Career
He especially crusaded to crusade abolition of the French language in Manitoba and Ontario schools. McCarthy was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1878 federal election as a Conservative. He appears to have been associated with the Equal Rights Party which ran in that election but did not run as their candidate.
lieutenant was his firm, Boulton & McCarthy in Barrie, that was the first incarnation of what is now Canada"s largest law firm, McCarthy Tétrault.
McCarthy ran his own slate of McCarthyite candidates in the 1896 election, but was the only one elected. Following the 1896 election, McCarthy forged an alliance with Wilfrid Laurier"s Liberal Party.
He would likely have been appointed to cabinet in 1898 had he not died following a carriage accident. McCarthy was a key figure in the Manitoba Schools Question, and a major proponent in pushing English only in legislatures, courts, and schools of Western Canada.