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

IHOMAS D'ARCY 111'GEE.

[Preceded by the following curiously expressed
though evidently sincere words of commendation,
the subjoined tribute to the late. D'Arcy 11l‘Gee
appears in the Bermuda Royal Gazette of April
21] :

We (the Bermuda Gazette) unreservedly state
that we were not conscious, in preparing for pub-
lication the very able tribute to the memory of the
late t
lamented
mb e
rfrom
Icon.
theT peno D'Arcyf 111‘Gee, in our pre-
enour talented Colonial
Secretary, of the influence of an excited imagina-
tions : and therefore hesitate not to affirm that it
number,
o
seldom falls to our lot and, in our belief, to the lot
of any editor of a weekly journal, to give to the
public such a masterly composition. We were in-
deed, we do not attempt to deny it, entranced while
we examined it with riveted eyes, absorbed atten-
tion, and stirred feelings. Our publications are by
their very nature ephemeral, but this epithet, we
are sure, will not be applied to the sentiments con-
tained in this excellent production. We appeal
to our readers, and will patiently wait for their
decision.

such high-toned patriotism, such noble thoughts
enweaved in beautiful afi.tptedn2s3 of expression,
such manliness of dignified assertion, and such de-
gant and classical allusions—we were, procul driVo,
delighted with it, and beg to tender the lion. M. G.
Keon our sincere thanks.
Add to what we have said, there is such a kind
and sweet affeetionateness as to us appears very
winning—the index and offspring of a truly bene-
volent heart, most acceptable in the present state of
a bard, hard world.

One would almost think that, in speaking of his
friend, so cruelly torn from sublunary scenes, Mr.
Keen had this passage before him from one of Dr.
Young's prose compositions. He may or he may
not have had it ; but here it is :-
4, Sorrow indeed predominates. Oh, recent
wound ! Sorrow how just ! Whom lost we the
very last moon ? Lost we? That is vainly said.
Whom lost the public? Whom list the whole na-
tion ? Few have left it more worthy of all love and
esteem than our friend deceased. lie was entitled
by nature to be beloved, and by virtue to be ad-
mired.

" Quern semper amaturn, semper honoraturn, sic
Dii voluistis, habcbo."

The awful death of the Hon. T. D'Arcy M.‘Gee
fills us with horror—indescribable, withering hor-
ror. But let us draw a solemn admonition from
this most deplorable event. How uncertain iu every
way is life—whether from natural or other causes.
We speak not now of the variant causes, but of the
sometimes instanced awful truth and fact.
Therefore let each attend to the advice given by
the same Dr. Young, just now quoted, in poetic
guise—

44 Give thy mind sea-room ; keep it wide of earth,
That rock of souls immortal ; cut thy cord ;
Weigh anchor, spread thy sails ; call every wind ;
Eye thy great Pule-star ; make the land of life."

influencing vast masses of his countrymen, is at this
moment" Mr. Don'Ae roefy M`Gee, who never speaks without
the most eloquent advocates of
British rule and British institutions that is to be
found on the face of the globe." (Cheers.)—Earl
:\layo last month in the House of Commons on the
state of Ireland and the sentiments of the Irish
Race.

At the moment when an atrocious and cowardly
assassination has torn him from us, I should feel
lowered in my own esteem if I remained altogether
silent (where there is no one else to say a word)
es—rconcerning
se the public character and the loyal ser-
vic vice 3 the vast importance of which the
Imperial Government well knows—of an illustrious
.which I hold, under thevely humble, but honour-
ablere a
betweenman who u s
:
would,
who
bb was not only my countryman and
if alive, acknowledge many ties
my co-religionist, but a high dignitary of the same
g ,Service) in
ac°mparatathers were at hand, to fulfil the
or
fioicvwei. in
If o
samet
Crown,
Civil
task, I would resign it ; but in this place, and at
this moment, I will bring my tribute to liis•meinory,
and place respectfully and tenderly a little garland,
however worthless, a ring, though it mty be, of
common field-flowers, around yon ler blood-stained
headstone. There is a fourfold fitness in my attempt;
for besides the three ties between us to which I
have adverted, Mr. D'Arcy 111.‘Gee, in his" History
of Ireland," mentions, with the honour due to his
qualities and actions, my grandfather, Miles Keon,
of Keonbrook. I will try to requite that fairness.

To say that the Canadian Cabinet has lost in Mr.
11FGee its most brilliAnt member is lesa than tha
truth. The Queen had not in her empire an abler
public servant, nor the empire itself a stauncher
champion of its unity, and dignity, and security ; a
sounder, more thoughtful statesman ; or (with two
or three exceptions) in his last years a more spirit-
stirring or splendid orator. His was the eloquence
ctoourinseaikme old-fashionedab ie
truth, though not in their
acceptance among fickle multitudes, in frivolous
mut iIl
their principles
times) prevail over new-fangled conceits or flatter-
ing delusions. _ _ _

As the Earl of Mayo said the other day in the
House of Commons, while commenting on the

WBexofronrdin f Irelandulily unify)
h Ithink,
113uttho, f
Aprill thoughB2s, of a
amid
those
circumstances of obscure respectability wherein
thousands upon thousands of Catholic homes-e ols
114ve transmitted through twenty recorded or tradi-
tionary generations very slender worldly means
along with ancient blood, untarnished nam s, con-
sistent characters, and unconqn-m-able principles ;
reared with a taste for mental toil and aspirations
after honourable fame; for live and twenty suhs_t-
que it years a combatant in the greatest aren ts of
human competition, and in all of them eventually
crowned a victor ; then in the dead of night between
the sth and 7th of April, 1868, n)t quite forty-
three years old, suddenly and cruelly murdered
thousands of miles from the homes of his forefathers,
while the acclatnations. 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 in ruling ; such are the two opposite
terms that enclose between them, and bound at the
beginning and the end, the strange, romantic, ad-
venturous, glorious, but heart-rending and tragical
career of Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee.
In mental endowments one of the .most gifted ;
in heart and disposition and-,personal .ionreourser
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
world, and was
h e alreadyginni
nfigl lteod
stehned Ei
tnsg
el i se
hho-essp
eatintghe 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 be 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
cmclude 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 bs described
as having passed through adventures, performed
operations, wielded an influence, wrought changes
of opinion and of sentiment, disseminated ideas,
left records of an industry, and raised monum .mts
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 retained 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. •

Ile did what few men ever do ; he conquered him-
self, surmounted the prejudices and illusions of his
early life; and afterwards amid scenes and circum-
stances which would have guaranteed comparative
impunity to the prosecution of schemes and to the
promulgation of ideas which, while he had honestly
entertained them had brought him nothing but
danger, loss, and ultimate expatriation ; amid such
new scenes, I say, he had wisdom enough to rea-
son himself out of his former errors, and he bad,
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 maturer
genius, and all the strength of his remaining years
to a strange a marvellous, a romantic undertaking ?"
What was it? Why at the cosi, 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 way, and which was seen afar off as it flashed
above the shifting movements of the political and
moral war, was his eloquence. He was, in this great
faculty and power, constantly improving, though
very early in life he had begun to win distinction as
a speaker ; but his greatest and noblest successes in
this character have been achieved within the last
two years, nor had he reached his best. He was
destiscd, if spared, to have attained far higher ex-
cellence. It is only fair to number him among
those great minds whom the Almighty fashions in
a special manner for the advantage, the safety, and
the guidance of society ; those glorious intelligences
to whom public care is a personal study ; to whom
the true and enduring interests of millions are au
open book, a labour of love, and a direct personal
vocation. These be the real " Kings of men," the
" Anakites andron," the temporal emissaries of
Divine Providence to nations ; and therefore it is
that the assassination of such a man is so pecu-
liarly wicked ; such an enormous and flagitious
crime.

He was one of the few really great and original
minds that appear in each generation : a mln who
could think for others, and who thought for them.
Whatever form of Government may have been
adopted, the mass of men require leaders, as much
as an army requires atom. Wood, soldiers know

world. It must have been a stranger that killed
him; none know, 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 must renounce all hope
of tracing more than a faint sketch of the grand
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 in which
he insured 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'Arey 111‘Gee.
Bermuda, April 16, 1868.

M. G. K.