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Lorsque le d icument est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en jn seul cliche, il est film^ d parir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m^thode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 i p CS-i) 5''/6l1 THE HONORABLE THOMAS D'AECY ICGEE OF MONTREAL. Eob me of all the joys of sense, Curse me with all but imiwtonco, FUnft me upon an ocean oar, Cast me upon a savage shore, Slay mf; ! but own abovo my b.er " The man now gone still held while horo The jewel Independence ! " ^ Canadian Ballads, By Thomas D' Arc y Mc Gee Had the Honorable Thomas D'Arcy McGce lived in the middle of the sixth century he would very probably have been a member, and a very distinguished one too, of that all-powerful " Bardic Order," before whose awful anger, Mr. McGee informs us in his History of Ireland, " kings trembled and warriors succumbed in superstitious dread." This iiifluential order, we are elsewhere told, were " the editors, professors, registrars, and record keepers " of those early days ; th^ makers and masters of public opinion, whose number in the provinces of Meath and Ulster alone, in the reign of king Hugh the second, exceeded twelve hundred. Although the subject of our sketch was neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, it is not improbable that, could we trace his genealogy aright, we might discover that the trunk of his family tree is rooted and grounded in poetic earth ; for his intellectual life derived no slight nourishment from the poet's heritage, — imagination and fancy. Mr. McGee's ancestors hailed originally from Ulster. It is therefore probable he derived through them from the imposing commonwealth of bards to which we have referred, and that his scholar-like fore- HON. THOMAS 1) ARCY McOEE. fathers may be looked for among the twelve hnrulred whom king Hugh impeached, but who were upheld and defended by the mag- nanimous St. Columbcille, who, moved by a love of letters, a school- man's sympathies, and a christian man's duties, expressly journeyed from his sea-girt home at Icolumkill to appear as counsel for his brethren at the rude tribunal of the irascible king. On referring to one of the larger and more perfect maps of Ireland, and looking closely along the north-eastern co:kjt, we shall perceive situated sca-Avard oft' the shore of Antrim, in the province of Ulster, and within the ancient barony of Belfast, a small islet which bears the name of " Island Magee." This little sea-washed speck contained, according to one of the latest, if not the latest topographical survey, about seven thousand acres of the finest land in the northern part of the kingdom. Moreover, in 1837 it was peopled by no less than two thousand six hundred and ten inhabitants. In the early times, the lord hip of the Island was vested in the great Ulster family of O'Neil, from whom it passed in the sixteenth century to the Macdonalds of the Antrim Glens, and in the seventeenth, by the fortune of arms, to the Chichesters, Earlg of Belfast and Marquises of Donegal. From this small Island, for which the original tenants iU'c said to have paid the annual rental of " tAvo goshawks and a pair of gloves," (which, by the way, may have been considered enough, since, to an incredibly recent period, the Island was imagined by its inliabitants to be a theatre of sorcery,) — their descendants were almost extenninated, and wholly expelled by a force of covenan- ters at the time when the memorable Munroe was commander of the Parliamentary armies in Ireland. Three only of those who bore the name of Magee were said to have escaped to the mainland, and from one of those three, who we suspect must have appropriated more than his share of the sorcery, the subject of our sketch accounted himself to have directly descended. Without dwelling further on the facts and incidents of his remote ancestry, we may mention that the Honorable Thomas D'Arcj McGee is the second son of the late Mr. James McGee, of Wexford, and of Dorcas Morgan, his wife. He was born at Carlingford, in the County of Louth, on the 13th of April, 1825, a day which has since then become a day of mourning in hie family. The name of HON. THOMAS D ARCY McGEE. 1- If '• D'Arcy," by which Mr. McGec was conventionally known, is, we have understood, derived from his god-father Mr. 1'homas D'Arcy, a gentlemen who resided in tlie neighborhood of Carling- ford, and, as we may infer, a personal friend of the family. Of his parents Mr. McGee was accustomed to speak with filial affection and becoming reverence, for he was early taught to " honor his father and his mother." But for the memory of the latter, whom he lost at a very early age, he entertained feelings of tender and enthusiastic admiration. Such feelings appear to be almost divmely wrought, and, like threads of gold, they beautify as well as strengthen the purest fibres of our nature. On the mind of Mr. McGee they exerted the gentle influence of poetry as well as the holy one of love. Separate qualities, such as duty and respect, obedience and devotion, love and pride, when looked at through the lens of his memory, cease to be distinct. All his recollections of his mother, though differently colored, nevertheless met and blended harmoniously in his character, not unlike the soft hues of the rain- bow, as in the hush of evening they silently melt in a sea of light. No doubt there were strong intellectual affinities between the mother and her son ; and this sympathetic attraction created an indelible impression on the heart of the latter. The intellectual charts of the two minds were, we are inclined to think, marked with not dissimilaT^ lines ; bold and deeply drawn 'n the case of the son, they were sketchily traced and dehcately shaded in the instance of the mother. The subtle charm of divine poesy seems to have pervaded both ; and this spell of fancy and feeling, of imagina- tion and truth, may, in some sort, account for the magnetic attractions which governed the intercourse of the parent and child. To talk about his mother was, as all who know him had occasion to observe, a source of unalloyed happiness to her son. As in a holiday in his boyhood, so the acids of controversy and the sharp edges of strife gave place to expressions tipped with sunshine, when his lips could be beguiled into speaking of what his heart never ceased to feel. " My mother ! at that holy name ' ; _ Within my bosom there's a gush • , Of feeling, which no time can tame, ^ v^ - , ^. , ., , A feeling which for years of fame " I would not, could not crush ! " _ ;! 6 HON. THOMAS d'ARCY McGEE. According to his recollection of her, the subject of our sketch vras accustomed to allude to liis mother as a person of genius and accjuirements, rare in her own or in any other class. She was endowed, as Mr. McGeo commonly observed, with a fertile ima- gination and a cultirated mind. Moreover nature had given her a sweet voice and an ex(][uisite ear, and the latter prescribed exact laws to the former when, bird-like, she thought fit to attune that voice to song. She was fond of music, as well as of its twin sister, poetry. A diligent reader of the best books, she was also an intelUgent lover of the best ballads. She liked especially those of Scotland. The poetry of common life was in her case no mere figure of speech. Through all the changes of daily duty there ran a vein of fancy, which enabled her to brighten the real with the pleasant phantasies of the ideal, and support the dark cares of the mind on the white wings of the imagination. McNeil's .words " Oh whar hae you been a' the day My boy Tammie ! " were the words with Avhich she usually greeted and welcomed her favorite child. In common with her contemporaries, the mothers of her day, she appears to have had a special liking for Home's tragedy of Douglas ; and we may perhaps more easily imagine than describe her sense of pride as she listened to " Tammie's" earliest lesson in elocution. It is not difficult to see the curly-headed urchin standing on a table, and in melo-dramatic guise, with precocious efifrontery informing his mother, who knew better, and his mother's friends who did not believe him, that • " My name is Norval." His mother, as we have said, was early removed from him by death. We will not speak of, since we cannot describe, grief. We may, however, conjecture, since their natures and intellectual tastes were identical, that her death was like a severance of himself from himself. The tears, for he was not ashamed to weep, which no doubt fell upon her grave, were neither idle nor unavailing tears, for they became as it were so many cameras through ivhich were reflected the duties, the incidents, and the obligations of his HON. THOMAS d'aRCY McOEE. future life. Thus at the age of seventeen vre find D'Arcy McGee had passed tlie shallows whore timid youths hatho and shiver, and had boldly struck out into the deep sea of duty. We have no data which will enable us to bridge the time between his mother's death and his arrival on this continent : but it is not difficult to suppose that it was filled up in the manner usual to youth, with the diftcrence only of a greater amount of application and a higher range of study. On arriving at Boston, he became almost immediately connected with the press of that city. Kind fortune seemed to befriend him ; for his lot appeared to bo cast in, what was at that time, and perhaps still is, the intellectual capital of the United States — the forcing-houso of its fanaticism, and the favored seat of its scholarship. Thus it was that D'Arcy McGee, a youth hungry and thirsty for knowledge, influence and fame, found himself a resident of the New England States capital, with access to the best public libraries on this side of the Atlantic, and within reach of the best public lecturers on literary and sci^^ntific subjects. For at that day Emerson, Giles, his county and cou.itry- raan, Whipple, Chapin, and Brownson, lived in that city or in its vicinity. It was moreover the residence of Channing, Bancroft, Eastburn, Prescott, Ticknor, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and others, whose works should have purified the moral atmosphere, and have made Boston to others, what we suppose it must have been to them, an appreciative and congenial home. It is not difficult to- imagine, from what we knew and could observe of his mature man- hood, that D'Arcy McGee, the impulsive Irish lad, overflowing with exuberant good nature and untiring industry, with his heart full of hope and his brain full of ambition, soon found his way into meetings where learned men delivered lectures, or among the book- sellers, whose shops such celebrities frequented. Neither is it a matter for surprise that he early attracted the notice of several of their number. Opportunities of speaking publicly are by no means uncommon in the United States, and we should imagine that Boston contained a great many nurseries, under difierent names, where the alphabet of the art could be acquired. Whether the scholar progresses beyond his letters depends very much on the furnishing of his mind. The nerve and knack may be got by practice, but the prime condition, — having something to say, — must spring from 8 UON. THOMAS d'ARCY McGEE. exact thought and severe study. We have every reason to believe that even in his early youth, the subject of our sketch, observed that condition ; but we have no means of knowing where or in what way ho acijuired the fluent habit of graceful and polished oratory. For since ho was enthroned on his mother's tea-table, and declared to listening friends that his name was " Norval," wo have boon unable to discover any intermediate audience between his select one at Carlingford, and his scientific one at Boston. Strange as it may seem, it is we believe, no less true than strange, that during his sojourn at Boston, from the years 1842 to 1845, when between the ages of seventeen and twenty, he had actually made his mark as a public speaker. Nor was it denied, that the auda- cious youth, though contemptuously styled " Greenhorn," and " Paddy-boy," very fairly held his own with men who never were " green" and who had long ceased to be " boys." It may be observed in passing that the " Know-nothing" party, which has since then acquired consistency and influence, in its incipient shape, was discernible at that day under the name of the Anti-foreign party, a party which Mr. McGee could not do otherwise than criticise Avith severity and oppose with vehemence. At the period we refer to, 'he " Lyceum System" as it has been termed, spread itself over the New England States. Peoplo desired to receive knowledge distilled through the brains of their neigh- bors. Lecturers were at a premium ; and youth forestalled time by discoursing of wisdom, irrespective of experience. Thus it was that D'Arcy McGee, with a boy's down on his chin, and with whiskers in embryo, itinerated among our neighbors, and gave them the advantage of listening to a youthfuUecturer, discoursing, we must be permitted to think, on aged subjects. What those subjects were may be partially conjectured, for the reminiscences of his lecturing life in those days were full of amusing as well as of instructive incident ; more especially as the period was, we think, coeval with a transition phase not only of the Irish, but of the American, mind. Mixing, as he necessarily must have done, with all sorts and con- ditions of men, it was impossible that Mr. McGee should not have formed many acquaintances of more or loss valuable, and some friend- ships, perhaps, beyond price. Among the latter it was his practice to make grateful mention of Mr. Grattan, then Her Majesty's HON. THOMAS D ARCY McQJ 9 eve vctl Iiat ecu Oct a.s hat ah Consul at Boston. Besides a name historically eloquent which ho inherited, that gentlemen, muiucstionahly possessed great intellec- tual acquirements as well as personal gifts. In the latter wore in- cluded a kindly disposition and a cordial manner. It was therefore natural enough that ho should have taken a warm interest in his en- thusiastic countryman, and from the treasmy of his own experience have given the young writer and lecturer many valuable hints on the style and structure of literary work. Thus it chanced that the wise counsellor and the kind friend meeting in the same person, exerted no inconsiderable influence on the young enthusiast. Mr. Grattan's 8ym})athics fell upon an appreciative mind, and were destined at a later period of life to exert no inconsiderable iufluenae on his character ; for Mr. McGce always spoke of the Consul with admiration and of his services with gratitude. A new page in his eventful life was however about to bo opened. The obscure lad who had turned his back upon Ireland was about to be beckoned home again by the country he had left. The circumstances, apart from their political significance, were in the highest degree complimentary to one who at the time was not " out of his teens." An article, written by Mr. McGee, on an Irish subject, in a Boston newspaper, having attracted the attention of the late Mr. O'Connell, the former received, early In the year 1845, a very handsome offer from the proprietor of the Freeman's Journal, a Dublin daily paper, for his editorial services. This proposal he accepted, and henco his personal participation in the Irish i)olitics of the eventful years which commenced then and ended in 1848. Ardent by temperament, and enthusiastic by disposition, it was almost impossible for him to keep within the bounds of moral force which Mr. O'Connell had prescribed, and which the newspaper he served was instructed to advocate. Mr. McGee felt that such fetters galled him, and he became impatient under their restraint. The habit of maintaining his own convictions was a necessity of his condition. Controlled by his imagination and following the lead of his feelings, he determined at all hazards to associate himself with the more advanced and enthusiastic section of the liberal party, then known by the name of "Young Ireland." This section or coterie, for it was scarcely a party, possessed many attractions for such an adherent. Besides the name, and the bright, 10 HON. THOMAS D ARCY McGEE. alluring, misleading (juality of youth, which that name symbolized and expressed, the coterie was mado up of those many-hued forms of intellectual mosaic work which men generally admire and rarely trust J very charming in our sight and very perishable in our service ► It was composed, at least at first, almost altogether of young barristers, young doctors, young college men and young journalists, most of them under thirty, and many under twenty-five years of age. Mr. McGce was probably their most youthful member, for when his association with them commenced he was not of age. Of such hot blood was the " Young Ireland " party compo' tided, that little surprise was occasioned, and none was expressed, when its mischievous revels were broken up by the riot act. We cannot in a paper of this kind discuss the question at any length, but if Ave under- stand the history of those times aright, the policy of moral force which had guided O'Connell was not, in the first instance, discarded by his younger and more ardent disciples. They wished to accomplish the purpose of " The Liberator," only they desired to shorten the time and accelerate the speed of the operation. They thought that O'Connell was " old and slow." They felt that they were young and active. In their minds the rivalry between age and youth was renewed, provoking the old issues and re-enacting the old results. Keeping in view the great end which they had set themselves tO' accomplish, they nevertheless sought, in the first instance, to move by literary rather than by political appliances. Accordingly they planned, among other works, a series of stirring shilling volumes for the people, entitled the " Library of Ireland." The famine of 1847 extinguished the enterprizc, but not until twenty volumes of this new National Library had been published. Of the above number Mr. McGee was the author of two. One, a series of bio- graphics of illustrious Irishmen of the seventeenth century, and the other a memoir of Art. McMurrough, a half forgotten Irish king of the fourteenth century. Of course, works published under such circumstances, and forming parts vi such a series, would at first, at all events, be well received and widely circulated. They were passionately written and greedly devoured by a people Avho were emaciated by famine and made desperate by pestilence. Still their merits could not have been of a mere evanescent character, for we are credibly informed that now, after a period of twenty years, the books retain much of their early popularity. -IS HON. TnOMAS D'ARCY McGEB. 11 Mr. McGee, if wo remember aright, has somewhere said, with respect to the transactions of those times, that " Young Ireland," not content to restore the past, endeavored to re-enact it ; not content to write history, tried, to use a familiar phrase of Mr. John Sandfield Macdonald's, to " make it ;" and we have little doubt, could we see the intellectual machinery which preceded those events, we should discover that none more than Mr. McGee assi- duously labored to manufacture history. The coterie grew into a confederation of which Mr. McGee was, we beheve the chief promoter and the chosen secretary. It was not without adherents, neither was it without attraction, and especially co the class, a by no means inconsiderable one, whose judgment is controlled by their imagination, and who seem to think that feeling and wisdom are identical qualities. We decline to in- dicate those transactions by any particular nuine. We all know that they were failures, and since time tempers judgment, we venture to believe that the chief actors of that day concur with the critics of the present time in thinking that they were follies. The most stirrinfj among the ma.iy impassioned Songs of the Nation, — " Who fears to speak of '98" — showed alike the genius, the courage, and the credulity of " Young Ireland" of '48. The Irish politics of fifty years since were no more worthy of recall than was the Irish policy of two hundred years since. Young Ireland should not, we venture to think, have invoked the embarrasing memories of the past, if it wished to make old Ireland new. It was an error in time, an error in judgment, and an error in sense, which, fortunately for all, contained within itself the germ of inevitable failure. While England, through her press and in her Parliament, scouted the policy and punished its principal exponents, she did not fail very generously to acknowledge the unquestionable talent and out-spoken honesty of that earnest and ill-fated party. We all know what followed. Some of the leaders were sent into penal exile, while others, including the subject of our sketch, found safety in voluntary expatriation. But the exploit was not unattended with excitement and peril, as the following narrative will more clearly show: — After the secession of the Young Ireland party from Conciliation Hall, in 18ir>, under f'e leadership of the lato Mr. Smith O'Brien, the confederation was estub- 12 HON. THOMAS D ARCY McGEE. lished, and at all its meetings McGee was one of the most forcible and prominent speakers- He was not a favorite with many of the leadirg spirits of the party with whom he was associated ; but he and Charles Gavan Duify, who has since so :!on- spicuously figured as a statesman in Australia, were always the fastest friends, and carried on with each other a friendly correspondence up to the time of his death. When the British Government suspended the Habeas Corms Act in 1848, it was resolved at a meeting of the Executive Council, held at their rooms in D'Olier street, that this act of despotism should be resisted by force of arms, and for that pur- pose an appjal should be made to the country, and the prominent leaders sent into those districts where their influence with thepeasantry was greatest. According to this arrangement, the late Smith O'Brien, the late Col. Doheny, and the late John B. I^illon, General Meagher, Richard O'Gorman, and others, left Dublin and proceeded to their assigned localities ; but McGoe was charged with bringing over from Glasgow an expedition which had been organized and armed in that city. — Descriptions of the leaders were published in the Hue and Cry — a sort of private police gazette— and rewards offered for their apprehension. The country was sAvarming with detectives ; the railway depots were closely watched, and tho stage coach lines placed under strict police scrutiny. The proclamation of the suspen- sion of the Raheas Corpus Act wa,s made in Dublin on a Sunday morning in July, 1818, but Mr. McGee departed suddenly from the city on Saturday evening, and arrived in Londonderry on the following morning, whore he met a friend, as he was taking his matutinal walk upon the historic walls of the maiden city. The meeting occurred on a much-frequented spot of this very public promenade — it was exactly over Bishop's gate— McGeo placed his finger on his lip, which his friend at onue understood; no name was mentioned and they walked past Walker's monument out of Butcher's gate, through the suburb of Dcrry called the "bog side," into the country, and up the green hills which look upon the fair Lough Svvilly, where Wolfe Tone was captured, upon the mountain of Gray Innishowea, "Where coward or traitor there never was none." Mr. MoGee briefly explained the proceedings of the previous forty-eight hours, the plan of action, and the duty to which he was detailed. The assizes which Avere about to commence the next day iuDer'-y, brought many professional men from J)ublin to the city, and it was therefore deemed prudent not to return to his hotel, where he stayed under the name of Doyle, until night had cast her shadows athwart the waters of the Foyle. The evening was spent in McGee's bed-room, where future prospects of success were enthusiastically discussed. His companion wrote a let- ter to his wife in Dublin, simply stating that Mr. Doyle had passed through Derry and was in good health and spirits. He was then soant of money, but expected to find a draft on his arrival in Glasgow, for which place he left by steamer the next evening. AMien he arived in Glasgow he met his friends, and put up at a hotel to await some intelligence of Smith O'Brien's movements. When he had been there a fortnight, he was discovered, and a warrant was being made out for his arrest, when intelligence reached the ears of a wealthy citizen, and a prominent member in the Repeal Association. That gentleman hastened to inform Mr_ McCee of his danger, supplied him with the funds, and with him took the next train for Newcastle on-Tyne. \A'hen within a few miles of that place, they returned towards Glasgow, got out at a way station, and took tho stage coach for a littlo port on the Scotch coast whence a steamer plies daily to Belfast, and makes tho trip in about three hours and a half. This was lucky, for the police had hired a special train, passed them on the way, and wore waiting for Mr. McGee at tho Newca'^tlo station. There was another passenger in tho coach, but to his great HON. THOMAS D ARCT MrGEE. la horror that passenger was no other than the renowned Rev. Tresham Grejig, who was the great champion of tha Orange and Government party in Ireland. Mr. McGee thought he would be delivered over by the reverend loyalist to the first policeman they should meet. But he was agreeably dissappointed ; Tresham did not take the slightest noti(;e of him, and soon himself and his carpet-bag were stowed away in the steamboat. He arrived in Belfast about midnight, walked to the station of the Ulster railway, took the train for Ar- magh, which he reached about daylight. From Armagh he proceeded to Omagli, in the county Tyrone, by jaunting car, thence to Enniskillen, and from that to Sligo, where the Ribbon men took charge of him, and concealed him for a fortnight at the base of the Benbulben ^lountain. Here he remained in perfect security until he communicated with his friends in Gla.sgow, and funds were for- warded to him to enable him to escape from the country. His object was to reach Donegal or Derry, and get away by some ;ihip leaving either of those ports for America. He moved from Benbulben, first to Donegal, and was concealed in the town and in the very house where Sir Thomas Blake, of Menio Castle, County Galway, was then stationed as one of Her Majesty's "Resident Magistrates." He remained there a week, and Sir Thomas got information of the fact on the very day he took his departure. The worthy Baronet gave close pursuit, and traced him up to Dcrry, where the late Bishop McGinn and some of his clergy rendered him efiectual aid. He was jirovided with a clerical suit of clothes and a breviary. In the garb of a Catholic priest he was passed through the enemy's lines and put on board a ship anchored off Moville at the mouth of the Foyle, called the "Shamrock'"' and commanded by Capt. John Moore, of Galway, He was several days at soa before he let the Captain know his real (iharacter, but his confidence was not mis- placed. The captain treated hira hospitably, and brought him safely to Now York. Thus it was that, heated and excited by the strife, angered and disappointed at the issue, Mr. McGce for a second time landed in the United States. As before, his occupations "vvere those of a journalist and a lecturer, for it ■was his pleasure as well as his duty to live by the sweat of his brain. Between the close of 1848 and the commencement of 1857, he published two newspapers, The Neiv York Nation, and the American Celt. It was, of course, natural, all the circumstances considered, that the inclination of his mind should have been violently, and from the force of recent ex- perience and actual discipline, bitterly hostile to the government of Great Britain. Many will remember, not from the papers them- selves, for they had but a small circulation in the Provinces, but fr.' m extracts which found a place in several of the Canadian jour- nals, how fiercely and fanatically anti-English his political writings were. But while admitting the exaggerated rancour which char- acterized his words, it will undoubtedly be allowed that time and the opportunity for closer observation produced tlicir usual influence 14 HON. THOMAS d'aRCT MoGEE. on his instructed mind. His tierce anger towards Great Britain gradually disappeared. His excited temper, like the evil spirit of the son of Kish, was exorcised, if not by the spell of music, at least by the taming influence of time, the force of a '^quired truth and the sense of obvious wrong. The book of remembrance and the book of experience were before him. He could read their letter- press and criticise their illustrations. He could see his country- men under British and his countrymen under American rule. He <}ould look from that picture to this, from monarchical England to republican America, and with all the imperfections of the former, he might and probably did express his judgment of the contrast in the words of the Prince of Denmark, that taken all in all " it was Hyperion to a Satyr." We could not, even in the cursory sketch which our limited space will permit us to make, pass over in silence Mr. McGee's personal and political career previous to his residence in Canada, for a por- tion of that career was a prelude to, and directly connected with, its more recent sequences amongst ourselves. His occupations during that period were professedly those of an author and a lecturer, and only accidentally those of a politician. Those occupations were marked with many errors and crossed with many vicissitudes. Still it must be allowed that if one of his ardent temperament and peculiar position succeeded in avoiding misfortune, he could hardly be expected to escape mistakes. An Irishman by birth, a Roman Catholic by parentage, passionately attached to his race, and devoutly loyal to his rehgioa, he was from the very outset of his career remarkable for the courageous spirit of independence with which he formed and maintained his opinions, no matter whether the subjects on which he adventured them were political, historical, or social. One of his Canadian ballads illustrates this phase of his character, and supplies a key-note to his conduct ; The last stanza which prefaces this sketch will be read with mourn- ful interest for it seems to have been laden with the crimson burden The first is as follows : of foreknowledge " Let fortune frown and foes increasci And life's long battle know no peace, Give mc to wear upon my breast The object of my early quest, Undinnn'd, unbroken, and unchang'd, The talisman I sought and gain'd, The jewel, Independence !" HON. THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE. 15 Neither was it a mere poetical profession of faith. Mr. McGee 's history very clearly shoAvs that he had reason for his rhyme. In the very dew of his youth he maintained his poUtical principles against such an opponent as the great O'Connell, and later still he wore his " Jewel Independence" in the presence of the late Dr. Hughes, the distinguished Archbishop of New York. It is pro- bable that neither of those eminent men viewed with complacency what must have appeared like presumption on the part of their youthful antagonist, and the latter especially may have detected in the at<;jtude thus assumed a certain amount of spiritual indepen- dence which that Prelate regarded as perilous to his religious welfare; but it is pleasant to believe, as we have some reason to believe, that with manly generosity, those gifted gentlemen did not fail to express their respect for Mr.' McGee's abilities, their appreciation of his sincerity, and their desire for his success in life. The independence which Mr. McGee valued and apostro- phized was not the independence which he found in the United States. His second sojourn in that country thoroughly disen- chanted him. His early admiration paled before his later expe- rience. The homoeopathic principle appears to be susceptible of political as well as physical application, for a taste of democratic institutions cured Mr. McGee, as it has cured many besides him, of any tendency to democracy. Neither was social life in America more attractive than political life. Both were an ofifencc, and one was an abomination. But the double discovery was made only after a painful and protracted effort not to see it, for it was with great reluctance that his vigorous mind and tenacious will surren- dered their preconceived impressions and yielded at length to the irrefragable force of such unwelcome truths. It would be interest- ing to read, perchance we may have the opportunity of reading, Mr. McGee's own account of his rise and progress towards higher moral and physical latitudes, for every inch of his course might point a moral, every stage of his journey adorn a tale. They only who know with what fanatic faith the human mind will cling even to a cheat, can appreciate the wrench which follows the discovery of the cheat. No man can deliberately break his idol without some sorrowful remembrance of the thing he once thought divine. The testimony of Mr. McGeo might enable us to compare the pttractions 16 nON. THOMAS d'aRCY McGEE. of his fancy witli the fallacies of his experience,— the dream-land which his imagination painted and the real land which his eyes saw. In this interval of conflict, while fighting against himself, and by wager of battle as it were, testing the strength and quality of his prin- ciples and opinions, new light, and with it new views, from an un- looked-for quarter, seemed to cross his path. In the midst of lite- rary work in New York he made the acquaintance of many friends in Canada. Having formed his own opinions of the people whom he had mot, it was natural enough he should wish to see the coun- try where they dwelt. Thus it was that Mr. McGee, during one summer vacation, takmg a holiday after the manner of an editor, found himself writing letters to his paper from the shores of Lake Huron, at another from the solitudes of the Ottawa, and at a third from the scenic Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Provincial attractions were too much for him. He heard in the Provinces what he did not hear in the States, honest opinions open- ly expressed. He found in the Provinces what he failed to find in the States, a tangible security for freedom. The promise of liberty was no spurious or counterfeit debenture. It was impressed with the stamp of law and endorsed with the sign -manual of authority. Whatever may have been the form of the fascination, we find that in the early part of the year 1857, after, as we have the right to suppose, a carefal comparison of the two stutes of society, the American and the Canadian, Mr. McGee transferred, as he has somewhere said, " his household goods to the valley of the St. Law- rence," selecting the City of Montreal as the place of his abode. We may here add that the City of Montreal 'ost no time in return- ing the compliment, for on the first opportunity that city elected him as one of its representatives in Parliament, and a little later his friends and neighbors presented him with an exceedingly well-appointed homestead in one of its most eligible localities. It was a hearty Irish mode of making him welcome. Mr. McGee very modestly sought only to be a citizen of the country ; his friends determined that he should be a freeman. No doubt the gift represented a great honor of no uncertain value to the object of it. But apart from such considerations, the shape which the testimonial took, soothed and flattered Irish sentiment, for if there be one form of property dearer than another to the offspring of Erin, it is that of a holding ; and'na HON. THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE. 17 matter whether it be a park or a potato patch, it is equally precious if it promotes the possessor to the condition of an estated gentleman or a landed proprietor. The old vocation was revived in Mr. McGee's new home. To write, to print, to publish were with him not only habits of life, but modes of enjoyment. " The long, long weary day Would pass in grief away," at least to him, if it uttered no speech from his pen, or received no thought from his brain. The time which elapsed between his arrival at Montreal, and the isssue of the first number of his news- paper, the New Era, was brief enough ; but it was nevertheless of suflficient length to enable hira to sketch through its columns a policy which harmonized with the name of his paper. He earnestly advocated, and continued to advocate to the last hour of his life, an early union of all the colonies of British North America. In doing so, we may observe in passing, he initiated a phrase descriptive of his object, a phrase which has since become familiar alike from use and criticism, for the proposed confederacy in his mind and writings was felicitously associated with the idea of a " new nationality." At the general election in 1858, Mr. McGee's public career in Canada commenced. He was returned to Parliament as one of the three representatives of Montreal. Whether from hereditary habit, a playful disposition, or serious thought, we know not, but on his arrival in the Province, he lost no time in declaring himself in true Hibernian style to be " against the government." And against the government he undoubtedly was during the four years of the continuance of irritating and acrimonious sixth Parliament. Much of course was expected of him. He had a certain repute as a politician, though he was more distinctly known as a forcible writer, and a fluent speaker. Still, his earlier Parliamentary efforts were, we think, followed by disappointment to those who had thought him to be capable *of better and wiser things. It was observed that he was a relentless quiz, an adroit master of satire, and the most active of partizan sharpshooters. Many severe, some ridicu- lous, and not a few savage things were said by him. Thus from his aflBuent treasury of caustic and bitter irony he contributed B 18 HON. THOMAS D'ARCY McQEE. not a little to the personal and Parliamentary embarrassments of those times. Many of the speeches of that period we would rather for