Among the men who were most prominent in bringing about federation and who came to be known as the Fathers of Confederation were several distinguished Irishmen. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was the best known and probably did more than any other Canadian to make the idea of confederation popular by his writings and speeches. He had come to Canada as a stranger, edited a newspaper in Montreal, and was elected to the Assembly after a brief residence, in spite of the opposition cries of "Irish adventurer" and "stranger from abroad," was subsequently elected four times by acclamation, and was Minister of Agriculture and Education and Canadian Commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1867. His letters to the Earl of Mayo, pleading for the betterment of conditions in Ireland, were quoted by Gladstone during the Home Rule movement as "a prophetic voice from the dead coming from beyond the Atlantic." Another of the Fathers of Confederation was the Honorable Edward Whalen, born in the county Mayo, who as a young man went to Prince Edward Island, where he gained great influence as a popular journalist. He was an orator as well as an editor, and came to have the confidence of the people of the island, and hence was able to do very much for federation. A third of the Fathers of Confederation from the Maritime Provinces was the Honorable, afterwards Sir, Edward Kenny, who, when the first Cabinet of the New Dominion was formed, was offered and accepted one of the portfolios in recognition of the influence which he had wielded for Canadian union. At all times in the history of Canada the Catholic hierarchy has been looked up to as thoroughly conservative factors for the progress and development of the country. After the Irish immigration most of the higher ecclesiastics were Irish by birth or descent, and they all exerted a deep influence not only on their own people but on their city and province. One of the Fathers of Confederation was Archbishop Connolly, of Halifax, of whom the most distinguished Presbyterian clergyman of the Lower Provinces said the day after his death: "I feel that I have not only lost a friend, but as if Canada had lost a patriot; in all his big-hearted Irish fashion he was ever at heart, in mind, and deed, a true Canadian." Among his colleagues of the hierarchy were such men as his predecessor Archbishop Walsh, Archbishop Lynch, the first Metropolitan of Upper Canada when Toronto was erected into an archbishopric, Bishop Hogan of Kingston, Archbishop Hannan of Halifax, Archbishop Walsh of Toronto, and Archbishop O'Brien of Halifax, all of whom were esteemed as faithful Canadians working for the benefit of their own people more especially, but always with the larger view of good for the whole commonwealth of Canada.