The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1861-08-29
Hon. II. -. MCGEE, M. p. P., on the
American Crisis.


On July II, at a reunion in Chataugay G..
w. Hon. 7. Darcy McGee made an address
In the course of it he said
1T may be what is called an error OIL the
right side, but confess to you, ladies and gen
tlemen, | would look for the preservation of
peace between ourselves and the American peo
pie far more to the cultivation of a just and gen
erous style of dealing with the national troubles
of that people, than l would to the presence here
of few thousand regulators more or less
Cheers We have every thing to lose, and
nothing to gain, by adopting any other tone or
any other tactics, and I repeat here, at this
earliest opportunity have had, what L said
in my place in the last Parliament, that all this
wretched small-tak about the failure of the Re-
publican experiment in the United States ought
to be frowned down whenever it appears by the
Canadian public. | am not a Republican in
politics long before these recent troubles
came to head in the American Union, had
ceased to dogmatze upon any abstract scheme
of Government but l have no hesitation in de-
claring my own belief-a belief founded on cv-
idence accumulated through several years of
observation that the American system so far
from having proved failure, as tyrauts aud
t0ad-eaters all over the worll would wish IL to
be-that that system will emerge from this, its
first great domestic trial-purihed, cons oidated,
disciplined for greater usefulness and greater
achievements than ever before. Cheers. 1t
is then, it seems to me, the duty of Canadian
statesmen to look through the temporary to the
lasting relations we are to sustain to our next
neighbors; to suppress and discountenance all
ungenerous exultatiou at the trials and tribula-
tions which they are now undergoing to show
them, on the contrary, i'll this the day OF their
adversely. that while preferring on rational
grounds, the system of Unconstitutional monarchy
for ourselves and our children-while preferrIng
TO lodge within the precincts of the Consttu-
ton elaborated through ages by the highest WIS
dom Of the British Islands, we can at the same
time be ust, nay, generous, TO the merits of the
kindred system founded by their fathers, in the
defensive and justifabe wars of their Revolu-
ton. If we are freemen so are they, and the
public calauitie5 which beial one free people
can never be matter of exultatlon to another, so
long as the world is haf-darkened by despotism
as it is. If the American experiment were. in
deed, to fail, the hope kindled on the aitafs OF
The East--the old Greek fire of freedom-wOuld
at last be quenched, and forever, i'll the far West
If the American experiment were TO fail, not
their fathers alone, but all the illustrious com
pany OF freedoms martyrs would have lived ana
bled in vain. In vain had Roman virtue resis-
ted Roman ambition; in vain had Christian
chivalry Tended off the scimitar and the super
stition of the Mussum9n; in vain had the great
charter been drawn, and Bannockburn been
fought, and Switzerland been freed
''What time the hardy peasants safe,
On Urls rock in close dVan,
And wing'd the arrow sure as fate,
That ascertained the rights of man."
Loud cheers American liberty is the product
of the highest political intelligence of modern
times, working in the freest field, castadrift from
all European ties, by the madness of an arbitra-
ry Minister, blind to all circumstances Of time
and place if that fabric should be destined to
all-as fall firmly believe it will not in our
day, nor ct any early day-the whole world
must feel the shock and all the civilized parts
OF the earth might well be clothed in mourning,
if they only understood the value of what they
had lost. | am told there are several American
citizens here present. / was not before aware
of the fact but if there are, beg them to take
from me, as one of the public men of this Pro-
vince, that SO far as | am aware, with few and
unnfuential exceptions, the Press and the peo-
pie of Canada are anxiously and sincerely desir-
Gus that they may be able soon to settle their
domestic troubles, and that tie future course Of
their Confederation may be as free from anarch-
icaI dangers, az it has been hitherto, since The
days Of Washington. Cheers.