In the succeeding months McGee's activity was as varied and ceaseless as ever. He was still in very large demand as a lecturer, and with personal trouble and expense he went long distances to deliver lectures for the benefit of charities. One of his most famous addresses was onThe Mental Outfit of the New Dominion, delivered in Montreal on November 4, 1867, in which he pleaded for the development of mental self-reliance as an essential condition of political independence. A literature to shape and express the mind of the new nation was as imperative as self-governing institutions. At the time Canada had no literature. Journalism, it is true, flourished like a green bay tree. In the four provinces there were about one hundred and thirty journals, thirty of which were published daily. But this ephemeral literature was characterized by a narrowness of view, a local egotism, and a lamentable absence of anything approaching a catholic spirit. In addition to elevating the tone of journalism, McGee believed that Canadians with national development at heart must encourage a literature "calculated to our own meridian, and hitting home our own society, either where it is sluggish or priggish, or wholly defective in its present style of culture". Literary talent should be cherished as precious. He hoped that "if a native book should lack the finish of a foreign one, as a novice may well be less expert than an old hand, yet if the book be honestly designed, and conscientiously worked up, the author shall be encouraged, not only for his own sake, but for the sake of the better things which we look forward to with hopefulness. I make this plea on behalf of those who venture upon authorship among us because I believe the existence of a recognized literary class will by and by be felt as a state and social necessity." The new northern nation, notwithstanding that it possessed all the benefits which Nature could possibly bestow, would still in his estimation be impoverished if it failed to develop a cultural life. He endeavoured to direct the attention of Canadians to the fact that there should be built upon the political unity already attained a life of the mind on which the vitality of a nation finally depended.
The cause of union which had fired McGee's mind since his immigration to Canada was now attained. What was to be his future? Political life had never failed to attract him, for he liked its intensities of struggle. His future in Canadian politics was secure. Few public men of the time were held in such esteem throughout the British provinces, and none had so quickly jumped into prominence. His career was not closed by his absence from the first cabinet of the Dominion. Macdonald had confessed that his admission to a cabinet office could only be a matter of short delay. Yet work other than that of public life attracted him. He had never lost the ideal, born in his youth, of devoting himself to literature. By temperament he was a man of letters. His vivid imagination sought expression in the creation of what might be a permanent addition to literature:
I dreamed a dream when the woods were green,And my April heart made an April scene,In the far, far distant land,That even I might something doThat would keep my memory for the true,And my name from the spoiler's hand!
From the summer of 1867, he looked forward to obtaining a commissionership under the government, which would maintain him and his family, while providing leisure for literary work. These were the hopes shattered suddenly by his murder.
During January and February, 1868, McGee was seriously ill in Montreal, but in March he was back in Ottawa for the opening of parliament. The crucial issue of the period was the inclusion of Nova Scotia in the federation. A delegation of Nova Scotians headed by the redoubtable Howe had gone to Britain to obtain the support of British statesmen in the endeavour to release their province from the federation. To neutralize their influence by stating the counter case, the Canadian government in March sent over Tupper. To the Nova Scotian anti-unionists—and they constituted a majority of the representatives of the province—the little energetic doctor was anathema. With painstaking bitterness, they assailed his appointment. On the evening of April 6, Dr. Parker, a Nova Scotian representative, made a personal attack on Tupper, demanding his recall. He declared that he was "utterly disqualified for being a representative of the Dominion, and sending him only deepened the disaffection of the sister province of Nova Scotia".
In reply to Parker, McGee declared that the motion to recall Tupper was delivering Confederation a stab in the dark. "If he had been in earnest in wishing to give the new system a fair trial, he would have said: I do not think Mr. Tupper was the best choice, but since he has gone I wish him all success for the sake of the union." In impassioned words which show how poignantly his own bitter struggle with Fenianism was on his mind, he argued that Tupper should not be judged by the transitory ill-esteem in which he was held by his countrymen. "We should not make a mere local or temporary popularity the test of the qualification of a public servant. He who built on popularity built on a shifting sand. The man who showed he was ready to suffer for his principles as well as triumph with his principles was far beyond comparison with the mere popularity hunter. It would be a base spirit to sacrifice the man who had sacrificed himself for the sake of the union." No attentive parliamentarian who heard these words could have foreseen that in little more than an hour McGee himself was to be sacrificed for his opinions.
No less significant than his defence of Tupper was his plea that Nova Scotia should await the action of time for the consolidation of the provinces into a great nation, all parts of which would find justice. "I have great reliance on the mellowing effects of time. It is not the lime, and the sand, and the hair of the mortar, but the time which has taken to temper it. And if time be so necessary an element in so rudimentary a process as the mixing of mortar, of how much greater importance must it be in the work of consolidating the confederation of these provinces. Time, sir, will heal all existing irritations; time will mellow and refine all points of contrast that seem so harsh to-day; time will come to the aid of the pervading principles of impartial justice, which happily permeate the whole land. By and by time will show 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." Such was McGee's last confession of faith. It lost none of its force in the grace and beauty of its language.
He spoke at midnight. Shortly after one o'clock on the morning of the 7th, the debate closed. The members, while putting on their coats, commented generally on McGee's speech; some thought that it was the most effective they had ever heard him deliver. He lit his cigar, and in company with Macfarlane, a very intimate friend, went down the board walk towards his lodging. It was an exhilarating night, with a bright full moon and the tonic air of early spring. McGee was in elated spirits. Perhaps part of his light-heartedness was caused by the reflection that on the morrow he would return to Montreal, where his wife and daughters were, within a few days to celebrate his forty-third birthday. Letters from home had informed him of the preparations. At what is now one of Ottawa's busy corners, that of Sparks and Metcalfe Streets, he left his friend, and alone walked to his lodging on Sparks Street. As he endeavoured to open his door with a latch key, a slight figure glided up and at close range fired a bullet into his head. There was no cry, only the deadly crack of the pistol, and McGee pitched forward on his doorstep. His work done, the assassin dashed away in the night, but left tell-tale steps in the snow, later to assist in his conviction. Some inmates of the house, who had not retired, immediately discovered the body, and soon the dreary news was circulating through Ottawa and across the telegraph wires to all parts of the Dominion.
The following afternoon, Sir John Macdonald before a gloomy chamber gave expression to the public sorrow, and in token of it adjourned the House. Meanwhile Ottawa was feverishly searched for the assassin. The prison was soon filled with suspects. The Dominion government offered $5,000 reward for information concerning the culprit or culprits, and the two provinces, Quebec and Ontario, each offered $2,500. Incriminating evidence quickly accumulated against Patrick James Whelan, a comparatively young man, whose trial began on the 17th of the month. From the outset the chain of circumstantial evidence against him was strong. He had long been implicated in the Fenian movement, having been discharged from the army in Quebec for Fenian sentiments. He had but recently come to Ottawa, and on the night of the murder had been seen in the gallery of the house. After his arrest there was found in his possession a revolver, one chamber of which had been recently discharged. But the most conclusive of the many facts of evidence was submitted by a French Canadian, Lacroix, who declared that he saw Whelan commit the deed. Notwithstanding the weighty case relentlessly built up by the prosecuting attorney the trial dragged wearily into the following year. Finally, on February 11, 1869, Whelan, pleading innocence to the end, met his death on the scaffold. It has remained problematical how far he was the fatal instrument of the Fenian brotherhood or how far his action, like that of the man who shot Lincoln, was due merely to personal hate. The evidence would seem to make it clear that Whelan did not receive instructions from a head centre outside the country, but that he performed the deed to satisfy the hatred of himself and a few Canadian Fenians whose identity is uncertain.
McGee died a martyr for the young Dominion. Such was the judgment of contemporaries, and history need not reject it. On the day following the murder, Sir John Macdonald described "how easy it would have been for him, had he chosen, to have sailed along the full tide of popularity with thousands and hundreds of thousands, without the loss of a single plaudit, but he has been slain, and I fear slain because he preferred the path of duty". From the time that he resolved to fight Fenianism, his life was in danger. Had he been more passive, and allowed the movement to wreck itself, he would not have incurred the enmity of Whelan and his associates. But McGee never entered a cause half-heartedly. He had the firm conviction that Fenianism was a menace, not merely to Canada, but to Ireland. It represented an anarchical and revolutionary spirit which long ago he had come to dread. It endeavoured to overthrow the British Empire, which he considered a magnificent instrument in spreading civilization. Hence he fought it with as much intensity as he had formerly struggled for Irish independence, and his guilt, to the minds of his opponents, was that of an apostate as well as of an enemy.
As McGee's last speech was a plea for the conciliation of all members of the new Dominion, so his last letter of public significance was a passionate plea for reform in Ireland. Just two days before his death he had dined with an old Ottawa friend, Alderman Goodwin, and after dinner had excused himself to pen a letter to Lord Mayo, then chief secretary for Ireland, which was described aptly by a contemporary as having "struck the heart of the British nation like a cry for justice from the grave". In a parliamentary speech, Lord Mayo had referred to McGee's loyalty as that of a Canadian Irishman. McGee in his letter endeavoured to make clear why Irishmen like himself were loyal in Canada, and how the loyalty of those in Ireland might be won. Canada did not have the abuses which in Ireland was the prime source of discontent. There was no established church, no system of tenancy at will, no poor laws, nor any need of them. Instead there was the recognition of complete religious equality, a general acquisition of property as the reward of well-directed industry, and the fullest local control of revenues and resources. Such was the head-spring of Irish loyalty in Canada, and "were it otherwise, we would be otherwise". This letter is the best apology for the chequered career of the young Irish rebel of 1848, who died twenty years later the champion of a British American nationality, linked by bonds of sentiment to the Britain across the seas.
McGee's position among the few outstanding fathers of Confederation is secure. His work was not that of a constitutional architect giving expression to political needs in the legal terms of a constitution. Nor was he a party leader, subtly pulling together the strings guiding political groups, and through the resulting combination carrying measures beneficial to the community. In both these fields Sir John Macdonald easily carries away most of the honours. McGee's task was that of inspiration. His position was that of a prophet and a guide. Creative statesmen fall into two categories—those who inspire a people to establish new structures, and those who build in under their influence the bricks and mortar of the new creation. McGee, in the most plastic period of Canadian history, belonged to the former class. Throughout the brief span of his life in Canada, he had been the untiring advocate of union amongst the colonies. He had championed it in the press and on public platforms from Lake Huron to the Atlantic. In the legislature, he had pushed it forward through the weary bickerings over much smaller issues. He had made the colonists realize that to them there was no subject of equal magnitude. This was the prime question of their destiny.
Coming to the Canadas as a stranger, his mind was not cramped by local patriotism nor handicapped by the shortness of vision characteristic of many colonial leaders. He saw the common interests of all the colonies to a degree that was difficult with men who had matured within the confines of one, and who were content to worship only at its shrine.
He had an additional advantage. He had been reared in an old community with long traditions and in possession of that virile community-consciousness which we call nationality. His mind had developed in contact with a group of young brilliant men who sought to revivify the life of their nation, and who went to its traditions for inspiration. McGee never lost the effect of such experiences and aspirations. The vision of giving new vitality to a nation and setting it on the path of fresh development continued to stir his imagination. When he came to Canada, he did not find an old community, as in Ireland, in need of inspiration for fresh accomplishments; he found all the elements necessary for the building of a new northern nation, and the prospect of assisting its creation was the spur of his Canadian career.
Union of the colonies was the first and most important step towards the attainment of a national existence. It was the essential foundation for everything else. But McGee did not overlook other and subsidiary policies necessary for the same end. That on which he had laid most emphasis was the development of a broad-minded national spirit which would sponge out from politics the influence of sectarian and sectional interests. Tolerance of the differences of race and creed must, he argued, be the corner stone of the Dominion. There was need of emphasizing this doctrine, for the parochialism of colonial government and the seclusion of colonial society tended to shut out the healthy air of large affairs, and develop a pettiness of mind and an intolerance of spirit. The differences between the French and the English—differences of race and creed—seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle to the emergence of a national community embracing them all. But McGee was not despondent over such differences. He believed that the task of the new nationality was to reconcile them through toleration. In 1865, in St. John, he declared that "the bilingual line which divides us socially is one of the difficulties of the government of the country. But though a difficulty it is by no means a serious danger, unless it were to be aggravated by a sense of injustice, inflicted either by the local French majority on the English minority, or by the English majority on the French minority. So long as we respect in Canada the rights of minorities, told either by tongue or creed, we are safe, for so long it will be possible for us to be united; but when we cease to respect those rights, we will be in the full tide towards that madness which the ancients considered the gods sent to those whom they wished to destroy."
It is always difficult to determine accurately the influence of a political educator. There is no exception in the case of McGee. But there is not the slightest doubt that his effect on the colonial mind was very considerable. While he was expounding throughout the country his great cause, a number of young and able men were growing to maturity who later bore eloquent testimony to the penetrating influence of his teaching. The prominent members of this group—H. J. Morgan, Charles Mair, R. J. Haliburton, G. T. Denison, and W. A. Foster—formed a few years after McGee's death the "Canada First" party, dedicated to the task of advancing the cause of Canadian nationality. In this brilliant party, McGee left disciples to champion all that he had projected. In 1871, their ideas and visions found expression in a lecture of W. A. Foster, entitledCanada First, or Our New Nationality. Foster gave to McGee the premier position among those instrumental in arousing a Canadian national idealism. He paid the warm homage of himself and his associates in a passage remarkable alike for its passionate eloquence and for its unstinted admiration of the man who inspired it:
There is a name I would fain approach with befitting reverence, for it casts athwart memory the shadow of all those qualities that man admires in man. It tells of one in whom the generous enthusiasm of youth was but hallowed by the experiences of cultured manhood; of one who lavished the warm love of an Irish heart on the land of his birth, yet gave a loyal and true affection to the land of his adoption; who strove with all the power of genius to convert the stagnant pool of politics into a stream of living water; who dared to be national in the face of provincial selfishness, and impartially liberal in the teeth of sectarian strife; who from Halifax to Sandwich sowed broadcast the seeds of a higher national life, and with persuasive eloquence drew us closer together as a people, pointing out to each what was good in the other, wreathing our sympathies and blending our hopes; yes! one who breathed into our new Dominion the spirit of a proud self-reliance, and first taught Canadians to respect themselves. Was it a wonder that a cry of agony rang throughout the land when murder, foul and most unnatural, drank the life-blood of Thomas D'Arcy McGee?
The memory and influence of McGee lived not merely in the counsels of the "Canada First" party, but in the efforts of Canadian statesmen in succeeding years to make Canada strong within herself. Even when leaders appeared who may have forgotten his name and had not heard in the legislature or on the public platform his silver speech, their work for the completion of Canadian autonomy was but a fulfilment of what he had advocated. Canada as a self-governing nation, linked fraternally to Britain and other parts of the Empire, was McGee's goal for the Canadian people. Since Confederation they have been steadily advancing towards it, and thus paying homage to the strength and vision of McGee's ideals.
McGee has importance in Canadian history for other reasons than his statesmanship. He holds no mean place in Canadian literature. Historical myth puts into the mouth of Wolfe the remark that he would sooner have written Gray's "Elegy" than take Quebec. The poet may be greater than the soldier, and similarly the literary artist may be placed above the statesman; yet statecraft has drawn fervid minds from poetry to political action. It drew McGee. While, in temperament and aspiration, he was a man of letters, so resistless was the attraction of politics that in it he expended most of his energies. But any account of his life which would leave out of consideration McGee as alittérateurwould be incomplete. Something has already been said about his oratory. A native oratory was one of the most distinctive elements in his equipment as he started on the path to fame. Yet from the outset he used his pen more frequently than his tongue. From his first arrival in America to his death, he wrote continuously prose and poetry.
Most of this literary output found expression in the journals with which he had been connected, but he left to his name a goodly number of volumes dealing with historical and biographical subjects. Of these two have already been mentioned as contributing to the cause of Canadian Confederation,Notes on Federal Government Past and PresentandSpeeches on British American Union. All the others deal with Irish history and biography, which next to living political causes engaged McGee's imagination. The most noted of these books was hisPopular History of Ireland, on which he had begun earnest labour in 1858, but which exacting political activities had prevented him from finishing till 1863. On many an evening within these years, he would retire to his room from the battles of parliamentary debate and, forgetful for the time being of Canadian problems, would trace out the struggle of the Vikings for Ireland or some other dramatic phase of Irish history.
Within his life-time no complete collection of his poems was made. They appeared chiefly in the various newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic to which he had contributed. The year after his death they were collected and published by his friend Mrs. Sadlier. One little volume he himself published in 1858,Canadian Ballads and Occasional Verses. It was a worthy tribute to his interest in the history of his newly adopted country, and was addressed to those who looked forward to the development of the colonies into a great new northern nation. The subject matter of his verses is varied. Many deal with the affections; others are religious in sentiment; but the greater number are patriotic and historical. They are concerned with the saints and heroes of Ireland's story, from St. Patrick to Smith O'Brien. They throb with the fervour of a patriot as they tell of Innisfail, the Ireland of ancient times, and of how
Long, long ago, beyond the misty spaceOf twice a thousand years,In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race,Taller than Roman spears;Like oaks and towers, they had a giant grace,Were fleet as deers,With winds and wave they made their 'biding place,These Western shepherd-seers.
McGee's imagination revelled in the traditions and myths of the Celts. He expressed that brooding melancholy over the past which has ever been the pervading sentiment of Irish poetry. He believed that the Celtic race had a soul that was chastened by past misfortunes, and yet was not without hope in the present. He invoked it in the lines:
Soul of my race! Soul eternal!That liveth through evil and time—That twineth still laurels all vernal,As if laurels could once more be thine!Oh hear me, oh cheer me, be near me,Oh guide me or chide me alway,But do not fly from me or fear me—I'm all clay when thou, Soul, art away.
McGee's poetry was shaped largely by the group of Young Ireland who taught that verse might be used as a convenient means of drawing upon Irish traditions for the purpose of arousing a national consciousness. From its nature such poetry has limitations. It must fail to win the universal appeal of verse with no national end to serve. McGee was not limited in his allegiance to Ireland. HisCanadian Balladswere inspired by incidents in Canadian history, and were intended to show the fertility of Canadian annals in subjects adaptable to verse. It was his belief that "of all the forms of patriotism, a wise, public-spirited patriotism in literature is not the least admirable. It is, indeed, glorious to die in battle in defence of our homes or altars; but not less glorious is it to live to celebrate the virtues of our heroic countrymen, to adorn the history, or to preserve the traditions of our country".
As might be expected in the work of a man enmeshed in the ceaseless activities of public life, to whom poetry was of necessity an embroidery to other activities, his compositions are uneven. They are always spontaneous, but frequently show a roughness that a painstaking workmanship would have removed. Yet there are bursts of genuine lyric quality that will receive the commendation of even the critical. Of a simple beauty are the lines imitated from the Irish and namedA Contrast:
I.
Bebinn is straight as a poplar,Queenly and comely to see,But she seems so fit for a sceptre,She never could give it to me.Aine is lithe as a willow,And her eye, whether tearful or gay,So true to her thought, that in AineI find a new charm every day.
II.
Bebinn calmly and silently sailsDown life's stream like a snow-breasted swan;She's so lonesomely grand, that she seemsTo shrink from the presence of man.Aine basks in the glad summer sun,Like a young dove let loose in the air;Sings, dances, and laughs—but for meHer joy does not make her less fair.
III.
Oh! give me the nature that showsIts emotions of mirth or of pain,As the water that glides, and the corn that grows,Show shadow and sunlight again.Oh! give me the brow that can bend,Oh! give me the eyes that can weep,And give me a heart like Lough Neagh,As full of emotions and deep.
To Gavan Duffy, the warmest of his friends among the Young Ireland group, he wrote lines that expressed a yearning for an old companionship amid old scenes:
Oh! for one week amid the emerald fields,Where the Avoca sings the song of Moore;Oh! for the odor the brown heather yields,To glad the pilgrim's heart on Glenmalur!
Yet is there still what meeting could not give,A joy most suited of all joys to last;For, ever in fair memory there must liveThe bright, unclouded picture of the past.
Old friend! the years wear on, and many caresAnd many sorrows both of us have known;Time for us both a quiet couch prepares—A couch like Jacob's, pillow'd with a stone.
And oh! when thus we sleep may we beholdThe angelic ladder of the Patriarch's dream;And may my feet upon its rungs of goldYours follow, as of old, by hill and stream!
Of his Canadian ballads one of the best known isThe Arctic Indian's Faith:
I.
We worship the spirit that walks unseenThrough our land of ice and snow:We know not His face, we know not His place,But His presence and power we know.
II.
Does the Buffalo need the Pale-face wordTo find his pathway far?What guide has he to the hidden ford,Or where the green pastures are?Who teacheth the Moose that the hunter's gunIs peering out of the shade—Who teacheth the doe and the fawn to runIn the track the Moose has made?
III.
Him do we follow, Him do we fear—The spirit of earth and sky;—Who hears with the Wapiti's eager earHis poor red children's cry.Whose whisper we note in every breezeThat stirs the birch canoe—Who hangs the reindeer moss on the treesFor the food of the Caribou.
IV.
That Spirit we worship who walks unseenThrough our land of ice and snow:We know not His face, we know not His place,But His presence and power we know.
McGee's power as an orator deserves special mention in this concluding chapter. There are few orators whose speeches have literary value. Supreme eloquence is rare and generally transitory. It is inspired by the gravity of great events or dramatic situations. When the vivid circumstances have passed, the printed sentences divorced from the inspiring presence of the orator lose their former magic influence. Thus, most great speeches come down in history as a feeble echo of what they had been when delivered. Those of Edmund Burke are an exception that prove the rule. McGee was an orator of great power, and his orations, delivered without the use of notes, live as literature. Something of the beauty of his expressions may be gathered from the few quotations on preceding pages. But these quotations do little to recall their thrilling effect when they were delivered by McGee. Leading contemporaries agreed in giving him the first position amongst the orators of Confederation, and the verdict of contemporaries on such a subject must be accepted. Sir Charles Tupper, on hearing the news of McGee's death, remarked that "the grave has closed over the most eloquent man in Canada." TheGlobe, in an editorial the day after his assassination, stated that "whether his hearers sympathized or not with what he said, it was impossible for anyone not to acknowledge that he was marvellously eloquent; that his words were fitly chosen, and gave every intimation of masterly power.... His wit—his power of sarcasm—-his readiness in reply—his aptness in quotation—his pathos which melted to tears, and his broad humour which convulsed with laughter—were all undoubtedly of a very high order. Among the orators of Canada, either within or without the House, he has not, we believe, left his equal, and even his opponents will miss the speeches in which he developed his plans for promoting the greatness of Canada." This judgment is all the more convincing in that theGlobehad been for some years previous hostile to McGee.
Joseph Howe had won many laurels as an orator, yet the brilliant French-Canadian writer, Hector Fabre, considered him inferior to McGee. "Mr. Howe is well adapted to the tribune; he pleases, he amuses, he charms; but a severer taste would say that his is far from the brilliant eloquence, the irreproachable diction, the constantly pure style, the breadth of views and the rectitude of ideas of Mr. McGee. To my mind Mr. McGee is a nearly perfect orator, and one who in many senses has no superior."
Of McGee's domestic and private life, little need be said. It was happy in the highest degree. He was married in the period of his association with Young Ireland, and his wife shared the subsequent adventures of his chequered career, and survived his tragic death. His home presented to all who entered it a charming circle. McGee, with his family, was like a joyous boy. He would often be found romping on the floor with his baby daughter. Of his children only two daughters survived, one of whom took the veil. A genial, convivial nature and an ever sparkling humour won him friends in every part of Canada. One of the many tokens of esteem on the part of his townsfolk in Montreal was the present of a handsome furnished house in one of the best districts of the city. Although an Irishman and a very devout Catholic, he gained the warm homage of the Scotch Presbyterian population in Lower Canada, a homage deeper than that bestowed by the Scotch on any of their own countrymen. At the old Irish and Scottish festival of Hallowe'en he had been an ever welcome speaker in the St. Andrew's Society. It is interesting to note that on the Hallowe'en after his death, thirty-seven of the forty-six poems competing for prizes contained some allusion to him, and one lamented his absence in Scotland's old dialect:
Ah! wad that he were here the nicht,Whase tongue was like a faerie lute!But vain the wish: McGee! thy mightLies low in death—thy voice is mute.He's gane, the noblest o' us a'—Aboon a' care o' worldly fame;An' wha sae proud as he to ca'Our Canada his hame?
The gentle maple weeps an' wavesAboon our patriot-statesman's heed;But if we prize the licht he gave,We'll bury feuds of race and creed.For this he wrocht, for this he died;An' for the luve we bear his name,Let's live as brithers, side by side,In Canada, our hame.
These simple Scotch verses strike the most memorable fact respecting McGee. His name should live in Canadian History as a statesman, orator, and poet. But he should be remembered for an additional reason. The Dominion, for which he laboured, grew, as he prophesied that it would grow, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and its scattered provinces, flattened out over a vast territory, are bound together by the steel lines of trans-continental railways. Yet such material bases of union must fail to hold together the different sects and races inhabiting the Dominion, unless Canadians cherish what McGee passionately advanced, the spirit of toleration and goodwill as the best expression of Canadian nationality.
No adequate biography of Thomas D'Arcy McGee has hitherto been written. Consequently the student of his life must depend upon sundry sources of information. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's books,Young Ireland(New York, 1881),Four Years of Irish History(London, 1883), andMy Life in Two Hemispheres(London, 1898) contain material on McGee's adventures as a Young Irelander.
For the study of his Canadian career, his ownSpeeches and Addresses, chiefly on the Subject of British-American Union(London, 1865) is of prime interest. This volume comprises his leading speeches on the subject of Confederation, but many more of his addresses must be sought for in the columns of Canadian newspapers, particularly in theMontreal Gazette. TheCanadian Freeman, published in Toronto from 1858 to 1869, was a Catholic paper which gave special place to McGee's views. Of course, theNew Erais also of interest. In theBritish American Magazinefor August and October, 1863, McGee wrote articles on British American nationality. A few of his remarks in parliament on the same subject may be found in Thompson'sMirror of Parliamentfor 1860. Much interesting material will be found in theMemoirs of Ralph Vansittart(Toronto, 1924) by Edward Robert Cameron, a personal friend of McGee. W. A. Foster,Canada First(Toronto, 1890; with intr. by Goldwin Smith) is worth consulting for a contemporary opinion on McGee's influence over the younger generation of Canadians. George W. Ross,Getting into Parliament and After(Toronto, 1913) has a good, if brief, description of McGee as an orator. Joseph Pope,The Memoirs of the Right Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald(Ottawa, 1894) contains some information of interest. TheMacdonald Papersin the Dominion Archives, have a fund of material on the movement of Confederation, with which McGee was so intimately connected. Sir Charles Tupper,Recollections of Sixty Years(London, 1914) has a few notes of interest.
The following brief sketches and studies may be mentioned: Fennings Taylor,Thomas D'Arcy McGee: Sketch of His Life and Death(Montreal, 1868). Henry J. O'C. Clarke,A Short Sketch of the Life of Thomas D'Arcy McGee(Montreal, 1868). N. F. Davin,The Irishman in Canada(Toronto, 1877), devotes a few pages to McGee. Charles Dent,Canadian Portrait Gallery, (Toronto, 1881), volume III, has a sketch of McGee's life. Robert McGibbon,Thomas D'Arcy McGee: An Address Before the St. Patrick's Society of Sherbrooke(Montreal 1884). J. K. Foran,Thomas D'Arcy McGee as an Empire Builder(Ottawa, 1906), an address before the Empire Club of Toronto. H. O. Hammond,Confederation and Its Leaders(Toronto, 1917), contains a brief chapter on McGee. W. S. Wallace,Growth of Canadian National Feeling(Canadian Historical Review, June, 1920), discusses McGee's part in the creation of a Canadian national sentiment. D. C. Harvey,Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the Prophet of Canadian Nationality(University of Manitoba, 1923) describes McGee as a Canadian nationalist and quotes from his speeches.
McGee's collected poems were edited and published by Mrs. Sadlier (New York, 1869). Mrs. Sadlier's introduction contains some valuable information concerning McGee's life.
The following is a list of the more important of McGee's other books:O'Connell and His Friends(Boston, 1845);Historical Sketches of Irish Settlers in America(Boston, 1855);Catholic History of North America(Boston, 1855);Life of Bishop Maginn(New York, 1857);Canadian Ballads and Occasional Verses(Toronto, 1858);The Irish Writers of the 17th Century(Dublin, 1863);Popular History of Ireland(New York, 1863); andNotes on Federal Governments Past and Present(Montreal, 1865).