Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness: A Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art and Education in CanadaBourinot, John George
History
Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness: A Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art and Education in Canada
Bourinot, John George
Canada -- Intellectual life; Canadian literature -- History and criticism; French-Canadian literature -- History and criticism
party in Nova Scotia, remarkable for his great flow of language and
argument; William Young, an astute politician; James Boyle Uniacke,
with all the genius of an Irish orator; Laurence O'Connor Doyle, wit
and Irishman; Samuel J. W. Archibald with his silver tongue, afterwards
master of the rolls; Adams G. Archibald, polished gentleman; Leonard
Tilley with his suavity of demeanour and skill as a politician;
Charles Tupper with his great command of language, earnestness of
expression and courage of conviction, were the leading exponents of the
political opinions and of the culture and oratory of Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick. In the upper provinces we had in addition to the names
of the distinguished French Canadians I have already mentioned, those
of John A. Macdonald, at all times a ready and incisive debater, a
great party tactician, and a statesman of generous aspirations, who was
destined to die very many years later with the knowledge that he had
realized his conception of a federation uniting all the territory of
British North America, from Sydney to Victoria, under one government.
The names of Allan McNab, Francis Hincks, George Brown, George Etienne
Cartier, Alexander Galt, D'Arcy McGee, Louis Sicotte, John Hillyard
Cameron, Alexander Mackenzie, Seth Huntington, William McDougall,
Antoine Dorion, Alexander Campbell, and of other men, eminent for their
knowledge of finance, their powers as debaters, their graceful oratory,
their legal acumen, their political skill and their intellectual
achievements in their respective spheres, will be recalled by many of
those who hear me, since the most eminent among them have but recently
disappeared from the stage of active life.
As long as party government lasts in this country men will be divided
into political divisions, and objection will be of course time and
again taken to the methods by which these and other political leaders
have achieved their party ends, and none of us will be always satisfied
with the conclusions to which their at times overweening ambition
has led them; but, taking them all in all, I believe for one who has
lived all my life among politicians and statesmen that, despite their
failings and weaknesses, the public men of our country in those days
laboured on the whole conscientiously from their own points of view
to make Canada happier and greater. Indeed, when I look around me and
see what has been done in the face of great obstacles during a half
century and less, I am bound to pay this tribute to those who laboured
earnestly in the difficult and trying intellectual field of public life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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