Alexander Brady

“ In the forties of the century he was reaching the sere and yellow leaf of his career, but his ambition to maintain an unquestioned control of Irish affairs remained as keen as ever, and prompted him to look with critical suspicion upon the Young Ireland group. It is the lot of old men seldom to understand the generation that hurriedly presses behind them with its new hopes and fresh methods. They view its visions with frank uneasiness, and in the rheumy conservatism of age condemn its vibrant actions as erratic and destructive. It was so with O'Connell. ”

“ Political morality, seldom very high on the American continent, was at a low ebb. The restless spirit of self-interest, a powerful agent in promoting the development of a new country, expressed itself in actions predatory to the community. The outbreak of the American civil war seemed to rock institutions throughout the continent, and accentuate the sense of insecurity. It was natural that McGee should look abroad for some means of bringing stability to Canadian institutions, and he was merely following a time-worn precedent in believing that a monarchy was a stabilizing force. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Do not let us, for our common country's sake—for the dear sake of our existence, not to say establishment, as a distinct free people, in North America—usher in our new condition of things, by raking up old sores and pelting each other with old nicknames". There was danger not merely of party conflict hampering the new institutions, but of Canadian statesmen meeting the venture of the young Dominion with minds insufficiently occupied with constructive plans. ”

“ What was the attitude of McGee? He slipped into office with the determination to perform something for the cause which he had advanced by voice and pen, the development of a British-American nationality. Varied elements entered the task of nation-building. More was necessary than the territorial union of the colonies, although that was imperative. In a sparse community, flattened out over a new and vast country, an impelling need was the encouragement of immigration. The body of a nation was in its sturdy farmers and dauntless pioneers. Men were required to labour in field and mine. ”

“ He had been a leader in an attempted revolution, a conspirator, a fugitive rebel, an exile. He had felt the thrill that comes to a poet, and the less intense satisfaction that comes to the public leader. In the work that brought him fame, journalism, he had a career equalled by few in its meteoric character. He had been the editor or assistant editor of five newspapers, and on both sides of the Atlantic had borne a large share in intense controversies. He came to Montreal, in 1857, almost in the guise of an adventurer ”

“ Fate in her kindest mood could not have given a better opportunity to Canadian statesmen. Why should not the prospective union between Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island include the Canadas? The dream of a united British North America, which had long dazzled the imagination of McGee and others, pushed itself to the fore. The plastic moment had come. Now was the time to shape the destiny of the British possessions. Fortunately men were in the Canadas ready to snatch opportunity by the forelock. ”

“ McGee was not limited in his allegiance to Ireland. His Canadian Ballads were 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". ”

“ The logical corollary from which he did not shrink was that all sects should have their separate schools. The followers of Brown viewed such a doctrine with dismay. To them the common school was the least expensive and the most likely to alloy sectarian feeling. The Globe lucidly stated their case. "We need the common school system more than New England to blend into one homogeneous people all these races of men. Carry out Mr. McGee's ideas, and we shall never accomplish that. We shall be a nation of sects fighting for supremacy; a people backward, unintelligent, unenterprising." ”

“ 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 ”

“ We commend the speech of D'Arcy McGee at Wexford to the attention of all intending emigrants to America—to the attention of all the discontented classes in Ireland—to the attention of all who believe that there is anything to be gained by plots and conspiracies against the British government. ”

“ In his mind the Reform party existed primarily to establish representation by population. A ministry that failed to accomplish this was no reform government. "Better a thousand times," thundered the Globe, "had it been that the Cartier-Macdonald government with all its wickedness should have been recalled than that so many leading men of the Liberal Opposition should have sacrificed their principles and destroyed the moral influence which they justly possessed with the electors of Upper Canada." ”

“ If we extend our vision so as to embrace all British North America, we survey a region larger than all Europe. If we have no coal, Nova Scotia has abundance. If Newfoundland has an indifferent soil, this Ottawa valley can grow wheat enough to supply all that is required. Throughout this wider view we find at least four millions already in the field—one quarter more than laid the neighbouring republic. Nature pronounces for the union of the provinces. Canada needs a sea-coast. ”

“ With two languages—two law codes—two judicial systems—two systems of national instruction—two systems of municipal government—two systems of land tenure—two systems of title registration—two systems of mercantile partnership and right of kin—two systems of relief to solvents—two systems of raising money for local purposes—two systems in everything—how can we hope to create a united people? ”

“ What was McGee's position? He was in the ranks of the Opposition, but his views on the momentous question of the time did not entirely square with those of Brown and the Upper Canadian Reformers. He admitted the justice of the claim that numbers should be the basis of representation. "Property should have its weight, intelligence should have its weight, but any man who, on this continent and in this age of the world, did not believe that numbers should be the basis, was as little to be reasoned with as a man who believed in the philosopher's stone." ”

“ Many of the young men here to-day will live to see the proof of what I am about to state, that all other politics that have been preached in British America will grow old and lose their lustre, but the conciliation of class and class, the policy of linking together all our people in one solid chain, and making up for the comparative paucity of our members, being as we are a small people in this respect, by the moral influence of our unity ”

“ One of his most famous addresses was on The 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. ”

“ The sacrifice on the part of McGee and Tupper was considerable. They were men in that lusty prime of life when the passion for building a career is strong. Both had worked for confederation with a zeal exceeded by none. For McGee an office in the first cabinet of the Dominion, whose emergence he had long heralded, would have been a deep satisfaction. His mind was charged with plans for the strengthening of the young nation. All the imaginative schemes which the "Canada First" party later championed were in his thoughts, and would have found in him an eloquent exponent. ”

“ The Know-Nothing party could never have had more than temporary success. As Horace Greeley, the noted editor of the New York Tribune, remarked, it "would seem as devoid of the elements of persistence as an anti-cholera or an anti-potato-rot party would be." But McGee, like other leaders of the swelling Irish population, was alarmed at its growing strength. It threatened to proscribe the men of his faith, and to exclude from the exercise of political rights immigrants like himself who sought a new home in the republic. ”

“ The new constitution must be federal, allowing a large measure of local autonomy, while constituting a central government to deal with common interests. Many of the leading Fathers of Confederation, most prominent among whom was Sir John A. Macdonald, began with the suggestion of a legislative union, and only with reluctance in the heat of constitution-building recognized the need of federal institutions. But with keen insight McGee saw from the outset that only federation could be the goal of British Americans. ”

“ They were marked by an intense feverishness in politics as the question of slavery loomed higher on the horizon. The giant strides of material development, the pushing back of the frontier by the advancing lines of railway, the expansion of commerce, the marvellous growth of population, all added a buoyancy to American life which tended to draw newcomers into its tide. Carl Schurz, the young German revolutionist of 1848, was only a few years in the country when he became a party leader, swinging the votes of the western Germans in support of the Republican platform. ”

“ He was convinced that the colonies had reached the cross-roads of their destiny. The pressure of events across their frontiers and their own political development brought them face to face with a number of alternatives, one of which must be chosen. They must either (1) strengthen themselves as members of the Empire by union amongst themselves; (2) become independent states and face the perils of such a situation; or (3) agree to be absorbed in the United States and lose their individuality as British-American communities.
McGee argued that the time was ripe for the first alternative. ”

“ We have acres enough; powers mechanical and powers natural; and sources of credit enough to make out of this province a great nation, and though I wish to commit no one to my opinion, I trust that it will not only be so in itself, but will one day form part of a greater British North American state, existing under the sanction, and in perpetual alliance with the empire, under which it had its rise and growth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 judgment is all the more convincing in that the Globe had 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. ”

“ In addition the colonies had other resources for which union alone could give adequate protection, rich fisheries, extensive forests, fertile lands. "Facts are logical, and unless we dream that the laws of cause and effect will be suspended in our favour, we must look either to the internal union or the political extinction of these provinces at no distant day." Not merely would the wealthy natural resources of British North America be preserved, but they would best be developed by the consolidation of the colonies into one state. ”