A champion of many causes,[3] generally of a liberal persuasion, his abilities as a criminal advocate and oratorical skill established for him a wide reputation throughout the then-Dominion of Canada,[4][5] and his motto: "justice and equality to all classes and creeds, undue favor to none" was far in advance of the tenor of the times.

[1] Born at Meera, outside present day Carrick-on-Shannon, County Roscommon, the eldest of seven siblings,[6] son of extensive landed proprietor[7][1] and merchant Owen Devlin and his wife Catherine Mullany.

[9][10][11] Dr. Charles Devlin gave his life in 1847 at the age of 44 during the worst year of the Irish famine, serving the sick poor of a workhouse in Ballina, County Mayo.

[9] At Quebec, unable to practice medicine because he was less than 21 years of age, Devlin established a weekly newspaper with a liberal bias called the Freeman's Journal and Commercial Advertiser.

He directed this newspaper from 1844 to 1847, after which he left for Montreal, where he continued his activity as a journalist and began the study of law under Edward Carter, QC, Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for Brome, Quebec.

Created a Queen's Counsel (QC) by the Joly Government of Quebec in 1878, few cases of major importance of a criminal nature took place without his taking part on one side or the other.

Among other important causes Devlin was retained, in 1864, by the administration of Abraham Lincoln to serve as counsel in the prosecution at Montreal of the participants in the celebrated St. Albans, Vermont Raid, the most northerly incident of the United States Civil War.

However, realizing that such a move would violate Canadian neutrality and precipitate war between the Union and Great Britain, thereby achieving one of the key goals established for the raid by the Confederacy and only serving to help the South, President Lincoln revoked the order.

It was then that discovery of a handkerchief at the Virginia site monogrammed for John Surratt, a rebel agent, gave police a continuous trail and confirmed that the conspirators were not within Canadian borders.

Formed in 1857, the Fenians' plan was to attack British colonies in North America, thereby forcing Britain to send troops, weakening her defenses in Ireland.

The Fenian threat helped forge a sense of unity among the British North American colonies, and added impetus to the move toward Canadian confederation, which occurred 1 July 1867, a year after the initial raid.

Opposed to the Fenian raids into Canada, although not unsympathetic to their cause of freedom for Ireland, Devlin was for fifteen years (1851-1866) closely identified with the active volunteer militia force.

[35] A key platform for the enhancement and extension of his reputation was membership in the St. Patrick's Society of Montreal, a theoretically non-political organization founded in 1834 to care for Irish immigrants and to defend the local Irish-Canadian community's interests.

He was vocal in his praise for the new Dominion of Canada, wrapped up his speeches with three cheers for Queen Victoria, and had demonstrated his commitment to his new country by helping lead the defence of the Quebec border against Fenian invasion.

The Fenians, although not constituting the majority of Devlin's supporters, had nonetheless played a significant role during the election and fallen not far short of achieving their goal of defeating McGee.

[45] Among the militant Devlin supporters during the 1867 election campaign was an Ottawa tailor by the name of Patrick James Whelan, who had previously declared that McGee was a traitor, that he should be shot, and that if no one else would do the job, he would do it himself.

Following McGee's assassination, support for Fenianism declined, although the movement retained enough sway among Irish Americans to attempt another invasion of Canada in 1870 from Vermont into the eastern townships of Quebec, where it was decisively defeated at the battle of Eccles Hill (25 May 1870).

1875: Unseated on petition 26 August 1875; re-elected as a Liberal by acclamation in by-election of November 26, 1875 in riding of Montreal Centre, and sat in the House of Commons until the 1878 election.

Years later, in the press of 20 September 1876, we find Devlin "arranging with the Government for the proper disposal of the remains of the unfortunate immigrants who died from ship fever in 1847 and were buried near the Wellington Bridge and vicinity".

From about 1860 onwards the family lived in a fine home in downtown Montreal known as Tara Hall, located at 52 Upper St. Urbain Street, just east of Park Avenue, with large grounds and wide verandahs.

Of the three survivors, Mary Lillian married Arthur Turcotte Genest, a prominent civil engineer of old Quebec stock, whose descendants included Major John Cuthbert Wickham,[49] MD, CM, a long-serving medical veteran of the First World War; Francis ("Frank") Eugene married Maude Steele and went on to become a physician, surgeon and psychiatrist, head of the very large St. Jean de Dieu Hospital, and Crown alienist for the Province of Quebec; and Mary Gertrude ("Gert") married wealthy construction magnate James Thomas ("JT") Davis, involved with the concrete construction elements of the Lachine Canal, Trent-Severn waterway, Quebec bridge, Tay canal and other major water works, and residing in a mansion in the Square Mile area of Montreal at 3554 Drummond Street, now part of McGill University.

[50][51] Profoundly saddened by the early loss of the majority of his children and the premature death of his wife Anna Eliza at age 41 (13 June 1875),[52] and weakened by the onset of tuberculosis, in 1879 Devlin traveled to Colorado seeking a cure, dying there on 7 February 1880.

Confirming the esteem in which he was held by the Irish community, upon the return of his remains to Montreal from Colorado the train was met at Bonaventure station by a large crowd, who, doing away with the hearse in attendance, raised the coffin to their shoulders and in groups of six changing every few hundred yards, carried the body of their former leader to the St. Lawrence Hall Hotel, where it lay in state for three days, preceding a public funeral.

The funeral cortege wound its way through the heart of the city from the St. Lawrence Hall Hotel, along St. James Street, through Victoria Square past the statue of Queen Victoria and up the mountain along Cote des Neiges to Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery, where Devlin was buried at the Devlin monument (now Devlin-Wickham), ironically within clear sight of, and just down the same byway from, his former foe D'Arcy McGee's mausoleum.