being returned against M'Gavin. A public subscription in his favour produced 900l.
M'Gavin wrote also in the 'Glasgow Chronicle' refutations of the principles of Robert Owen of Lanark (1823), and of the views promulgated by William Cobbett in his discreditable 'History of the Protestant Reformation' (1825), both series of letters being afterwards published separately. He took part in the Apocrypha controversy of 1825. In 1826 he published an edition of Knox's 'History of the Reformation,' and subsequently defended the views expressed then in the 'Christian Herald' (1827-9), under the title of 'Church Establishments considered, in a Series of Letters to a Covenanter' (reissued in 8vo). He superintended an edition of John Howie's 'Biographia Scoticana' in 1827 (other editions, 1833–4, 1846, 1858), and wrote an introductory essay to John Brown of Whitburn's 'Memorials of the Nonconformist Ministers of the Seventeenth Century' (1832), besides numerous tracts and books for the young. His posthumous works, with a memoir, were issued in two volumes in 1834.
[Dr. William Reid of Edinburgh's The Merchant Evangelist, 1884; Memoir prefixed to M'Gavin's Posthumous Works; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]
McGEE, THOMAS D'ARCY (1825–1868), Irish-Canadian statesman and poet, born of an Ulster family at Carlingford, co. Louth, on 13 April 1825, was second son of James McGee, a coastguard. His mother's father, a Dublin bookseller named Morgan, had suffered imprisonment and financial ruin owing to his connection with the United Irishmen. In 1833 his father obtained an appointment in the custom-house at Wexford, and Thomas attended a day-school there. He showed an aptitude for study and a natural gift of eloquence. In 1842 he emigrated to America. After a brief stay at Providence, Rhode Island, he reached Boston in June, and entered the office of the ‘Boston Pilot’ as a clerk (Duffy, Four Years of Irish History, pp. 18–20). Before long he became editor of the newspaper. Reports of his activity in the Irish political movements in America, and his reputation as a writer and speaker, reached Ireland, and through the influence of O'Connell, it is said, he was appointed parliamentary correspondent of the ‘Freeman's Journal’ in London. Literature, however, had greater attractions for him than the business of the House of Commons. Duffy says he ‘was more absorbed in the achievements of Luke Wadding and Art Kavanagh than in those of Sir R. Peel or Lord John Russell’ (ib.) His connection with the ‘Freeman's Journal’ consequently soon closed. But he subsequently became London correspondent of the ‘Nation.’ To that paper he sent, besides letters, many poems, which appeared over one or another of the following signatures: ‘Montanus,’ ‘Amergin,’ ‘Feargail,’ ‘Sarsfield,’ ‘An Irish Exile,’ ‘GillaEirin,’ ‘Gilla-Patrick,’ and ‘M.’
In 1847 he was appointed secretary to the committee of the Irish Confederation, and returned to Ireland to take an active part in the literary propaganda of Young Ireland. In the same year he was arrested at Hollywood, co. Wicklow, but was released, and shortly afterwards he married. He was sent on a secret mission, which proved abortive, to Scotland in the following year. His orders were to rouse the Irish of Glasgow, to seize two or three of the Clyde steamers, and to force the hands to work the vessel round to the coast of Sligo. Thomas Francis Meagher [q. v.] bears testimony to the courage, enthusiasm, tact, and energy of M'Gee, and the charge that he betrayed the cause in Scotland may safely be rejected (Michael Cavanagh, Memoirs of T. F. Meagher, 1892, pp. 245–6). On his return to Ireland he was sheltered by Dr. Edward Maginn [q. v.], catholic coadjutor bishop of Derry, whose biography he wrote in later years, and finally, after the rout of his party, he escaped to America disguised as a priest. He arrived in Philadelphia on 10 Oct. 1848, and proceeding to New York, started there within a month the ‘New York Nation,’ which was a success until he came into collision with the clergy by his denunciations of the priests for dissuading the peasants from rebellion. He then went to Boston and founded in 1850 a paper called ‘The American Celt.’ The tone of this journal was at first republican or revolutionary, but McGee gradually changed his views, under the influence, it is said, of the Know-nothing movement in America, and advocated a return to constitutional methods (Drake, Dict. of Amer. Biog. p. 518). His secession from the ranks of his old comrades led to accusations of treachery, and he found it needful to remove his paper, first to Buffalo, and then to New York. But the continued attacks made upon him by Devin Reilly and others made it impossible for him to remain in America. Duffy remarks that ‘some of Reilly's articles about McGee were a disgrace to Irish-American journalism by their foulness and mendacity’ (Four Years of Irish History, 1883, pp. 458, 459, 775).
In 1857 McGee disposed of his newspaper property in America and settled in Montreal. There he started another paper, the ‘New
