~~ a 4 \ ? ' i . THE HERALD, WEDNESDAY, JUNE _ 10, 1868. serra | seamnunpurensnenrannie OFFICE AND HIGH MASS FOR THE LATE HON. T. D. MoGEE, IN HALIFAX, N. S. VUNBRAL ORATION BY THE MOST REV. THOMAS L. CONNOLLY. (Continued. ) Within » year from bis arrival, he made bis mark, and took such hold of the public, that at the first vacancy he member of Parliament for Montreal. During that short year, there was scarcely a literary club, or society, or a scientific re-union, from end to end of the land, that was not charmed by the magic of his voice and the flashes of vivid lightning bat shot out from his prolific brain. At the first out- hie #et, be found in Canada many and signal advantages denied tu bie people in the ok! country, and not enjoyed to same extent by emigrants in the neighboring republic; but yet even in Canada he bot too plainly saw that much was still to be achieved before his fellow- countrymen would-be effectual! on the same perfect level with their fellow-sub: of other creeds and nationalities. They were nominally equal before a, bet in some vital instances the law was de- ve and one-sided, and proscriptive to some extent. The anti-Catholic and anti religious school system of the United States was thrast on them in Weetern Cana. da, making their conditioa in this respect ov it of Orangeie rted fi th old cowl. spin m, im rom the old country, seemed to have acquired new vigor and increased in- tensity on this wew soil. Prieats were insulted—their lives threatened—some few churches, I believe, were burned, and even several unavenged murders were com- mitted iv the daylight, without a jury unprejudiced enough to find an honest verdict. | Hundreds of Catholics seld out their farms, and thousands of mechanics and laborers were forced, for the same reason, to seek employment elsewhere; and Fenianism to-da. in Canada, odious and indefensible as it may be, is, solemnly believe, to some extent, the inevitable recoil and natural offshoot of all these unfortunate ultra- Protestant exhibitions. We can easily conceive why an uneducated Irish Catholic might be a Fenian in Ire- land; bat why Fenianism, iu its most odious and as- eassin forme, should have acquired such intensity in Canada rather than in any other part of the American coritinent, cannot be otherwise explained. Besides all this, there was no pewter bond of union—no common a whatever between Protestant and Catholic; and tiv still more extraordinary and un- , the same result obtained to a large extent between French and Irish. On the occasion of my first visit to that country, the three parties seemed to me to resemble three un bulldogs, mare or less ferocious, let into the same enclosure, for the mere pur- of worrying each other, without any imaginable waty baie Bi aed sry) et bens, gra cuts and + And positive and downright injury to the most successful among the three. : . Sach was the social and political state of Canada when Mr. McGee arrived. His life was threatened, as far as I remember, on his first public appearance in Toronto, For aught I or any one else could foresee at the time, there was never to be an end to it. Instead of improy- ing as years rolled by, and as the country was becoming settled, this gangrene seemed to be gnawing more and more into the social system, and wide-spreading, till it seemed to infect all classes. Every new importation from Ireland but added new virus to the malady, until the case appeared to be desperate as it was incurable, In the reap nny arn simplicity of my heart at the tame, I looked to the United States ge oe for the only possible solution of the pean. but the unexpected phenomenon of Know-Nothingism in that country. of which I was an eye-witness, diepelled that delusion for- ever. We had the same evils to complain of, in-an ex- aggerated form, in the neighbouring province of New Branewick, where, together with the usual excesses, % midday and murderous couflict took place, which well nigh threatened the peace of the whole colony, But few ears since the same, in leeser degree, occurred in Nove Bootie and Prince Edward Island, where the banners of the respective contending ies seemed to be fur the moment, ** Luve God, and your fellow-crvature as heartily as possible,”’ And how was this amin evil to be remedied? We had three millions of people in these now united Pro- vinees; and 1 must he excused for stating my honest conviction that I saw but one man alene with expansion of heart and head enough to p the magnificent de- sign, and with te lever of genius and indomitable epergy to carry it into triumphant execution, and that man was Thomas D'Arcy McGee. Other prominent party leaders seemed to me to be ever screaming and piping lamentations, and playing on the passions of the per menay em a up the ery men's bones of centuries gone by, tor purpose of finding the God- = of a = . aor rarer ots — all their nowledged ability, they at harm to the count and to the public and but very little good to p aan sy They were their whole lives pulling down rather than building up, and therefore when dying left nothing be- hind of an enduring character or worthy of a people's gratitude. Not so with the great and good man we mourn to-day, To him belongs the singular privilege of per ar inaugurated what his journal in Canada was called, the new era of peace, benediction, prozperity, and strack down by the miscreant blood red-havd of one of his own countrymen, is perfeetly overwhelming. Whenever I look back at the deed with all its aceom- panying horrors (and it is a speotre that haunts me almost at every hour), 1 feel as if my blood would eurdle and my heart shrivel ap within me. Instead of being dwarfed by distance of time, in my view it is every day looming up more hideous and more apal- ling. Since the stabbing of Henry the Fourth of France, by Ravaillac, nothing like it in atrocity except- ing the pablic murder of Presideat Lincoln, has oocur- red for three hundred years. In the absence of all knowledge of the particulars, save what we all learn from the prese, I only hope, and, I fear against hope, that my worst suspicions will not be realized; and in the midet ot all I 80 poignantly feel on the subject. to know that it was not au Irishman who did the deed will be a relief that I cannot express in words. Rut the deed is done, beyond all doubt by an assas- sin’s band, who perhaps, : ** Should against the marderer shat the door, Nor bear the knife himself.” Besides this great and good man, ** Hath borne his faculties so meek hath heen Se clear in his great office, that his virtnes Will plead like angels, trampet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off; And Pity, like a naked new-born babe Striding the blast, . . . . Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye." Impiously pushing God aside from His throne, and the arbitrament of that life which he alone could give, and ought to take away at his own sweet time, the as- sassin, countryman orstranger, committed the foulest deed that can be conceived against God or man, In a fell ewoop he extingaished one of the most brilliant lamps of God, and stopped in one second the throb- bings of a giant's heart. “How are the valiant fallen? Jonathan slain in the high places? | — for thee, Jonathan, exceed- ingly beautiful, and to be loved as the mother loveth her only son,” by those who, in this world, basked as I did in the sunshine of your genial friendship, And, oh! my friends, I will ask here to-day, for what has this termble retribution been inflicted! Is it for any criminal act, any treasonable or libellons speech or writing against the State orfellow-subjeot ? If 40, redress was at hand, the appeal was obviously to the outraged law. If only a private feud, a quarrel, a personal insult, there was another remedy—unsanction- ed, indeed, nay, condemned by religion—in the manly, the open, the midday fight for henor, But for the coward wretch, who tracka his victim in the shades of night, and craven-like lurks in holes, araynd corners, and crouches behind walls for the security of his own worthless life, while gending the assasain bullet on its errand of death, the scathing contempt of the universe together is not a feathers weight as compared with God's maledictions on such aman. Tu poiat of fact, that crime has no proper name in human language. ‘The blow of the avenvsin is terrific beyond doubs, but a million of euch edwards never did and never could or would fight a nation’s battles. Assassinafion never yet redressed the grievances of a peuple nor won back the lost boon of their national independence. There is not in all history an instance of such a fact. Neither ean there be, It is God himself who assures us that all whe take the sword shall perish by the sword. Besides the many inetances of assassination and its inevitable retribution, quoted by the press when lately alluding to thie sabject, 1 heard myself from x competent authority in France, where I resided fur some yeara, that of the hundreds of assassins who were prominent during the French Revolution. there was scarcely one ever known to have —- a bloody and disastrous death. Marat, the prince of assassins, was killed naked in his bath by the weakly hand of a girl, who plunged the fatal dagger into his heart at a mount when he was probably plot ting to make her a victim of hia lust, as he had already victimized her dearest ones on earth at the guillotine. Robespierre. who in the name of liberty boasted of having cut off the heads of thousands, had bis own jaw bone nearly torn away by a woman, and like a coward as he was, screamed at the intensity of his torture as he was carried on a hurdle iv the ‘bloody track to the Place de Greve. Need I remind you of the terrific end of Booth, said to be cut upin fifty pieces, and the atrocious death of his wretched accgmplices, marked as it was by everything a mighty nation could do to disgrace and to consign them to everlasting infamy. Such wie the end of assasination from the beginning of the world, and in my soul I believe that there will be no exception to the rule uutu the Consummation of all things. ~ In Mr. McGee's case it would now appear evident that he lost his life to save the people of his country from a band of assassins, and for the unpardonable crime, in their eyes. of fearlessly expressing his honest political opinions in this free country. ‘The crime perpetrated against Mr. McGee, if committed by a cliqne, as alleged, is a crime against every man in this land, whose life and liberties are thereby threatened, and for the same reason. This is the first time that midnight political assassination has been imported into this country, and if it be proven to be by an Irishman, I, on the part of Ireland and the Trish, repudiate the and brotherly love, where there was naught before but heart-buraings, and hard feelings, and deeds of death, and darkness, and total alicnation of brother from brother, and party feelings, and schism in their most unchristian and revolting forms Without ceasing for a moment to be the ardent lover of Ireland, her religion, and her people, he was first among the benefactors, and in acertain sense father, of hit adopted country. By herculean labor he succeeded to a large extent in tear- ing up, root and branch, senseless and inveterate pre- ices, and blending all hearts in ene common effort for one common weal. He did what before him no one ever seriously attempted with any show of success. He made man’s * and kisa,”” and without the a le principe religious or political, rich poor, Protestant and Catholic, 8h, Scotch and Canadian, into the he social compact, and unified s bee 9 pe people, far more than the of new and interesting country tivipated, And this, [ confess, ie the olf esteemed, loved and. admired him, Irishmaa, with all his failings, of whom never seen him, and that he had lived an ustralia, his literary works and the thrill of and inspired oratory, and above all, his life- any pee services to religion and country, to my heart, and ensbaien hie Hid Hl : oes i “ E E E =5 errs ee if in ialedbesibinnds oka bee he his and kind! beat friend, Archbishop _ for a considerable period a life and death on the subject. And Ob! tell it not in Gath—publish it notin the streets of Ascalon, lest the daughters of the Philistines pride, the bonor, and henefactor of his race and ereed—the giant in Intellect ‘guasi father of his country—the foremos readers sep hecitations~