Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Mr. President, and Members of the Empire Club of Canada,--I am glad to be here to talk on the life of one of our Great Canadian statesmen, Thomas D'Arcy McGee. I hope, sir, that your Club will continue this good work of familiarizing our people with the great men who have done so much in the life of this country.

I think it was Disraeli who said he liked the Irish, they were so frank-in talking about each other. (Laughter) I am going to be candid, and take you back to other days and other times.

It is a long step from an uneducated orphan boy, poor, and almost friendless, to a great Canadian statesman. On the thirteenth of this month in Ottawa we celebrate the centenary of the birth of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the most accomplished, the most gifted and the most versatile of all Canada's public men. (Applause) Not only was he a statesman of wide, far-seeing vision, but he was a prolific

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The Hon. Mr. McMurray was born in Middlesex County in Ontario in 1878; educated in the country school and St. Mary's Collegiate, graduated from Manitoba University and the Manitoba Law School; practised law in, Winnipeg. In 1921 he was elected Liberal member for that city. In September, 1923, he was made Solicitor General of Canada, becoming also a member of the Privy Council.

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singer. Some three hundred songs are to his credit; poems of nature, poems of a deep religious fervour, and poems of patriotism. He was a great wit and an outstanding orator, possibly the greatest that Canada ever had. Canada has had many great speakers -Joseph Howe, Laurier and Chapleau will possibly come to your memory-but none of them the equal of McGee. An able historian, he wrote in this country the finest history of Ireland that was ever written. Some thirteen volumes are the product of this man. Cut off at an early age when most men in public life are but beginning to leave their impress, McGee left a volume of work and achievement that I-believe has never been excelled, possibly never equalled. Our Empire is a product of the law-loving Englishman, the sturdy and intelligent Scot and the brilliant and heroic Irishman. McGee possessed, in the highest degree, the heroism and brilliancy of the Celtic Irishman.

McGee was born in 1825 in Carlingford, County Louth, in the north of Ireland. Carlingford is a place of natural beauty, at the foot of the lovely Mourne Mountains, washed by the blue waters of Carlingford Lough. Nearby were ruins of the Druids of old, forts built by King John, ruins of monasteries--all of which undoubtedly played some part in moulding the boy's mind. He was eight years of age when his father, who was a coast guard, left that part of the country to to go Wexford, and on the way down his mother was killed, being thrown from a cart. The loss of such a mother must have deeply affected young McGee. Our mothers, gentlemen, have made us what we are. (Applause) It is as natural for the child, when the mind is like wax, and retains like marble, to derive his faith and all his highest faculties from his mother as it is to draw his physical nature from the maternal breast. It is said that a man inherits his physical qualities from his father, but his virtues from his mother. (Applause) McGee came of goad old rebel stock. Nearly every one of his father's people had taken part in that awful Wexford rebellion where quarter was neither asked nor given on either side. His father was a coast guard and his mother a very patriotic woman. In its great struggle for nationalism, Ireland was always nobly helped by its women. McGee's mother told him of Ireland's early struggles, and of Ireland's heroes, and she instilled into him that love of country which never left him. She was well acquainted with old Irish myths, poetry, and traditions, and she recited to him old ballads and the poems that were then new, of Tom Moore. Deep love of his Church she also gave him. The child was father to the man, and McGee through all his life retained his love of country, his love of song and poetry, and unceasing devotion to the great Church to which he belonged.

He was a marvelous boy. A little bit of a chapyou can see his picture there (pointing to a large portrait of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, lent to the Club for the occasion) and you can see he was not a handsome man. He had no schooling in the ordinary sense of the term, but he had a turn for poetry. It may interest you good people in Toronto to know that he first became an orator in Father Matthew's temperance organization. Among all other things, we Irishmen claim to have been the forerunners in the temperance cause. (Laughter) His father married again, his two sisters died, and the boy came to the United States.

I will read you a poem he wrote at this time. And remember he was but a boy of seventeen. The poem is entitled "Lines dedicated to the memory of a beloved Mother and two dear Sisters."

(Applause)

While in America, shortly afterwards, he wrote

these lines

(Applause)

In 1842 he came to the United States, to Boston, and on the 4th of July he went down to Boston Common to hear the "orator" of the day talk on Independence. Becoming enthusiastic, this young man of seventeen mounted a wagon and addressed the crowd, thrilling them, holding them spellbound. Years afterwards General Ben Butler, one of the audience who was thrilled by this young Irish immigrant, met the brother of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Col. James McGee, by a camp fire in the great Civil War, and related to him this episode. This exhibition of genius of young McGee caused him shortly afterwards to be invited to join the staff of the "Pilot," a newspaper devoted to the Irish cause in the United States. He won such recognition there that Daniel O'Connell, in Ireland, referred with pride to the "inspired writings of a young exiled Irish boy in America." O'Connell took young McGee back to London, and made him a reporter for the Dublin "Freeman's Journal," but McGee was not interested in British politics. His mind was on Irish literature, Irish traditions, Irish heroes. He was a great admirer of Charles Gavin Duffy, that rebel in arms who later became Premier of Victoria, Australia, and was knighted by the King. These men proved that saying of Junius that he is the best subject who will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.

McGee joined with other associates in founding a newspaper in Ireland, the "Nation." Meagher was one of them, that brilliant young man who later went to the United States and became a General in the American Army and afterwards Governor of the State of Montana. There was also Magim, a wonderful young poet, and Davis, one of the most remarkable singers Ireland ever produced. Their associations was known as the Young Ireland Movement: and it might have continued for a long time had not the restless young men wanted action; they wanted O'Connell to fight, but O'Connell was a constitutional man. At this time there came a terrible famine in Ireland, and in the course of two years some two million people starved to death, starved while food was being exported and while soldiers were on guard to safeguard the exportation. At the same time the people were rising everywhere in Europe in France, and in Germany, particularly. All these things caused the young people to break into rebellion. This Young Ireland Movement tried to build up in Ireland a national spirit, tried to bring them all together--Protestant and Catholic, landlord and tenant. You will see how it was that that training fitted McGee for the work that was awaiting him here. It worked the same with Charles Gavin Duffy. It is strange to think that rebellion should qualify McGee for the work he was to do here; yet, it gave him -a knowledge that no other man concerned with Confederation had of the great underlying essentials that make a nation.

McGee wrote a great many books. The first book he wrote in the United States was "O'Connell and His Friends." The next, after he went back to Ireland, was "The Life and Conquests of Art MacMurrogh," an old Irish King. Here are stanzas from a little poem of his called "The Exile's Request"

These stanzas were followed by the speaker reciting some verses from "To Duffy in Prison."

McGee's attitude to England is expressed in the following paragraph

"I believe I am not prejudiced towards England. If you cast aside the multitude of political crimes perpetrated by her rulers. I can look upon her literature, can admire her social institutions, and do homage to the genius of her many illustrious children with alacrity. But when I look upon her in connection with Ireland, my indignation outruns my judgment." Here is his picture of O'Connell, who would not fight when the Young Irelanders wanted to:

"Their, high priest is an old man, but the sound of his voice is heard in cities and courts and camps far beyond the verge of the summer horizon. The firmament is the cupola of his temple and the breath of millions the incense of his altar. He carries them to the graves of the dead and there teaches them union, and, like Asmodeus, unroofs every dwelling in the land to discover to the people the multitude of their woes. He speaks of their unequalled priesthood with the fervour of the most filial affection, and from thence, by a natural transition he directs their thoughts to the God of their ancient altars, whose mercy is equal to his justice. His smile consoles the most despondent and his promises have all the solemnity of prophecies. Such is O'Connell, the fervent Christian, the radical Catholic, the politician non-resistent, the fierce vindicator of the power of moral agitation, the first and last orator of a school peculiarly his own, without a rival in history and beyond the chance of imitation."

Because of his part in the rebellion, McGee fled from Ireland, and came once more to the United States, which has been a haven and a refuge to the Irish. They were with it at its birth; the men of Belfast constituted a large part of George Washington's army, almost 50 percent--not Irish Catholic but Irish Protestant. At the time of the famine over 100,000 came to Canada, and were kindly received by the people of this country; and we Irish must never forget the kindness of the French Canadians. (Applause) Somehow or other, McGee never found his right place in the United States. He was like Noah's dove-he came once and he came again. He started a newspaper and ran headlong into opposition to Bishop Hughes. McGee attacked the Catholic Church, but Hughes was at a great advantage. He taunted McGee with "You would have nothing to do with the Church in Ireland; leave her alone here." Another thing; McGee was a dreamer. He found his people in the cities, and he wanted them on the land. He had imagined the people worshipping freedom and independence, and when he came there he found them worshipping the almighty dollar. (Laughter)

He was a very religious man and he felt his countrymen were losing their religion. The leading men of the United States, men like Emerson, with his transcendentalism, didn't appeal to him. He fought the "Know Nothing" movement in the United States, which was something like the Ku Klux Klan of today. These organizations fought the Roman Catholic elements and the Irish elements--and anybody who fights the Irish is likely to find them fighting back. (Laughter) Finally he became so disgusted that at a great convention held in Buffalowhich was attended by some delegates from Canada -he proposed that the Irish should leave the United States and come to Canada. The idea was not very well received here. Even my own political mouthpiece, if I may call it that-the "Toronto Globe," didn't welcome that. (Laughter)

However, he came to Canada. He found the Irishmen on the farms, clearing away the forests; he found them contented and happy; there were no great congested industrial districts. He was invited to come to Montreal, and in 1857 he went there and started a newspaper; the "New Era." In the same year he was elected to Parliament by the Irish people of Montreal West. He started out lecturing on "Canada and her Destiny," a New Nationality." That would indicate that McGee was talking Confederation in 1857, ten years before it came. He was the real father of Confederation; he was a scholar, a real scholar; it was not a question of dates and facts with him--he clothed them with that powerful imagination of his. He went up and down this country, and there was hardly a town or village in this part, or in the East, that did not hear him. He delivered one thousand lectures in three years, nearly three a day, making appeals to brotherly love, showing the great things that made a nation, its great institutions and its great men. Mrs. Skelton, in that fine work of hers that has just come from the press (I have not had the pleasure of reading the work* of. Mr. Brady here), tells of the great part played by McGee in bringing about Confederation.

McGee came here to Toronto and got acquainted with the Orangemen. This that I will read to you will give you an idea of his broad-mindedness. It was spoken by him to Orangemen in this city:

"We Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, born and bred in a land of religious controversy, should never forget that we now live and act in a land of the fullest religious and civil freedom. All we have to do, is each for himself to keep down dissensions which can only weaken, impoverish and keep back the country; each for himself do all he can to increase its wealth, its strength, and its reputation. Each for himself, you and you, gentlemen, and all of us-to welcome every talent, to hail every invention, to cherish every gem of art, to foster every gleam of authorship, to honour every acquirement and every natural gift, to lift ourselves to the level of our destinies, to rise above all low limitations and narrow circumscriptions, to cultivate that true catholicity of spirit which embraces all creeds, all classes and all races, in order to make our boundless Province, so rich in known and unknown resources, a great new Northern nation."

When McGee came to Canada it was a different Canada from what we have today. It was our sparsely settled, widely scattered provinces, each with a government of its own. It was going rapidly to pieces. Ontario was claiming representation by population--the old cry of "Representation by Population." McGee was not a religious bigot; you found him here a friend of George Brown-a good, though

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*Life of D'Arcy McGee by Alexander Brady in Canadian Statesman Series.

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narrow, man, who proved a good, honest friend. He had supported the Brown-Dorion government, and in 1862 he became a Minister in the Sanfield Macdonald cabinet. Dorion opposed the building of the Intercolonial Railway on the ground that this country was nearly submerged in bankruptcy, but McGee insisted on the building of that road because to him it was not merely a matter of dollars and cents, as it was to Dorion. Rather than give up his idea of uniting the Maritime Provinces, with Canada McGee left that government.

McGee made a memorable reply to the taunt in the House that he was a rebel, in 1860. 1 want to give you that, because it shows his own attitude to Canada and to himself, as his mind matured

"Sir, I will say on the outset, 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 schools. My native disposition is towards reverence for things old and veneration for the landmarks of the past. But when I saw in Ireland the people perish of famine at the rate of five thousand souls a day; when I saw children and women as well as ablebodied men perishing for food under the richest government and within the most powerful empire of the world, I rebelled against 'Lord John Russell,' who sacrificed two million of the Irish people to the interests of the corn buyers of Liverpool. At the age of 22 I threw myself into a struggle--a rash and ill-guided struggle--against that wretched condition. I do not defend the course there taken, I only state the cause of that dissatisfaction, which was not directed against the government but against the misgovernment of that day. Those evils in Ireland have beer to a great extent remedied; but those only who personally saw them in their worst stages can be fair judges of the disgust and resistance they were calculated to create. Sir, I lent my feeble resistance to that system, and though I do not defend the course taken, I plead the motive and intention to have been both honest and well-meaning."

Here is the conclusion of a speech he made in the House

"I conclude, Sir, as I began, by entreating the House to believe that I have spoken without respect of persons, and with a sole, single desire for the increase, prosperity, freedom and honour of this incipient Northern nation. I call it a Northern nation--for such it must become if all of us but do our duty to the last . . . . I look to the future of my adopted country with hope, though not without anxiety: I see in the not remote distance, one great nationality bound like the shield of Achilles, by the blue rim of ocean-I see it quartered into many communities--each disposing of its internal affairs, but all bound together by free institutions, free intercourse, and free commerce; I see within the round of that shield the peaks of the western mountains, and the crests of the eastern waves-the winding Assinaboine, the five-fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, the Saguenay, the St. John and the Basin of Minas-by all these flowing waters, in all the valleys they fertilize, in all the cities they visit in their courses, I see a generation of industrious, contented, moral men, free in name and fact--men capable of maintaining, in peace and in war, a constitution worthy of such a country."

McGee--a rebel in the olden days--was opposed to the Fenian movement. He didn't think it could be successful; it had no able or outstanding leaders. He spoke against it all over the country and he received in practically every mail some letter threatening his life: He joined the Liberal-Conservative party, and in 1864 became Minister of Agriculture, Immigration and Statistics in the TacheMacdonald cabinet. Possibly the leading statesman of that time was A. T. Galt, but McGee was the man who educated the people of this country into preparation for Confederation. When Confederation became a fact McGee sacrificingly stood aside and allowed another man to become a Cabinet Minister-that sometimes becomes necessary in our country-to have a Cabinet composed of representatives from various sections. That session he took part in the discussion. Here are his last words in the House, delivered on the 7th of April:

"Time, Sir, will heal all existing irritations; time will mellow and refine all points of contrast that seem so harsh today; time will come to the aid of the pervading principle of impartial justice, which happily permeates the whole land. By and by time will show us the Constitution of this Dominion as much cherished in the hearts of the people of all its Provinces, not excepting Nova Scotia, as is the British Constitution itself."

One hour after that speech McGee lay dead. A cruel, murdering assassin shot him. Possibly the man who shot him heard those very words. A cry of anguish rang throughout Canada; the whole nation mourned the passing of this kindly generous patriot. McGee fell upon the field of honour, gentlemen, just as surely as any of our gallant boys fell upon the field of honour in Europe during the last war. (Applause) Parliament did all it could; speeches were made in the House-a grave, stricken House; Parliament was adjourned for a week; great services were held in Ottawa and in Halifax, and in Montreal, where McGee lies buried beside the St. Lawrence. In England Gladstone read what was termed an address from the dead, on behalf of Ireland, on behalf of England, and on behalf of the Empire. The last public writing we have from McGee is that noble appeal, which was part of a letter written to the Earl of Mayo and was on the ocean when McGee was shot dead. It read in part as follows

(Prolonged applause)

MAGISTRATE J. EDMUND JONES voiced the thanks of the Club to the speaker for his fine address.