The Sun.
London, England, 1868-06-02 00:00:00

y 1

loyalty of the Irish in Canada and Australia, dur-
ing the deb.►te on the state of Ireland, Mr. Al'Gee
never spoke without influencing vast masses. Yet
no orator ever flattered his hearers less. A rapid
survey of his story will repay any student's atten-
tion.

Born in Ireland (Louth, I think, though of a
Wexford family) the 13th of April, 1825, amid those
circumstances of obscure respectability wherein
thousands upon thousands of Catholic homesteads
hr-►ve transmitted through twenty recorLd or tradi-
tionary generations very slender worldly means
along with ancient blood, untarnished names, con-
sistent characters, and unconquerable principles ;
reared with a taste for mental toil and aspirations
after honourable fame; for five and twenty subse-
quent years a combatant in the greatest arenas of
human competition, and in all of them eventually
crowned a victor ; then in the dead of night between
the 6th and 7th of April, 1868, not quite forty-
three years old, suddenly and cruelly murdered
thousands of miles from the homes of his forefathers,
while the acclamations that greeted one of the
grandest efforts of, his splendid oratorical genius
were still ringing in his ears and echoing through
the forest capital of the immense dominion which
he shared id ruling ; such are the two opposite
terms that enclose between them, and bound at the
beginning and the end, the strange, romantic, ad-
.venturtans, - glorious, _but.heart-rending and tragical
career of Thomas D'Arcy M'Gec.
In mental endowments one of the most gifted ;
in heart and disposition and personal intercourse,
one of the kindest, most genial, and most generous;
in practical influence, one of the most useful, bene-
ficent, order-loving, law-sustaining of the states-
men whom the 19th century has anywhere produced,
this brilliant Irishman of whom millions on either
side of a vast ocean had learnt to feel equally proud,
was in the full activity of a career not half accom-
plished, when overtaken by the midnight murderer.
The pure glory so suddenly quenched by a
dastardly and awful crime had only just begun to
burn in unimpeded and increasing radiance. It
was amid the steadily growing sounds and the yet
swelling and increasing voices of a fame which had
already filled the English-speaking world, and was
beginning to send its echoes and the long roll of its
musical thunders through many languages besides
our own, that the assassin imposed silence upon the
most eloquent of transatlantic orators, and stilled
for ever the pulses of the most generous and public-
spirited heart that has throbbed for many a year in
a statesman's breast. It was, I say, just when
greater and greater achievements were expected
from him, and just when they were sorely needed,
that my beloved countryman, whose hand I pressed
not four years ago, was forbidden by a caitiff, at
this critical and dreadful epoch, ever again to serve
mankind, ever again to labour for the highest inte-
rests of the British Empire, and indeed of civiliza-
tion itself.
The greatest mind in Canada and the greatest
orator in America was still but in the early sum-
mer of his intellectual life ; yet the fruits of his in-
defatigable industry—applied to a mental soil that
would have yielded two harvests in the year with-
out the husbandman's toil—convey the idea, and
would prompt the inference, that he to whose now
mouldering hand such treasures are due, and who
dispensed such bounteous profusion of mine-wealth
among his contemporaries, must not merely have
received from nature extraordinary gifts and used
them with extraordinary energy, but must have
enjoyed twice the usual length of days. Con-
template all he has performed, all he has
done and said, and you will be tempted to
conclude that such a man must have been spared
for a twofold span of labour. As he ran his
brief career, he scattered the teeming opulence of
his prolific brain, even in conversation, like a royal
largesse ; and he may with perfect truth ba described
as having passed through adventures, performed
=
operations, wielded au influence, wrought-olianges
of opinion and of sentiment, disseminated ideas,
left records of an industry, and raised monuments
of a genius, which would have sufficed to equip half
a dozen ordinarily useful and honourable lives,
though prolonged to their full duration. A charm-
ing writer, a very instructive lecturer, and one of
the foremost orators of his time, he might have flung
away all the claims upon our respect and admira-
tion, and yet have remained sure of undying re-
membrance and of imperishable fame. Why ?
Because, eminent as these titles to consideration
certainly are, he combined with them others higher
still.

He did what few men ever do ; he conquered hit
self, surmounted the prejudices and illusions of L
early life ; and afterwards amid scenes and circun
stances which would have guaranteed comparativ
impunity to the prosecution of schemes and to tt
promulgation of ideas which, while he had honestl,
entertained them had brought him nothing bu
danger, loss, and ultimate expatriation ; amid suet
new scenes, I say, he bad wisdom enough to rea
son himself out of his former errors, and he had, i
with this wisdom, so magnanimous and equitable a
spirit, that to expiate any wrongs which as a lad of
17 or 18 he might have committed towards the Em- .
pire, he devoted his now full grown mind, his maturcr
genius, and all the strength of his remaining years
to a strange a marvellous, a romantic undertaking ?
What was it? Why at the cost of his popularity
in the beginning, and at the cost of his life in the
end, as the event has terribly shown, and beyond
all question, selecting an up-current labour in pre-
ference to the obviously easier course of floating with
the tendencies which he found in existence already,
this politician, who had his bread to earn (and in
order that he might earn it required popularity),
undertook the stupendous enterprise, as well as the
generous and atoning office, of re-educating the
political mind and the political sentiments of his
countrymen all over the world, and wherever he got
a hearing he accomplished it.
This was an immense, a gigantic task ; and a
giant was he who could perform it. Opinions rule
mankind ; and therefore we know what to think of
those mighty spirits who are able, really, actually,
and positively to make opinion ; to disseminate the
thoughts and arouse the feelings which sway mil-
lions upon millions of men, and their children after
them. But to unmake and then remake opinion,
this was a subtle peculiarity in the stupendous work
which he had the daring to undertake, the genius to
accomplish, and the dread honour, the terrible glory
of sealing with his blood.
His character had some effect, but of course the
main instrument with which he wrought, the " Ex-
calibar" of unrivalled temper with which he hewed
his w?..y, and which was seen afar off as it flashed
alx,ve the shifting movements of the political and
var, was his eloquence. He was, in this great
and power, constantly improving, though
arly in life he had begun to win distinction as
leer ; but his greatest and noblest successes in
,aracter have been achieved within the last
3ars, nor bad he reached his best. He was
ed, if spared, to have attained far higher ex-
!.e. It is only fair to number him among
great minds whom the Almighty fashions in
ial manner for the advantage, the safety, and
idance of society ; those glorious intelligences
Dm public care is a personal study ; to whom
ue and enduring interests of millions are au
)ook, a labour of love, and a direct personal
on. These be the real "Kings of men," the
kites andron," the temporal emissaries of
e Providence to nations ; and therefore it is
he assassination of such a man is so pecu-
wicked ; such an enormous and flagitious

was one of the few really great and original
that appear in each generation : a man who
think for others, and who thought for them.
ever form of Government may have been
3cl, the mass of men require leaders, as much
army requires officers. Indeed, soldiers know

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much nure about fighting than the self-absorbed
multitnle know about the principles of difficult
questions. There are millions who have uo leisure
to think for themselves, except individuAlly or
domestically. In those momentous relations wherein
our des:inies, aul those of our chillren's children
are commingled, and constitute—however enor-
mous and complicated the object may bc—a single
unit of value, whole communities would drift away
to a joint perdition but for men like him whom we
have losf.

It was not Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee alone who
was stricken by the hand of Lis murderer. By
that hand a whole people has been smitten ; the
injury is deadly; the injury is universal; and this
deadly, universal injury is also a deadly, universal,
and inexpiable affront to a free nation. Their
choice, their admiration placed Mr. M'Gee in the
high position from which a murderer has hurled
him. When a useful and noble life was taken from
the victim, the object of their pride was by the
same cruel blow taken from all Canadians.
The Prime Minister of Canada on the morrow of
the awful event, while 14,003 dollars were offered
for the discovery of the murderer, attempted to ad-
dress a House of Commons drowned in tears, and
was himself obliged to desist for weeping. Next
day the flags hung half-mast high on the ships of
a hundred ports. The man whom they had lost
was as beloved in private life as he was illus-
trious in all public relations. He bad pro-
bably more personal friends than any man now
alive who can be named in the whole civilised
world. It must have been a stranger that killed
him ; none knew, without loving, poor Thomas
D'Arcy M'Gee.
To all well-informed persons, his services to
literature, and his services to Canada, are known
to form only part of that prodigious work which
his influence accomplished. Within the sphere of
that influence, at least, he healed a wound sup-
posed to be incurable, and admitted to be the most
inveterate that has ever been known in the annals
of politics. He made the Irish population of Ca-
nada loyal to the British Crown, instead of leaving
the hereditary sentiments which they had brought
with them from their native shores, to be gradually
diffused through the other sections of those ra-
pidly increasing populations.

It would require more space than I can afford to
analyze the elements of this achievement, and to
show its enormous and enduring importance to the
highest interests of the Empire. As Col. Lowrie
truly says " his death is a great national bereave-
ment." It is more than national—it will be. felt as
widely as literature, as widely as civilisation ex-
tends.

In these hurried lines I inust renounce all hope
of tracing more than a faint sketch of the gracd
historical figure, upon whom, except "in the
mind's eye," we shall look no more.
A founder of opinions, and practically a finder
of truths, because the inventor of forms iu which
he iusured their recognition as truths by millions
ignorant of them before ; a builder of new na-
tionalities ; a champion of ancient principles, a
builder as he said upon the old foundations, a great
heart, a great mind, and a great man, has passed
away from us ; and we have lost, and civilisation
has lost, all that I have stated in losing Thomas
D'Arcy M'Gee. M. G. K.
Bermuda, April 16, 186 S.