Thomas D'Arcy McGee Quotes

Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Grace Hughes McGee, was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was a Catholic Irishman who opposed British rule of Ireland, and worked for a peasant revolution to overthrow British rule and secure Irish independence. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, where he reversed his political beliefs. He became disgusted with American republicanism and democracy, and became intensely conservative in his politics and in his religious support for the Pope. He moved to Canada in 1857 and worked hard to convince the Irish Catholics to cooperate with the Protestant British in forming a Confederation that would make for a strong Canada in close alliance with Britain. His passion for Confederation garnered him the title: 'Canada's first nationalist'. He fought the Fenians in Canada, who were Irish Catholics that opposed the British and resembled his younger self politically. McGee succeeded in helping create the Canadian Confederation in 1867, but was assassinated by Patrick J. Whelan in 1868. Wikipedia  

✵ 13. April 1825 – 7. April 1868
Thomas D'Arcy McGee photo
Thomas D'Arcy McGee: 11   quotes 0   likes

Famous Thomas D'Arcy McGee Quotes

“That is a glorious doctrine to instill into society.”

Cheers.
Legislative Assembly, February 16, 1865

“The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency.”

Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough - too much perhaps in some respects - but at all events, liberty to our hearts content.

“Miracles would cease to be miracles if they were events of everyday occurrence;”

Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: Miracles would cease to be miracles if they were events of everyday occurrence; the very nature of wonders requires that they should be rare; and this is a miraculous and wonderful circumstance, that men at the head of the governments in five separate provinces, and men at the head of the parties opposing them, all agreed at the same time to sink party differences for the good of all, and did not shrink, at the risk of having their motives misunderstood, from associating together for the purpose of bringing about this result. (Cheers.)

“We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term.”

Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: This is a new land - a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term. (Hear, hear.)

Thomas D'Arcy McGee Quotes

“I will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids and must go on;”

Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: I will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids and must go on; next that our neighbours will not, on their side, let us rest supinely, even if we could do so from other causes; and thirdly, that by making the united colonies more valuable as an ally to Great Britain, we shall strengthen rather than weaken the imperial connection. (Cheers.)

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