity and brightness, but an angel that is a messenger from God by office. In this, we are taught, consists the difference between Catholic priests and ministers of other churches. The whole supernatural value of the teachings of the Catholic priest is derived, not from himself, or his learning, or ability, but solely and purely from his mission. This constitutes his only claim to be heard and to be obeyed by the people in all things spiritual, and at the risk of their salvation. Thus it is that there is not a priest in the Catholic Church who is not sent (as we maintain) by God, as Paul and Barnabas, selected and ordained by the Apostles were nevertheless sent by the Holy Ghost, (Acts XIII., 4.) Not a priest whose mission has not been received from a Catholic Bishop, and not a Bishop in the Church whose mis- sion, like that of St. Paul and Barnabas, cannot be traced back from Bishop to Bishop, in unbroken succession to Petei and to Jesus, and so it is written, (Rom. X., 14,) " IIow shall they believe him of whom they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach unless they be sent." "Faith then cometh (not by reading but) by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." (Rom. X., 17.) If these are our arguments to those outside the Catholic Church, how much more strongly must they not ap- ply to all Catholics, and especially Irish Catholics, who have been battling for that doctrine for centuries. It would be very f asy, and humanly speaking, very politic, for us to look on unconcerned like all others, and not run counter, perhaps, to the honest feelings of the most violent of our people. But a Catholic Bishop cannot, dare not do that. His mission from the da3's of the Apostles was to combat all the errors of the times in which he lived, no matter at what sacrifice. As the Saviour and his Apostles never failed to denounce all doctrinal errors and prevalent vices of their own day, so this same function has ever been the especial business of Popes and Catholic Bishops, and one of the main objects for which they are appointed. Silence, therefore, on my part, especially at the present moment, would be neither honest, honorable, nor conscientious. It would be treach- ery alike to God, to the people, and to my own position. 14 w "Woe 18 unto me if I preach not the Gospel," (Cor. I., 9, 16.) That is the moat easential lesson for the moment that Almighty God wishes to convey to his rational creatures. However unworthily, we are only occupying the place and performing the functions of Christ himself, and we must do what we feel and know he would do if he were still in hia visible form on the earth. "We have been sent, as St. Paul teaches, "Not to baptize, bat to preach the Gospel," (Cor. I., 17.) We have been set up as watchmen on Mount Zion, and guards on the turrets of Jerusalem, — that is, on the high places and prominent localities, and in the most conspicuouB positions of God's Church all over the world. ■ i It is from us, therefore, that Fenians and all their sympa- thizers, and all other people, must learn, not mere politics, but politics or anything else that will have a bearing on re- ligion. It is from us alone they can and ought to hear, and infallibly know, when their politics interfere with the ever- lasting teachings of God's religion, and when they are push- ing their principles too far. If secret societies be formed, and foul murders and dastardly assassinations be hatched, and hellish passions be roused in the name of patriotism, then we are no longer at liberty to look on without soiling our hands and our consciences, and becoming, negatively of course, but still morally, responsible for the crimes of our erring people. If we blow aot God's trumpet in Israel, the sins and the blood of the people will be on our heads. But if we blow the trumpet, and that the people heed it not, their blood will be oa their own souls, (Ezech. 33.) It was thus that the Saviour himself blew the trumpet, and cried out in thunder tones to the Scribes and Pharisees, and the blood-thirsting hypocrites and assas- sins of his own time, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the Prophets, and hast stoned those that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children, as the hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, and thou wouldst not." "■ '•■ ■' •■' '■' ' ■■ • ■•'■■• '^-^' ■■^^- Such are the correlative duties of IPriests and peopl<5 to teach and to believe — to command and to obey ; but as 1he ardent admirer and bereaved friend and panegyriPo of Mr. McGee, I must now come back to the important part he played in the old and young Ireland controversy, and to the \-, 1 y 15 I., 9, ; that itures. je and ust do in his ;. Paul I., 17.) n, and e high jicuouB sympa- politics, on re- ar, and le ever- re push- formed, aed, and then we ir hands rse, but people, blood of rumpet, on their himself Scribes d assas- ,t kill est jto thee, 1th e hen wouldst !opl<^ to as Ihe of Mr. part he to the position he occupied in Irish polities from 1848 until the day of his death. After a price being set on his head in Ireland, more fortunate than some of his confreres, he escaped in the garb of a Catholic Priest, and, after many trials and vicissi- tudes, succeeded in coming back to the United States. True to the instincts of his nature, no sooner landed than he entered at once on his labours for fatherland and his fellow-country- men. Fc. nine years after he successively edited the New York Nation and the American Celt with singular and ever- increasing ability. At no time did he render such signal ser- vice to Ireland's religion and people in a foreign country than during the reign of terror inaugurated by Know-J^othingism in the neighboring Republic. At a moment when millions of Catholic laymen in that country were struck dumb, and could scarcely utter a word in their own defence. Archbishop Hughes, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, and some very few others, came to the rescue, and but for their joint eflbrts at that critical period God alone can tell what may have been the consequences. I myself was eye-witness of many of the transactions of that period, and I unhesitatingly say that if it had culminated as many Bishops, and Priests, and intelligent laymen feared, and became an institution of the country, Irishmen and their religion would have been jist as much persecuted there ' as they ever were in the penal times of Ireland. Happily we had some three or four giants in the legislature — on the poli- tical platform — in the press, and in the pulpit, to do battle for us; and nobly did D'Arcy McGee, first among luy Catholics^ do his portion of the dut3^ Happily for us, through the good- ness of God and the efforts of our few public apologists, this storm, like most storms in that country, passed over with comparatively little harm, and was not of very loug duration. It was probably at this period that Mr. McGee began to open his eyes, and to change his opinions on the respective merits of Monarchy vis-a-vis Republican Government. Be that as it may, after nine years of ceaseless excitement and literary and political battles, — and mark you, always for the cause of Ireland, her religion and her people, — fortunately for the Irish and all Catholics in Canada he came to settle there. And here commences the most brilliant, because the most rational, consistent and useful portion of his short but w ; 'ii 19 W wonderfully chequered career. No sooner did ho take up hifl residence in the valley of the St. Lawrence than he was again at his old work for Ireland, and Irishmen and their faith ; and hist, thongh not least, for the moral and material prospe- rity of that new country which he now adopted forever as his home. In furtherance of this policy, he estahlishcd the New Era, a journal which plainly told, in its very first numbers, of the genius of the new emigrant, and of the eminent service he was likely to render to the country at large. Within a year from his arrival he made his mark, and took such hold of the public that at the first vacancy he became Member of Parlia- ment for Montreal. During that short year there was scarcely a literary club, or society, or a scientific re-union, from end to end of the land, that was not charmed by the magic of his euphonious voice and the flashes of vivid lightning that shot out from his prolific brain. At the first outset he found in Canada many and signal advantages denied to his people in the old country, and not enjoyed to the same extent by emi- grants in the neighbouring republic ; but yet even in Canada he but too plainly saw that much was still to be achieved be- fore his fellow countrymen would be etfectually placed on the same perfect level with their fellow subjects of other creeds pnd nationalities. They were nominally equal before 'he law, but in some vital instances the law was defective and one-sided, and proscriptive to some extent. The anti-Catholic and atiti-religious school system of the United States was thrust on them in Western Canada, making their condition in this respect worse and far more galling than in Ireland itself. The rampant spirit of Orangeism imported from the old country seemed to have acquired new vigor and increased intensity on this new soil. Priests were insulted — their lives threatened — some few churches, I believe, were burned, and even several unavenged murders were committed in the daylight, without a jury unprejudiced enough to find an honest verdict. Hun- d'*eds of Catholics sold out their farms, and thousands of me- chanics and labourers were forced, for the same reason, to seek employment elsewhere ; and Fenianism to-day in Canada, odious and indefensible as it may be, is, I solemnly believe, to some extent, the inevitable recoil and the natural oft-shoot of all these unfortunate ultra Protestant exhibitions. We can m 17 easily conceive why an uneducated Irish Catholic might be a Fenian in Ireland; but why Foniauism, in its most odious and assassin forms, should have acquired such intensity in Canada rather thiin in any other part of the whole American continent, cannot be otherwise explained. Besides all this, there was no fellows lip — no bond of union — no com- mon stand-point whatever between Protestant and Catho- lic ; and what is still more extraordinary and unintelligible, the same rule obtained to a large extent between French and Irish. On the occasion of my first visit to that country, the three parties seemed to me to resemble three unleashed bull- dogs, more or less ferocious, let into the same enclosure, for the mere purpose of worrying each other, without any imagi- nable benefit, — nay rather with s'^ndry unsightly cuts and ugly bruises, and positive and downrigbo injury to the most successful among the three. Such was the social and political state of Canada when Mr. McGee arrived. His life was threatened, far as I remember, on his first public appearance in Toronto. For aught I or any one else ^ruld foresee at the time, there was never to be an end of it. Instead of improving as years rolled by, and the country was becoming settled, this gan- grene seemed to be gnawing more and more into the social system, and wide-spreading, till it seemed to infect all classes. Every new importation from Ireland but added new virus to the malady, until the case appeared to be desperate as it was incurable. In the honesty and simplicity of my heart at the time, I looked to the United States eventually for the only possible solution of the problem, but the unexpected phenomenon of Know Nothingism in that country, of which I was an eye- witness, dispelled that delusion forever. We had the same evils to complain of, in an exaggerated form, in the neigh- boring province of New Brunswick, where, together with the usual excesses, a mid-day and murderous conflict took place, which well nigh threatened the peace of the whole colony. But few years since the same, in lesser degree, oc- curried in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward's Island, where the banners of the respective contending parties seemed to be a w m 18 .-M I for the moment, " Lcvo God, and hate your follow creature .as heartily as possible." And how was this gigantic evil to be remedied ? Wo had three millions of people in these now united Provinces ; and I must be excused for stating my honest conviction that I saw but one man alone with expansion of heart and head enough •to grasp the magnificent design, and with the lever of genius and indomitable energy to carry it into triumphant execution, and that man was Thomas D'Arcy McGee. Other prominent party leaders seemed to me to bo ever screaming and piping lamentations, and playing on the passions of the unthinking, and poking up the dead men's bones of centuries gone by, for the purpose of finding the Godsend of a grievance; and therefore, with all their acknowledged ability, they did but harm to the • country and to the publiC; and but very little good to them- selves. They were their whole lives pulling down rather than 'building up, and therefore when dying left nothing behind of an enduring character or worthy of a people's gratitude. Kot so with the great and good man we mourn to-day. To him belongs the singular privilege of having inaugurated what his journal in Canada was called, the new era of peace, benediction, prosperity, and brotherly love, where there was naught before but heart burnings, and hard feel- ings, and deeds of death, and darkness, and total aliena- tion of brother from brother, and party feelings, and schisms in their most unchristian and revolting forms. Without ceasing for a moment to be the ardent lover of Ireland, her religion, and her people, he became first among the bene- factors, and in a certain sense father, of his adopted country. By Herculean labor he succeeded to a large extent in tearing up, root and branch, senseless and inveterate prejudices, and blending all hearts in one common eflfort for one common weal. He did what before him no one evor seriously at- tempted with any show of success. He made man's "justice .and peace kiss," and without the compromise of a single principle, religious or political, he brought rich and poor, Pro- testant and Catholic, English, French, Irish, Scotch and •Canadian, into the bond of amity and the social compact, and .unified a whole mass of 'heterogenous people, far more than I I I ! \ m l:.k li M 19 jroature Wo had es; and at I saw enough t genius :ecution, eminent 1 piping hinking, y, for the herefore, m to the to them- ther than 5 behind gratitude, dav. To ,ugurated W ERA of 3, where bard feel- alien a- schisms Without Ireland, ;he bene- country. tearing ices, and common ously at- " justice a single oor, Pro- tch and lact, and ore than the most ardent lover of this new and interesting country could ever have anticipated. And this, I confess, is the secret why I myself esteemed, loved and admired him, as the Catholic Irishman, with all his failings, of whom I felt most proud. Had I never seen him, and that he had lived and died in Australia, his literary works, and the thrill of his Irish and. iiispiriting oratory, and above all, his lifelong and dis- tinguished services to religion and country, would endear him to my heart, and embalm his memory, as it now does, in my never-fading recollection. But returning to his history in Canada, within ten short years ho was, under God, mainlj- in- strumental in acquiring a position for Irishmen which I solemnly believe since the days of Henry the Second they never attained elsewhere. Up to a late period in life he car- ried his Irishry so far as to wish that all Irishmen were grouped and would live together in separate communities on this continent, so that their religion, language, customs, and' associations, might be preserved in their integrity, as in the old land, and for this reason alone he forfeited his life-long and kindly relations with his best friend. Archbishop Hughes, with whom he had for a considerable period a life and death quarrel on the subject. And oh ! tell it not in Gath — publish it not in the streets of Ascalon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, this is the Irishman — the pride, and honor, and benefactor of his race and creed — the giant in intellect and the quasi father of his country — the foremost among the founders of hor Institu- tions — the most genial and warm-hearted, and, in a human sense, the best and greatest man in this wide domain, — and this is the man who has been so ruthlessly cloven down and his soul hurled before the dread tribunal of bis Maker without having had time to say God have mercy on me. And by whom has this tremendous deed been perpe- trated? Was it by Wild Indians?— a Savage, a Cherokee, a Blackfoot, a Hottentot, or a l^ew Zealander ? Was it by an Orangeman — English, Scotch, American, or Cana- dian ? Was it by a Bengal tiger, a hyena, or a demon in human form? But, Oh, God!' to think that this prince of Irishmen, for mere blood money, for pri- rr^ # u 20 vato votigeanco, would have been trailed for monthB, and struck down by tho miscreant blood-rod hand of one of his own countrymen, is perfectly overwhelming. Whenever I look back at tho deed with all its accompanying horrors, (and it is a spectre that haunts mo almost at every hour,) 1 feel as if my blood would curdle and my heart shrivel up within me. Instead of being dwarfed by distance of time, in my view it is every day looming up more hideous and more appalling. Since tho stabbing of Henry tho Fourth of France, by Ravnil- lac, nothing like it in atrocity, excepting tho public murder of President Lincoln, has occurred for three hundred years. In the absence ot all knowledge of the particulars, save what wo all learn from the press, I only hope, and, I fear, against hope, that my worst suspicions will not be realized ; and in the midst of all I so poignantly feel on the subject, to know that it was not an Irishman who did the deed will be a relief which I cannot express in words. But the deed is done, and beyond all doubt by an assassin's hand, who perhaps, *' Should against tho murderer shut tho door, Nor bear tho knife himself." Besides, this great and good man, " Hath born his faculties so meek, bath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angols, trumpot-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off: And Pity, like a naked now-born babe, Striding the blast, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye." Impiously pushing God aside from his throne, and the arbitra- ment of that life which he alone could give, and ought to take away at his own sweet time, the assassin, countryman or stranger, committed the foulest deed that can be conceived against God or man. In one instant ho silenced forever the silvery tongue, the moutb of golden words, the first among the oracles of his country. In a fell swoop he extinguished ■I -.■•.liiU 21 months, and )f ono of hia Whenovcr I liorrors, (and ir,) 1 foel as if f) within me. in my view it 3re appalling, e, by llavftil- ublic murder undred years, vrs, save what fear, against ilized ; and in »jcct, to know ill be a relief J an assassin's ar, tainst lind the arbitra- and ought to Countryman or be conceived led forever the [e first among extinguished i ono of the most brilliant lamps of God, and stopped in ono Hocond the +hrobbings of a giant's heart. *' How are the valiant fallen ? Jonathan slain in the high places? I grieve for thee, Jonathan, exceedingly beautiful, and to bo loved as the mother lovoth her only son," by those who, in this world, basked as I did in the mnshine of your genial friendship. And, oh ! ray friends, 1 will ask here to-day, for what ha^ this terrible retribution been inflicted ? Is it for any criminal act, any treasonable or libellous speech or writing against the State or a fellow subject? If so redress was at hand, the appeal was obviously to the outraged law. If only a private feud, a quarrel, a personal insult, there was another remedy — unsanctioned, indeed, nay, condemned by religion — in the manly, the open, the mid-day fight for honor. But for the coward wretch, who tracks his victim in the shades of night, and craven-like lurks in holes, around corners, and crouches behind walls for the security of his own worthless life, while sending the assassin bullet on its errand of death, the scath- ing contempt of the universe together is not a feaiher's weight as compared with God's maledictions on such a man. In point of fact, that crime has no proper name iu human language. The blow of the assassin is terrific beyond doubt, but a million of such cowards never did and never could or would fight a nation's battles. ..Issassination never yet redressed the grievances of a people, nor won back the lost boon of their national independence. There is not in all history an instance of sroh a fact. N'either can there be. It is God himself who assures us that all who take the sword shall perish by the sword. Besides the many instariccs of assassination and its inevitable retribution, quoted by the press when lately allrding to this subject, I heard myself from a competent authority in France, where I resided for some years, that of the hundreds of nssassins who were prominent during the first French Revolution, there was scarcely one ever known to have escaped a bloody iind disastrous death. Marat, the prince of assassins, was killed naked in his bath by the weakly hand of a girl, who plunged the fatal dagger into his heart at a moment when he was probably plotting to make her "'y,!?*?!'^^!-' 't ■ ■^S 22 t|i:)l viii a victim of his lust, as he had already victimised her dearest ones on earth at the guillotine. Robespierre, who in the name of liberty boasted of having cut oft" the heads of thou- sands, had his own jaw bone nearly torn away by a woman, and like a coward as he was, screamed at the intensity of his torture as he was carried on a hurdle in the bloody track to the Place de Grevo. Need I remind you of the terrific end of Booth, said to be cut up into fifty pieces, and the atrocious dc b of his wretched accomplices, marked as it was by cverytuing a mighty nation could do to disgrace and to en- sign them to everlaating infamy. Such was the end of assas- sination from the beginning of the world, and in my soul I believe that there will be no exception to the rule unto the con- summation of all things. In Mr. McGee's case it would now appear evident that he lost his life to save the peo->le of this country from a band of assassins, and for the unpardonable crime, in their eyes, of fear- lessly expressing his honest political opinions in this free coun- try. The crime perpetrated against Mr. McGee, if committed by a clique, as alleged, is a crime against ev^ery man in this land, whose life and liberties are thereby threatened, and for the same reason. This is the first time that midnight political as- sassination has been imported into this country, and if it be proven to be by an Irishman, I, on the part of Ireland and the Irish, repudiate the foul deed as being in any way chargeable to us as a people. No country in the world ia which fewer cold-blooded mur- ders are committed than in Ireland, notwithstanding the cruel misrepresentations abroad and the fearful exaggerations of our enemies on that score. I am consoled with the tliought, far as I could ever learn, that not a single Fenian (properly so called) is to be found in any of these Lower Provinces. There is one more crime for whi(;li Mr. McGee suffered, to which I must again allude before concluding, and that is, that for the last ten years he labored to amalgamate Protestant and Catholic, French and Irish, into one body politic and social, in this happy land. 1, too, in my own way, have been guilty of the same crime, and I confess it not with remorse, but with honest pride. For the true interests of the Catholic Church, and still more for the (-■■ m m< \ 23 dearest » in the of thou- woman, ty of his track to 5c end of atrocious was by i to on- of assas- ay soul I the con- it that he a band of ;s, of fear- free coun- joraraitted 1 this land, id for the olitical as- [id if it be eland and any way ded mur- tho cruel ons of our o-ht, far as 80 called) ere is one lb I must he last Ten ic, French ppy land. irime, and For the re for the material as well as the spiritual welfare of the people commit- ted to my care, I feel it as much my duty to conciliate Protes- tants, and to preserve heavenly peace and happiness in this land, as to preach a sermon or to perform any other portion of my Episcopal functions. I believe that my humble eftbrts in this particular have brought more real blessings of every kind on the Catholic community over which I preside, than all my other labours together. I found my people nine years ago in the turmoil of religious strife ; and, if I die to-day, thanks to God and to the co-operation of clergy and laity, I leave them without any polemical heartburnings — in peace, happiness and union with their fellow citizens of every creed and class. It was for the attainment of this glorious position for the Irish in this country, that the mighty dead whom we honour to-day lived his last years, and like a martyr laid down his life in the Holy "Week of 1868, at the foot of his country's altar. As a man of the world and for earthly fame he could not have ended life's career more nobly ; but there is one other association infinitely more glorious f nd more heart-consoling in connection with his death, than all this together. Thomas D'ArcyMcGee did not die merely as a distinguished Irish- man, a Poet, a Philosopher, a Statesman, the beloved of all hearts; but he died as the servant of God, the Christian, the Catholic, with all the marks of Heaven's predestination upon his closing career. He died with nearly all the Rites of his Church, with the sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucha- rist received when leaving home for Ottawa but a w^ek or two before. And oh ! with all the darkness and horror that ac- companied the hideous deed, this beautiful consideration more than compensates for all. If he had performed his duty and was prepared to meet his God, and that his soul is safe, for us his death — and particularly such a death — is a disastrous, irre- parable loss, but for him it is an everlasting victory. The Honorable Thomas D'ArcyMcGee then, is really dead; but, thanks to God, he is only dead to rise again body and soul at the sound of the Archangel's trump, and go to meet Christ Jesus in the air, and thus to be " always with the Lord." Outside of the Holy Scriptures no more soul-soothing dirge — no more beautiful and appropriate elegy could be wjx ii,:. ^'i^Al'^IWi". t \V 4*^ 24 written, than that penned by himself for a deceased friend a a few days before, and prompted, to ail appearances, by inspi- ration, to tell of his own death, which then stood at his very threshold. " Mighty our Church's will To shield her parting souls from ill, Jealous of Death she guards them still, Miserere I)omv„e. I W: if The dearest friendri will turn away, And leave th? clay to keep the clay, Ever and ever she will stay, Miserere Domine. Well may they grieve who laid him there, Where shall they find his equal — where ? Naught can avail him now but prayer, Miserere Domine. Friend of my soul farewell vo theo, Thy truth — thy trust — thy chivalry. As thine so may my last end be, Miserere Domine." Reqidescat — May he rest in peace. — Amen. Deo Gratias, April 24, 1868. ■'i- 14. ) .,-., ised friend a cea, by inspi- l at his very \ e,