It is always difficult to determine accurately the influence of a political educator. There is no exception in the case of McGee. But there is not the slightest doubt that his effect on the colonial mind was very considerable. While he was expounding throughout the country his great cause, a number of young and able men were growing to maturity who later bore eloquent testimony to the penetrating influence of his teaching. The prominent members of this group--H. J. Morgan, Charles Mair, R. J. Haliburton, G. T. Denison, and W. A. Foster--formed a few years after McGee's death the "Canada First" party, dedicated to the task of advancing the cause of Canadian nationality. In this brilliant party, McGee left disciples to champion all that he had projected. In 1871, their ideas and visions found expression in a lecture of W. A. Foster, entitled _Canada First, or Our New Nationality_. Foster gave to McGee the premier position among those instrumental in arousing a Canadian national idealism. He paid the warm homage of himself and his associates in a passage remarkable alike for its passionate eloquence and for its unstinted admiration of the man who inspired it: There is a name I would fain approach with befitting reverence, for it casts athwart memory the shadow of all those qualities that man admires in man. It tells of one in whom the generous enthusiasm of youth was but hallowed by the experiences of cultured manhood; of one who lavished the warm love of an Irish heart on the land of his birth, yet gave a loyal and true affection to the land of his adoption; who strove with all the power of genius to convert the stagnant pool of politics into a stream of living water; who dared to be national in the face of provincial selfishness, and impartially liberal in the teeth of sectarian strife; who from Halifax to Sandwich sowed broadcast the seeds of a higher national life, and with persuasive eloquence drew us closer together as a people, pointing out to each what was good in the other, wreathing our sympathies and blending our hopes; yes! one who breathed into our new Dominion the spirit of a proud self-reliance, and first taught Canadians to respect themselves. Was it a wonder that a cry of agony rang throughout the land when murder, foul and most unnatural, drank the life-blood of Thomas D'Arcy McGee?