Morning Republican

In the country respecting the assassination of this gentleman, we publish the following as a matter of information to the inquiring:

The telegraph brings us the shocking news of the assassination of this brilliant Irish orator, who was shot at Ottawa, Canada, Tuesday morning, as he was entering his lodgings upon his return from the Parliament buildings.

D'Arcy McGee was born about the year 1822, probably in Wexford, Ireland, where his parents resided, though, in the absence of any reliable sketch of his life, we cannot state these particulars with perfect accuracy. He came to this country while young, and there are many residents of Chicago who remember his thrilling and eloquent speeches at Lowell and Providence, while yet a mere boy in short jackets. He was, for a time, editor of the Boston Pilot, and subsequently started a paper in New York, called, we believe, the American Union, which lived, however, but a brief period.

He went back to Ireland, and was prominent in the disturbance of '48, with Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, and John Mitchell. More fortunate than O'Brien and Mitchell, he effected his escape in the disguise of a Capuchin monk, and returned to this country, where he commenced the publication of the American Celt, a paper which acquired a wide circulation and influence among the Irishmen in America, and which, we believe, was first published in New York, afterward at Buffalo, and then again at New York. On account of McGee's opposition to the election of Buchanan, his paper rapidly declined in circulation, as was soon discontinued, whereupon McGee sought his fortune in Canada.

Like Mitchell, McGee in this country proved false to the principles he stood up so manly for in Ireland. Instead of being an apostle to freedom, he voluntarily became the willing instrument of tyranny. Choosing the loaves and fishes of government patronage, rather than the harder fare which would attend the champion of his country's cause, he deliberately joined the party of her oppressors, and threw the whole weight of his influence against the efforts to secure her enfranchisement.

As might have been expected from such a man, he took the side of the rebels in their war to dissolve the Union. He lived too long. He had wiped out his honorable record as the would be avatar of Irish independence and universal liberty, turned his back upon his many manly professions, and goes into history with something very like the brand of renegadeism upon his name and fame. It is quite probable, indeed, that this career was thus violently closed by some enthusiast in the cause of Irish independence, whose breast was fired with high indignation at what he considered McGee's treachery to the cause of his country, and those who sought to compass her liberation.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee was of humble origin, and when he first came to America was a protege of the venerable Father Fitzsimmons, now of Woodstock, in this State, who made him one of his assistants in altar service in the Cathedral at Boston. While we deprecate his political errors and his flagrant apostasy to the principles he once risked his life to uphold, we cannot but shudder with horror at the manner of his taking off.—Chicago Republican.