Canadians of the present take casually the fact that their country straddles a continent. They assume that the eastern settlements expanded through the pressure of population into the prairie country and beyond; that the spread of Canada westward was as inevitable as the growth of a sapling into an oak, that nothing else could happen but what did happen. Their assumption leaves out of consideration the effulgent political idealism that entered into the creation of their country. It was through the daring spirit of individual men and their faith in Canada's future that the Dominion was fashioned. The winning of the West was not the product of mass action, like the swarming of bees taking possession of a new hive. The majority of eastern colonists in the sixties knew nothing of the West, and were content to remain uninformed on the subject. A Nova Scotian of the period would have shaken his head in disbelief had he been told by a passing stranger that, in little more than fifty years, a city on the far-away Red River would possess one of the world's largest wheat exchanges, and that winding freight trains would draw the grain eastward on its way to the markets of Europe. The economic potentialities of the land beyond Lake Superior were a closed book to the average man. The school children knew of it only as the land where the Indian still hung his scalps in his wigwam, and hunted the buffalo. Adults read slender references to it in the newspapers with the mild interest with which their descendants scan the descriptions of Arctic territories discovered by a Stefansson. Had the acquisition of the West depended on popular agitation and action, it would not have become Canadian, and very likely would have become part of the American republic. It was won by the vision and faith of a few men, prominent among whom was McGee.
He had abundant reasons for western expansion. Conspicuous among them was the desire to open up the unexploited prairie lands, where the indigent members of society in the East might, through their own effort, find a competence. For the same reason he had been an ardent champion of western settlement while residing in the United States. A more imaginative consideration was that the Canadian territory might constitute a pathway to the great East, and that thereby the hopes of early explorers in a north-west passage from Europe to Asia might be realized. "We cannot despair," he declared in a speech in 1860, "that the dream of Jacques Cartier may yet be fulfilled, and the shortest route from Europe to China be found through the valley of the St. Lawrence." Some twenty-five years later, the steel lines of the Canadian Pacific Railway made McGee's dream come true.
Above all, he looked to the acquirement of the West as a subsidiary means of bringing to birth a new northern nation. From the outset his imagination had been fired by this conception. There was no better stage on which the experiment of nation-building could be attempted than the vast territory stretching westward to the Pacific. The pioneer settlers through a persistent faith and courage cleared the woods for their seed, and fashioned the farms of the future. A like courage on the part of Canadian statesmen would lay in the north-west territories the foundation of a new nation. Union of the colonies, followed by expansion, was the necessary element in the glorious vision which McGee pictured to an electrified legislature in the session of 1860: "I look to the future of my adopted country with hope, though not without anxiety; I see in the not remote distance, one great nationality bound, like the shield of Achilles, by the blue rim of ocean—I see it quartered into many communities—each disposing of its internal affairs—but all bound together by free institutions, free intercourse, and free commerce; I see within the round of that shield, the peaks of the western mountains and the crests of the eastern waves—the winding Assiniboine, the five-fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, the Saguenay, the St. John, and the Basin of Mines—by all these flowing waters, in all the valleys they fertilize, in all the cities they visit in their courses, I see a generation of industrious, contented, moral men, free in name and in fact—men capable of maintaining, in peace and in war, a constitution worthy of such a country."
Early in 1861, an event occurred which added force to McGee's advocacy of British-American union. In the gloom of an April morning, the guns of the confederate troops outside Fort Sumter boomed their first discharge, and the American civil war began. During the next five years a titanic struggle was waged in the republic. The issues and nature of this war might seem of little interest to the British colonists. They were sufficiently remote from the stage of conflict. Yet few events in the century so quickened and shaped development in the British communities as this. McGee was quick to see its implications. "That shot fired at Fort Sumter, on the 12th of April, 1861, had a message for the north as well as for the south.... That shot fired at Fort Sumter was the signal gun of a new epoch for North America, which told the people of Canada, more plainly than human speech can express it, to sleep no more except on their arms." The civil war made the northern states a military power, and whatever turn the struggle might take the British colonies were in danger from aggressive action. If the federal government failed to conquer the South, it might, as some politicians urged, obtain compensation by absorbing the British possessions. Even in case of victory the spirit of military aggression might so control northern statesmen as to lead to the conquest of Canada.
From the beginning of the war a very active newspaper campaign had been going on against Canada, led by the New YorkHerald, a paper which represented the opinions of Seward, Secretary of State. Significantly also it had the largest circulation of any journal in the United States. It declared emphatically that Canada geographically was an annex to the Republic, and that, if an army were sent there, its inhabitants would at once declare their independence of Britain. After theTrentaffair of 1861, when two southern gentlemen were removed from the British steamerTrentby federal sailors, these annexationist opinions found more heated expression. McGee, who kept in close touch with American opinion, became acutely aware of Canada's danger. On every available occasion, he publicly pleaded that preparation be made for defence and the most essential preparation was colonial union. The situation demonstrated Æsop's fable of the sticks. In a bundle they were unbreakable, but asunder they could be snapped with ease. He was convinced that the colonies had reached the cross-roads of their destiny. The pressure of events across their frontiers and their own political development brought them face to face with a number of alternatives, one of which must be chosen. They must either (1) strengthen themselves as members of the Empire by union amongst themselves; (2) become independent states and face the perils of such a situation; or (3) agree to be absorbed in the United States and lose their individuality as British-American communities.
McGee argued that the time was ripe for the first alternative. "The eventful opportunity for British America is now; the tide in our affairs is at the flood." Union would satisfy the most extended aspiration of the colonists, for through it they could march out of their petty colonial existence to the status of a nation, "in perpetual alliance with the Empire, under which it had its rise and growth." At the same time, he was emphatic in his description of the kind of nation to be nurtured. "A Canadian nationality, not French-Canadian, nor British-Canadian, nor Irish-Canadian—patriotism rejects the prefix—that is, in my opinion, what we should look forward to,—that is what we ought to labour for, that is what we ought to be prepared to defend to the death."
Such was the compelling cause which McGee as a member of the Opposition championed in parliament and on public platforms. In theNew Era, he had sketched it in outline. Now as a political leader he carefully shaded in the outlines, and presented a compact case. The enthusiasm which as a Young Irelander he had bestowed on the ideal of Irish freedom, he now devoted to the service of this new cause. Others had caught a similar vision. Alexander Morris, an Upper Canadian, in March, 1858, delivered a lecture in Montreal entitledNova Britannia, describing the potential resources of the British colonies and projecting the plan of a future union which would make those colonies a great nation. A few public men of the period spoke frequently of the national future of the colonies, but upon the mind of none had the idea fastened so firmly as upon McGee's. Not merely did he vividly grasp the ideal, he voiced it with impelling beauty of speech. In him the Canadian nation had its first prophet.
May 22, 1862, the Cartier-Macdonald government fell. Its career came to grief on a militia bill which provided for the maintenance of a force of 50,000 men, at all times available for active service, at a cost of about one million dollars. The danger to the provinces consequent upon the events of war in the United States had forced the government to stake its existence upon such a far-reaching scheme of defence. But the defection of some Lower Canadian supporters threw out the measure, and the government resigned. Foley, the Reform leader, was passed over, and the governor called upon Sandfield Macdonald to form an administration. In co-operation with Sicotte, the Reform leader in Lower Canada, he patched together a ministry which held office for approximately one year, and was known as the Macdonald-Sicotte government. It contained the leading figures of the Opposition: James Morris, A. A. Dorion, M. H. Foley, W. McDougall, W. P. Howland, and McGee. The presidency of the council was conferred on McGee.
The programme of the new administration had in it a dash of boldness. It included militia and bankruptcy bills, plans towards opening for settlement the great north-western territories, and the determination to set the building of the intercolonial railway on the move. Many of these measures McGee gladly welcomed as steps towards the establishment of that for which he laboured, the great new northern nation. But that stern reformer, George Brown, found one grave omission in this scheme of legislation. Sandfield Macdonald flatly refused to carry into effect the principle so sacred to the editor of theGlobe, representation by population. He was personally doubtful of its value as a medicine for Canadian ills, and he felt that the line of least difficulty would be to leave it alone. In its place he adopted as the hinge principle of the government's action, the double majority, begging that it be given a fair trial. But Brown was not satisfied. In his mind the Reform party existed primarily to establish representation by population. A ministry that failed to accomplish this was no reform government. "Better a thousand times," thundered theGlobe, "had it been that the Cartier-Macdonald government with all its wickedness should have been recalled than that so many leading men of the Liberal Opposition should have sacrificed their principles and destroyed the moral influence which they justly possessed with the electors of Upper Canada." Such hostility was unveiled, although Brown alleged that he was willing to give the government a chance. His lack of friendliness was ominous, and the fall of the ministry a year later was largely due to the fact that George Brown had failed to give it his blessing.
What was the attitude of McGee? He slipped into office with the determination to perform something for the cause which he had advanced by voice and pen, the development of a British-American nationality. Varied elements entered the task of nation-building. More was necessary than the territorial union of the colonies, although that was imperative. In a sparse community, flattened out over a new and vast country, an impelling need was the encouragement of immigration. The body of a nation was in its sturdy farmers and dauntless pioneers. Men were required to labour in field and mine. The Canadas from the eastern to the western frontier had thousands of acres of rich farming lands awaiting the plough. The wealth of the fisheries and mineral resources were no less great, and all these invited labour. This fact McGee keenly realized, and to the task of colonization he bent his attention. In his election speech at Montreal in June, 1862, he declared that in the ministry "all that he would ask to be judged by was this—what had he done for the settlement of the country? This was his great political principle, all others in his estimation being secondary." Canadian statesmanship, he believed, must be tested by the success with which it endeavoured to build a great community out of a small one. Careful settlement was the readiest means to this end. In the past three years McGee had done much to promote an interest in settlement. In each of the previous sessions he had obtained a committee to examine the problem of immigration. The committee of 1860 submitted a careful report with many recommendations. It drew attention to the fact that the advantages of Canada as a field of colonization had not been brought home to the popular mind of Europe. During the season of 1859 there arrived in the country by the St. Lawrence, not more than 6,000 English-speaking persons. In the same year New York received 45,000. There were many obvious reasons for this disparity. The development of industrial life in the United States gave the inducement of higher wages. Canada, being almost purely an agricultural country, could not offer the same wages, and incidentally the committee recommended that manufactures be encouraged to widen the appeal to prospective immigrants. But McGee and his committee emphasized in particular the need of spreading information concerning Canada's strongest attraction to the European emigrant, cheap or free cultivable land. They pressed the necessity of an intimate co-operation between the immigrant service and the Crown lands' department in order that immigrant authorities be kept cognizant with all the lands available. The lack of such co-operation in the past had seriously handicapped the settlement of the country.
The committee also laid importance upon the building of a suitable landing place for immigrants with convenient sheds and wash houses in the port of Quebec on the general plan of the establishment at Castle Garden, New York. A further recommendation, carried into effect, was that resident provincial agents be appointed at convenient places in Europe, such as Christiania, Hamburg, Liverpool, an Irish port, and also New York. At such strategic points information and guidance might be given to prospective emigrants, and their faces directed to the Canadas. The report of 1861 backed up these recommendations with others of a similar kind. In the spring of 1862, before assuming office, McGee again brought the question of colonization before parliament and "in the spirit of a broad, uncircumscribed Canadian patriotism, which knows in this House, in any legislative light, neither race, nor religion, nor language, but only Canada, and her advancement," moved for another committee. The committee was appointed, but in this year it lacked McGee's enthusiastic chairmanship. His ministerial duties kept him otherwise occupied.
When the ministry was being formed, he had hoped to get the Department of Agriculture, which included immigration, the subject in which he had most interest. Political considerations thwarted this hope, but on being given the presidency of the council he was promised that the immigration bureau should come under his department. The promise was not fulfilled, largely because of the opposition of Lower Canada. The French-Canadian members feared that a vigorous immigration policy would, through the inrush of immigrants, swamp the French-Canadian community with English-speaking people.L'Ordre, a leading French Catholic organ in Montreal, stated that "McGee's avowed liberality, which looked upon all nations and creeds alike, would fit him for minister of immigration for Upper Canada, but totally disqualify him for that office in Lower Canada." Such agitation was successful. It restrained Sandfield Macdonald from granting McGee control over the immigration service. It did more. Much to McGee's annoyance, it checked the government of which he was a member from doing anything to carry into effect the recommendations which his committees had suggested. Even the emigration agents in England and Ireland were withdrawn, and new ones not appointed. No event of the period gave McGee such chagrin. It seemed to him that the ministers were juggling with the most vital subject affecting the country's growth.
A work no less significant than immigration in the creation of a "new northern nation" was railway construction, and in its advocacy McGee was quite as ardent. Nature had endowed the British colonies of North America with a magnificent road system. In the seventeenth century the French settlements in Canada had clustered round the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers, and these winding watercourses constituted the one bond of communication. The United Empire Loyalists later erected their log houses along the wooded shores of the lakes and rivers further west, and the St. Lawrence waterway was their means of contact with Quebec and Britain. Without the St. Lawrence the Canadas would have broken in two like a bridge without piers. But one gift Nature failed to bestow on the British colonies. She provided no easy means of transit between the Canadian and Maritime provinces. Mountain spurs with dense forests constituted an almost impenetrable wall, blocking overland travel between the two groups of British colonies. The sea-route through the Gulf was tediously long, and was closed by ice part of the year. It was clear, as Lord Durham in 1838 had recognized with quick insight, that political association between the colonies must await the building of a railway cutting through the mountain and forest area and bringing Quebec closer to Halifax. In the years following Durham, the aspiration for such a line grew among the more far-sighted of colonial statesmen. It was considered as a necessary basis not merely for colonial union, but for colonial prosperity. The Maritime provinces were in need of it to reap the benefits of trade with the Canadian and American west, and to forge a commercial route which would make their harbours the winter ports of the northern part of the continent. The Canadas no less required it in order that they might have access to the Atlantic frontage of British North America, and find consumers for their produce amongst the seamen of the lower provinces.
The attempts to build an intercolonial line have a lengthy and chequered history. In 1850 Joseph Howe, Nova Scotia's distinguished champion of responsible government, obtained an imperial guarantee to support the colonies in financing the project, but the plan collapsed on account of irreconcilable opinions as to what route the line should take. In the following years negotiations continued, but a dismal succession of circumstances made them sterile. What the provincial governments failed to perform, private enterprise in part attempted. The Grand Trunk Company took the field, and pushed its lines west and east. But the vision of a truly intercolonial line was not lost. The need of it, to relieve Canada's dependence on American ports, increased in urgency. In 1857 the Canadian government, co-operating with Nova Scotia, again pressed the question on the attention of the imperial authorities, but without results. Nothing daunted, the Macdonald-Sicotte government resumed the project, and McGee was its warmest advocate. To him the railway was an instrument of creative statesmanship. "The construction of the intercolonial railway would have the effect of inducing a union of the colonies and making them one in interest and importance, whereas now they were but isolated, lone, undistinguished provinces."
In the Quebec conference of 1862, the first of the important colonial conferences, he drew up in company with Howe of Nova Scotia and Tilley of New Brunswick a memorandum concerning its construction and management. It was agreed that "if it should be concluded that the work shall be constructed and managed by a joint commission of the three provinces, it shall be constructed in the proportion of two appointed by the government of Canada, and one each by the governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the four to select a fifth before entering upon the discharge of their duties." It was also planned that Canada should assume five-twelfths of the risk of construction, the provinces by the sea dividing up the other seven-twelfths between them. Intercolonial free-trade was to follow at once on the making of the railway. But the scheme, like its predecessors, came to grief. For its adoption, the financial backing of the imperial government was imperative, and to obtain it Sicotte and Howland went to England. But British ministers would give a financial guarantee only on such conditions as would render it in the opinion of Sicotte of no advantage to the colonial governments concerned, and the Canadians returned empty-handed. The possibility of sinking money in the inter-colonial also led to disagreement within the government party. In hostility to the project Dorion in January, 1863, left the ministry. This confluence of adverse circumstances forced the administration to discard its intention of carrying through the much desired intercolonial line, much to McGee's regret. Little more was gained than the extension of the survey which proved useful in subsequent years. The most important step attempted by the ministry in hastening the emergence of the new nationality was thus halted.
A thorny issue which had much to do with the fate of the Macdonald-Sicotte ministry was that of separate schools. Early in the history of the Canadas a common school system had arisen which recognized no religious distinctions among those seeking education. The money of all taxpayers went to the maintenance of the system. But, in 1841, an Act allowed public support to denominational schools, and to such institutions Roman Catholic parents sent their children. The separate school principle was developed by later Acts in 1843, 1852, and 1855. Yet many Roman Catholics considered that the status given to their schools was inadequate. In 1860, 1861, and 1862, R. W. Scott of Ottawa introduced legislation to strengthen the Roman Catholic separate school system of Upper Canada. On each occasion he found a warm supporter in McGee. Indeed, in his first election address, in 1857, McGee had chosen this subject for his special championship. It was the one large issue on which he differed radically from Brown, and he was ever frank that in it he would not compromise. He made clear his views. "If you permit the state to form the minds of the young apart from parental or religious control, why not allow the same state to establish a uniformity of belief and worship for the old. The same pretension which justifies the state school will justify a state church." For youth the moral guidance received under the impress of religious teaching was invaluable. "In Scotland, Switzerland, Holland, do they launch men upon the voyage of life without a strong infusion of dogmatic religion—without a standard of right and wrong—without an ethical compass by which they may tell the moral north from the moral south?" The logical corollary from which he did not shrink was that all sects should have their separate schools. The followers of Brown viewed such a doctrine with dismay. To them the common school was the least expensive and the most likely to alloy sectarian feeling. TheGlobelucidly stated their case. "We need the common school system more than New England to blend into one homogeneous people all these races of men. Carry out Mr. McGee's ideas, and we shall never accomplish that. We shall be a nation of sects fighting for supremacy; a people backward, unintelligent, unenterprising."
Notwithstanding the hostility of Upper Canadians to the principle of separate schools, Scott's bill, in 1863, became law. Due largely to McGee's influence, it was carried as a government measure. This was fatal to the ministry. Although Scott's Act affected only Upper Canada, it was carried against the heated opposition of a majority from that province. The principle of the double majority, to which Sandfield Macdonald had pinned his colours, was flagrantly ignored, and Brown with his followers had an ample opportunity to sing condemnations. The government's action was a confession that its much proclaimed principle could not always be applied, and that, as a solvent of political difficulties, it was useless.
The Macdonald-Sicotte government never survived this shock to its pretensions. In May, 1863, J. A. Macdonald moved and Cartier seconded a motion condemning the ministry, and it was carried by a majority of five. "We shall not," declared the Globe, "cry our eyes out over the defeat of the ministry, whatever the result be.... If it is destroyed now by its enemies, we may rejoice that the executioner's task has been taken out of our hands." But the administration did not immediately die. Sandfield Macdonald endeavoured to save it by a purgation, and the infusion of fresh blood. A reorganization of the cabinet took place, with the obvious aim of making it more acceptable to Brown and Upper Canada. Sicotte was quietly dropped, and Dorion took his place as leader of the Lower Canadians and partner with Macdonald. McGee, Foley, and Abbott were gently pushed out. McGee was removed to make way for a person more favourable in the eyes of Upper Canada, but many of the prime minister's supporters considered his removal a serious mistake. TheGlobe, which blessed the ministerial changes, considered that McGee had not obtained a fair deal. To himself, the event was one of the most painful in his public career. Of all men he was least covetous for office as subsequent events proved, but he craved the confidence of those with whom he acted. Sandfield Macdonald withheld such confidence, and never adequately explained to him why he was being removed from the ministry. The cards were shuffled behind his back. In any case the affair was momentous, for it jostled him from the ranks of the Reformers and henceforth he tended to direct his support to J. A. Macdonald and Cartier.
In the early summer of 1863 the new Macdonald-Dorion government appealed to the country. Lacking robust strength, its members laid no very great emphasis upon the principles for which they stood. But one significant pronouncement was ventured to the effect that the ministry would consider representation by population as an open question. This alone was sufficient to win Brown who promised to wield his lance for the new government. The election gave Sandfield Macdonald a majority in Upper Canada, but in the lower province his followers were thinned to a minority. In Montreal three of the ministers went down to defeat, Young, Holton, and Dorion. This fact theGlobeattributed to the dropping of McGee. The elections altered only slightly the political situation. The government had not increased its voting strength, and it therefore lacked the vitality to carry through vigorous legislation. The evil of political deadlock remained like a running sore. Thoughtful men still shook their heads at a hopeless situation, and those with vision looked forward with more earnestness than ever to some great constructive measure that would bring salvation to Canadian politics.
McGee made his departure from the ranks of reformers the occasion of a dramatic utterance in the press. In June 1863 he wrote a public letter to a friend, Daniel Macarow, of Kingston, proclaiming his devotion to those principles cherished by Conservatives and expressing his fear of democracy. He believed that the surest antidote to the instability and rashheadedness associated with democratic government would be the establishment of a royal prince, and the nurturing in Canada as in England of the monarchical principle. He was confident that a monarchy would save colonial society from the excesses that seemed to be the natural irruptions of democratic communities. In the light of subsequent development, there is something a little bizarre about McGee's suggestion that a monarch be imported to the British colonies. But in the sixties it was not as chimerical as might now appear. The political future of the colonies was then obscure. Popular institutions worked in such a manner as to inspire despair in the minds of the critical. Partisan spirit was violent in its bitterness. Political morality, seldom very high on the American continent, was at a low ebb. The restless spirit of self-interest, a powerful agent in promoting the development of a new country, expressed itself in actions predatory to the community. The outbreak of the American civil war seemed to rock institutions throughout the continent, and accentuate the sense of insecurity. It was natural that McGee should look abroad for some means of bringing stability to Canadian institutions, and he was merely following a time-worn precedent in believing that a monarchy was a stabilizing force. All the prominent fathers of Confederation held a similar opinion, although McGee stood alone in his plea that the monarch should definitely live within Canada. His letter had no very practical results. It was little more than a gesture, transitory in its effects, but sufficiently significant at the time to arouse controversy.
For some ten months the Macdonald-Dorion government stumbled along under accumulating difficulties. Without a substantial majority it could venture on no bold legislation, and its efforts were mainly concerned with staving off defeat. McGee attacked it with as much fire as any member of the Opposition. He was merciless in his treatment of Sandfield Macdonald. The premier on one occasion taunted him with his rebel past, and McGee replied with a polished sarcasm that held the house spellbound. "Although there may have been imprudence and many errors in the early career of one who was an editor at seventeen, and a public speaker before I was of age, and although there have been many things that my own judgment at this day does not approve, at all events, throughout the whole long road, and it remains for the most part in irrevocable type, the honourable member will find no art of duplicity, he will find no instance in which I betrayed a friend or intrigued against an associate. I have not been fair to men's faces and false behind their back. I have not condoled with sinister sympathy with the friends of a public man whom I desired to injure, while at the same time I placed in the hands of his enemies weapons of attack, forged by malice, and poisoned by slanderous personalities." The words do little to recapture the intense atmosphere of the chamber, the young man with pale face and flashing eyes, and the piercing soprano voice which carried the barbed phrases to every listening ear. An observer, E. R. Cameron, wrote that "the members upon the floor, and the spectators in the galleries, were .... almost breathless during the delivery, and the merciless flogging of the Premier excited the same feelings as would be aroused in a gladiatorial combat, in which one party, by the most exquisite thrusts, is done slowly to death." Notwithstanding the criticisms of McGee and others, the government staggered on until, like a spent runner, it resigned in March, 1864. Anotherimpassewas reached.
After the usual political manœuvres Sir Etienne Taché, with the assistance of J. A. Macdonald, put together a new ministry in which the chief members were Taché, Macdonald, Cartier, Galt, Foley, and McGee. McGee became minister of agriculture, an office in which his chief interest rested, in virtue of its intimate contact with the work of nation-building through colonization. The ministry had the same jagged path to follow as its predecessors. With a slender majority, it worked under the shadow of defeat. It could obviously venture on no bold policies, and it was forced to shrink from clear-cut issues. Eventually, on June 14, it fell, the fourth ministry within four years. The situation had become baffling beyond description. It mattered not in what manner the political groups paired and allied, deadlock continued, like an evil spirit, to stalk the career of each administration. Political ingenuity exhausted itself without avail. Appeals to the electorate brought no wholesome results. The continuance of party conflict merely accentuated the difficulties. Where was the solution? The solution indeed had long been advocated by McGee and others. But it was now pressed forward by a stronger force than advocacy, by the intense gravity of the political situation. George Brown, with an honesty of purpose that should make his name for ever remembered among Canadians, came forward to declare that the time had come for establishing a new system by a union of all parties. His demand constitutes the real beginning of the federal movement consummated three years later.
Early in October, 1863, Brown and McGee had consulted over the difficulties of the existing constitution, and Brown was disposed to approve of a federal union of the Canadas. McGee promised his support to any motion which Brown might introduce on the subject. Hence on October 12, Brown introduced a famous resolution asking for the appointment of a committee to report on the constitutional difficulties with the purpose of finding a way out. The motion was temporarily withdrawn, but was reintroduced on March 14. Weeks again elapsed without anything being done, and throughout this period Brown's motion encountered the stern opposition of Cartier and Macdonald, while McGee was its warm champion, seeing in it the possibility of getting a federal system on the anvil. The committee was finally appointed, McGee and Brown being its two most prominent members. On June 13, the day previous to the fall of the Taché government, it reported in favour of a federation. The fall of the administration precipitated events. Brown's suggestion was now gladly accepted, and the formation of a coalition for the carrying of constitutional changes was agreed upon.
Difficulties strewed the path of forming a coalition. Men who had assailed one another with the bitterness of fishmongers could combine only with diffidence. Moreover, feeling in the country was lethargic. Yet, by the close of June, the administration was formed. The Reformers, Messrs. George Brown, Oliver Mowat, and William McDougall were sworn in as ministers, and eagerly looked forward to their task. Their procedure was shaped for them by events which matured quickly in the Maritime provinces. The need for union among the colonies by the sea had become so imperative that their leaders determined on holding a convention at Charlottetown on September I, for the purpose of fashioning a federal scheme. Fate in her kindest mood could not have given a better opportunity to Canadian statesmen. Why should not the prospective union between Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island include the Canadas? The dream of a united British North America, which had long dazzled the imagination of McGee and others, pushed itself to the fore. The plastic moment had come. Now was the time to shape the destiny of the British possessions. Fortunately men were in the Canadas ready to snatch opportunity by the forelock. Eight members of the ministry, including McGee, departed to Charlottetown to discuss federal union with the leaders of the lower provinces. They were successful in their mission. The statesmen of the Maritime colonies were convinced that the wider union was preferable, and to construct it they agreed to meet at Quebec in the early days of October.
In the months previous to the historic Charlottetown conference, McGee had championed his cherished cause, not merely in the legislature, but in the press and on the platform. The case for confederation had, in all the provinces, no greater publicity agent. In theBritish American Magazinefor August and October, 1863, he eloquently pleaded that the British North American provinces should insure their future by immediate union. With the faith of Mrs. Browning that nations are what they will, he believed that all obstacles would dissolve before the determination of the colonists. "We are between the Gulf Stream and the Rocky Mountains—British subjects—professing monarchists almost to a man—four millions. Are these too few to form a decision on their political future? Our joint revenues within that range exceed those of the respectable kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, Bavaria, Portugal, and Saxony. Our joint civil lists far exceed the cost of the royal governments of those ancient and considerable nations, cramped as they are, where we are boundless in point of territory. It is clear, then, that it is listlessness of will—not lack of means or numbers—which heretofore has prevented us taking up in a practical shape the alternative of the fate before us—the establishment of our future, complete, and permanent constitution."
The reasons for immediate action were those he had adduced in previous years. There was the elemental need of defence. The colonies disunited could not defend themselves, nor could they be expected to fight for one another when they had nothing in common. They cherished British institutions, but these they could not long maintain without union. The force of American example was too great. Moreover, their economic development must inevitably lag behind that of the states to the south, unless they united to confer upon one another the benefits of reciprocal trade and mutual assistance. Of no less importance was the fact that only through confederation could the colonies shoulder the responsibilities which necessarily clung to them as communities with self-government as an ideal. It was not merely in their own interests that they should do so, but in the interests of the mother state. "We have passed out of the stage of pupilage, and we have not emerged into the stage of partnership." The intermediary stage, in McGee's estimation, failed to develop an adequate sense of responsibility among the colonists, while it imposed on the imperial state the unfair burden of defence.
But mere reasons for union were not sufficient. The march of development depended upon another factor. A vital union of any kind presupposed a common sympathy and understanding, and these could be created only by intercourse. The colonists by the sea and those of the Canadas lived under similar institutions, and were of the same racial stock. But they had little intercourse; they were as divided as if they lived on different continents. The inhabitants of Nova Scotia looked upon Canadians with almost as much distrust as they would view the natives of the South Seas. Business relations might have done much to dissipate this feeling, but the drift of trade from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick was southward. Halifax had more commerce with Boston than with Quebec, which lay away to the west, and was too distant for intimacy. McGee, who had travelled in all the colonies and felt as much at home at the friendly firesides of Halifax as in Montreal, pleaded continually for closer relationship. It was essential for that future nationality which he ever saw in the horizon. He expended energy and time to effect the closer contact. Each year since 1859, he had visited the Maritime provinces, pleading on every occasion for closer association. In the hot days of August, 1863, he was in Halifax and St. John, painting vivid pictures of the possibilities in colonial union, and championing the completion of the intercolonial railway as a means to union. "Your destiny and ours," he told the people of St. John, "is as inseparable as are the waters which pour into the Bay of Chaleur, rising though they do, on the one hand on the Canadian, and on the other on the New Brunswick Highlands. Geographically we are bound up beyond the power of extinction."
In the mid-summer of 1864, he attempted something more than a personal tour. With Sandford Fleming, then chief engineer of the intercolonial survey, he planned an elaborate excursion of one hundred leading men from the Canadas. Members of parliament, the professions, and business men were represented. The boards of trade in St. John and Halifax welcomed the deputation, banquets were held, speeches delivered, and the Canadian representatives found through the fellowship of knife and fork how much they had in common with their fellow colonists of the lower provinces. McGee made use of the occasion to plead passionately for federation. The reporter of theCanadien, who accompanied the excursion, stated that at Fredericton McGee surpassed himself in his plea for united action. At Halifax, he declared that if the colonies "remained long as fragments, we shall be lost; but let us be united, and we shall be as a rock which, unmoved itself, flings back the waves that may be dashed upon it by the storm." His eloquent campaigning, combined with the social intercourse provided by the excursion, undoubtedly did much to make successful the discussions at Charlottetown in the following September.
Throughout this period, he endeavoured to advance not merely those material readjustments, such as territorial union, necessary for the creation of a new nationality. With no less enthusiasm, he sought to cultivate sympathy and fellowship between all groups, sects, and parties—the essential basis for a nation. Dissension between the Roman Catholics and Protestants had long rent the Canadas, and McGee from the outset of his residence in Montreal had striven to heal it, frequently at the cost of friction with prominent men of his own church and race who feared that he was compromising their interests. In the period, Toronto was the chief hotbed of sectarian strife. The parades there on St. Patrick's Day had generally ended in rioting and sometimes in bloodshed. McGee poured oil on the troubled waters. He persuaded the Catholic body to forego their parades, out of consideration for public harmony, and also induced them to cease printing a rather vituperative organ, known as theCitizen. In its place he substituted theFreeman, a journal, ably conducted, which championed McGee's policy of conciliation, and did much to bring about harmonious relationships between the Catholic and Protestant sects. With equal fervour he sought to break down the fatal inertia which lay like a mountain upon colonial leaders. In Halifax in 1863, he declared that "if we were ever to have a spirit of patriotism amongst us such as Englishmen manifest with respect to England, and Frenchmen to France, if we are to feel that we have a country, and that it is our country, we must obliterate all sectional lines, and overcome all party and local prejudices, and if in so doing difficulties present themselves, we must conquer them and assert our mastery over all obstacles." It was an admirable creed for those who looked to Confederation as the supreme goal for the colonies.
On the 10th of October, 1864, the historic Quebec conference met. It was a fitting time and a fitting place for the constructive work of colonial statesmen. October is the final harvest month of the Canadian year. The fruits and crops of the summer are garnered, and in no place does nature celebrate the event with more gorgeous colouring than in Quebec. Amid the magic charm and beauty of French Canada's old capital, the conference undertook the arduous labour of carrying into execution the visions of the previous years. McGee's feelings on the occasion were vivid. The cause which he had so faithfully championed and the hopes which he had so long cherished were now to triumph. The new nationality for whose emergence he had laboured was to be fitted with a constitution.
The story of the painstaking sessions of the conference belongs to the general history of Confederation, and need not be chronicled. In the debates and fashioning of resolutions, McGee's part was less prominent than that of many men who had not laboured as much in the heat of the day. His one recorded motion was to secure the preservation of denominational schools. He moved that to the clause which assigned education to the control of the local legislatures be added the words, "saving the rights and privileges which the Protestant or Catholic minority in both Canadas may possess as to their denominational schools at the time when the constitutional act goes into operation". Throughout the discussions he watched with jealous care the maintenance of minority and local rights, and made the significant confession the following February in defending the Quebec resolutions before the Canadian parliament: "If we had failed to secure every possible constitutional guarantee for minorities, east and west .... I myself could have been no party to the conclusions of the late conference. But .... in securing the power of disallowance, under circumstances, which might warrant it, to the general government, in giving the appointment of judges and local governors to the general government, and in expressly providing in the constitution for the educational rights of the minority, we had taken every possible guarantee ... against the oppression of a sectional minority by a sectional majority."
By the close of the month the conference had brought its labours to a conclusion. Its seventy-two resolutions embodied the framework of confederation. The remaining task was to obtain the confirmation of the various colonial legislatures, and in the following February the resolutions came before the Canadian parliament. Provided that the coalition of party leaders held together, their acceptance was assured. The debate was none the less critical. The ministers had to justify the resolutions not merely before parliament, but before Canadian public opinion. To render their work difficult Dorion and Sandfield Macdonald stirred up an animated opposition, and some feared that the coalition might break. The government's case for union was contained in five masterly speeches by Macdonald, Cartier, Brown, Galt, and McGee. Whatever might be the outstanding position of Brown and Macdonald as political leaders wheeling the party machines to make confederation possible, the most vivid orator of the projected Dominion was McGee. "When he rose to speak," said a reporter in the press gallery, "there was the greatest temptation to throw down my pencil and just listen." Fired by the event to the white heat of enthusiasm, he delivered one of his most powerful orations, infused with the imagination and glowing rhetoric of his best performances. He enumerated the military and political reasons for confederation which in the previous eight years he had steadily pleaded. The prospective commercial benefits of union were patent—free access to the sea, an extended market, the breaking down of hostile tariffs, and enhanced credit with England. Nothing short of a confederation would bring such advantages. A Zollverein or commercial union would not satisfy. "If any one for a moment will remember that the trade of the whole front of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia gravitates at present alongshore to Portland and Boston, while the trade of Upper Canada, west of Kingston, has long gravitated across the lakes to New York, he will see, I think, that a mere Zollverein treaty without a strong political end to serve, and some political power at its back, would be in our new circumstances merely waste paper."
He argued that the political reasons for union were no less imperative: the need of ending the fatal deadlock in the Canadas, the responsibility that rested on the colonies for the shouldering of some imperial burdens, and the immeasurable benefits that would accrue to all the colonies in pooling their common resources and working for common ends. With the inspiring vision of the new nationality, he looked forward to the attainment of a mental union, in which public men from all the colonies might rise from the cramping restraints of local politics and parish business to the expanding affairs of a growing nation. None the less he did not presume that colonial union would weaken the imperial tie. On the contrary, it would strengthen it, and through it the British North American nationality would be kept in contact with European civilization.
As in his former address McGee emphasized the argument of defence. "I said in this House, during the session of the year 1861, that the first gun fired at Fort Sumter had a message for us. I was unheeded then; I repeat now that every one of the 2700 guns in the field, and every one of the 4600 guns afloat, whenever it opens its mouth, repeats the solemn warning of England—prepare." Intimate observation of American politics had convinced McGee that aggression from the United States was an imminent danger, and the confederation of the colonies was the best precautionary measure of defence. He was confident that the terms of the constitution fashioned by the Quebec Conference satisfied colonial needs, and was "eminently favourable to liberty, because local affairs are left to be dealt with by local bodies and cannot be interfered with by those who have no local interest in them, while matters of a general character are left exclusively to a general government".
After the stormy battle of a month, the resolutions were carried. The Canadas had accepted the projected confederation. But McGee did not relax his efforts to enlighten public opinion on the issue. In the same year he published a little book,Notes on Federal Governments Past and Present, outlining for colonial readers the experiments in federal government from the Aetolian and Achaian leagues of ancient Greece to the New Zealand confederation. He also published a collection of speeches on British American union, which remain the most substantial evidence of how earnestly and ably he had pleaded his cherished cause. But it was chiefly from the platform that he shaped the public mind. His oratory had now reached an impressive maturity, and the reminiscences of all who heard him at the time agree as to the charm and power of his spoken words.
Sir George Ross related vividly how as a young school teacher in 1865 he was thrilled by McGee's speech at London, Ontario, on the future of British North America. His impressions bring before one the living McGee, as he appeared to Canadian audiences in the period of confederation. "After a ride of fifteen miles on a summer evening, I found myself in front of one of the greatest orators of the day. I had never heard or seen Mr. McGee before that day—or since. I am not sure that I had even read any of his speeches, unless it might have been in the condensed reports of the debates in Parliament. I had no preconception of oratory as a fine art or what were its essential elements.... But whatever it was, I was there to see and learn for myself. My first reflection as McGee rose to speak was that oratory was not necessarily associated with personal attractiveness. Mr. McGee, I observed, was not a handsome man. His face was flat and heavy—a face which no one would turn around to look at a second time. My second reflection was that physical action in oratory was not essential for effect. During the whole course of his two hours' address he stood fixed to one spot on the platform, with his hands clasped behind his back. Only once did he unlock them, and that was when carried away by the enthusiasm of a quotation from Tennyson's 'Brook', he repeated in thrilling tones the words, 'Men may come and men may go, but I go on forever'. This he applied to the British Empire. It was a glorious climax to his argument, felt and remembered to this day. The mellow richness of Mr. McGee's voice, and the rhythm and cadence of the Queen's English as it flowed from his lips, greatly impressed me. I noted also the finish of his sentences, coupled with a poetical glow which awakened emotions and feelings never before touched by the human voice. Of course argument and fact and history were there, all beautifully blended. But it was not by these I was affected so much as by the white heat of the mental crucible from which they issued, and the cadence—never monotonous—of the lofty rhetoric with which they were adorned. It was a noble speech, I thought—the product of an exalted being—a revelation of the power of articulate language and passion and poetry all combined .... I never heard McGee again, but in reading his speeches even now I see him as in a mirage, standing before me, rolling out his beautiful sentences with the same grace and affluence of language and voice as he did in 'the leafy month of June,' A.D. 1865."
While McGee was thus assisting in the creation of the Canadian Dominion, the politics of Ireland once more began to intrude on his attention. Like many Irishmen it was his lot to be dogged in the land of his adoption by the gloomy history of his native country. In the sixties Fenianism emerged as a political force in Ireland and particularly in America, and from the outset McGee looked upon it with fear. Its fatal significance in his life makes it necessary to treat briefly the rise and progress of the movement.
Following the famine of 1845, thousands of indigent Irishmen yearly emigrated to the United States, burdened with bitter memories of the starvation and the miseries that followed it. Between 1846 and 1851, more than one million persons died of hunger or its effects and more than one million quitted the country. In the succeeding years many thousands more were yearly evicted from their slender holdings by bankrupt landlords, anxious to sell their estates to rich graziers. These evicted also sought a subsistence on the other side of the Atlantic. Deep in the heart of each was a love of Ireland, and a hatred no less deep of England, whom the emigrant held responsible for the miseries of his country. In the fifties and sixties this hatred proved the nursing mother of Fenianism. The organizers of the movement were James Stephens, John O'Mahony, John O'Leary, and T. C. Luby. All of these men had been in one way or another implicated in the movement of 1848, although none so prominently as McGee. The two most dynamic characters were Stephens and O'Mahony. None can doubt their genuine love for Ireland. Their ideal of gaining its independence accompanied them when they fled as fugitive rebels to Paris. In 1850, they separated, O'Mahony going to New York and Stephens eventually returning to Ireland, but neither lost his youthful dream of Irish freedom. In the following years it led them into the shadowy paths of conspiracy. In America O'Mahony established the Fenian Brotherhood, named after the Fianna or Fenians who in early centuries were soldiers devoted to the cause of Ireland. He adopted the name as suitable for the men whom he was organizing for the championship of the national cause by secret enterprise and warfare. In Ireland Stephens developed a society on similar lines, but his secret army from the outset was handicapped by lack of funds. The movement on both sides of the Atlantic made little headway until the closing period of the American Civil War. It then loomed into supreme significance. In the southern and northern armies were thousands of Irish. An Irish brigade, fighting for the north, had won the highest laurels on many a contested field. On the conclusion of the war these hardened veterans were eager to turn their bayonets to the cause of freeing Ireland, and they swelled the Fenian ranks. At Boston, in 1865, O'Mahony boldly proclaimed their aim. "Ours is the only policy that can right the wrongs of Ireland. The days of peaceful agitation, of petitioning and parliamentary humbug is past forever in Ireland. The sword alone can win the liberty of that green isle. Away then with all associations that do not propose to win Irish liberty by the stalwart arms of Irishmen."
The Fenian brotherhood had an intricate organization, with local bodies called circles, all under the control of a head centre. During 1865 it spread rapidly through the United States, and penetrated into Canada, having many adherents in Montreal and Toronto, with a zealous leader in Michael Murphy. O'Mahony believed in concentrating on Ireland, but two American leaders, Sweeny and Roberts, preached the need of injuring British power by invading Canada. Their views prevailed among a body of their adherents, and preparations were made to carry their threat into effect. In view of the many thousands of veterans disbanded by the northern government, the situation was grave for Canada, and was rendered doubly so by the strained relations existing between Britain and the United States.
McGee grasped the seriousness of the situation. From the outset he viewed the Fenian movement with hostility. He had not lost his lyric love for Ireland nor had he resigned his hope that Ireland's aspirations for self-government might be satisfied. But he had long turned his back upon the methods of revolution. He was convinced that a revolution in Ireland was impracticable, and that an unsuccessful rising would bring injury rather than benefit, notwithstanding all the argument and passion of Stephens and O'Mahony. Moreover, from the time that he took up residence in Canada, he condemned the introduction of Irish questions into Canadian politics. He believed that one of the weaknesses of his countrymen was their long memory, and their tendency to feed on past misfortunes. In his famous Ottawa address of October, 1857, he declared that, in the new country of his adoption he would not be guided by the hostility towards Britain, which he had inherited from his native country. Irish politics and Canadian interests could not be wholesomely mixed, and it was by the interests of the country in which he lived that he would shape his career. The new nationality of which he made himself the apostle could not be advanced by the importation of prickly disputes from another country. In March, 1861, he gave frank advice to his Irish countrymen in Montreal,—"I hold we have no right to intrude our Irish patriotism on this soil; for our first duty is to the land where we live and have fixed our homes, and where, while we live, we must find the true sphere of our duties. While always ready therefore to say the right word, and to do the right act for the land of my forefathers, I am bound above all to the land where I reside; and especially am I bound to put down, so far as one humble layman can, the insensate spread of a strife which can only tend to prolong our period of provincialism and make the country an undesirable home for those who would otherwise willingly cast in their lot among us. We have acres enough; powers mechanical and powers natural; and sources of credit enough to make out of this province a great nation, and though I wish to commit no one to my opinion, I trust that it will not only be so in itself, but will one day form part of a greater British North American state, existing under the sanction, and in perpetual alliance with the empire, under which it had its rise and growth."
When Fenianism began to spread, he was trenchant in his attack. To him it was a disruptive conspiracy which could bring only disaster in its wake. In January, 1865, he was invited to deliver an address before the St. Patrick's society of Montreal, and with bitterness, bold but not discreet, he described the Fenian brotherhood as "a seditious Irish society, originating at New York, whose founders have chosen to go behind the long Christian record of their ancestors, to find in days of Pagan darkness and blindness an appropriate name for themselves". In reply to the journalistic reports that Fenianism was spreading in Upper Canada, he declared emphatically: "I would say to the Catholics of Upper Canada, in each locality, if there is any, the least proof that this foreign disease has seized on any, the least among you, establish at once for your own sakes—for the country's sake—acordon sanitairearound your people; establish a committee which will purge your ranks of this political leprosy; weed out and cast off these rotten members who, without a single governmental grievance to complain of in Canada, would yet weaken and divide us in these days of danger and anxiety."
With these audacious words he flung down the gage of battle to Fenianism, and the contest continued unabated to his death. From the outset his attitude placed him in peril. In the eyes of the more relentless Fenians, he was an apostate whose death would remove an obstacle to the triumph of their cause among the Canadian Irish. His visit to Ireland in the spring of 1865 added fuel to the hatred in which he was held. He had been sent over as Canadian representative to the international exhibition at Dublin, an honour he deeply appreciated. While visiting his father in Wexford, he delivered an address, far-reaching in its effects. Reviewing his past career in Ireland, he stated that the political aims of Young Ireland had been foolish—a sufficient evidence of apostacy which his warmest Irish friends did not welcome. But his remarks concerning the Irish Americans caused more resentment. He warned his audience that there was no national sympathy in the United States with Ireland and its struggle for autonomy, notwithstanding the rhetoric of Irish American orators. "In the United States there is no more sympathy for Ireland than for Japan, and far less than for Russia. In New England the people, tinctured with puritanism, proud of their property and of their education, hate the Irish emigrant for his creed, despise him for his poverty, and under-rate him for his want of book learning." These were unsavoury statements to those who lauded the institutions and people of republican America in contrast to those of the British colonies, and accompanied as they were with caustic remarks concerning the Irish leaders in the United States, they increased the odium in which McGee was held by his Fenian countrymen.
The telegraph wires hurried his speech abroad, and in every quarter it created a sensation. The complimentary remarks ofThe Times—a very conservative organ in its attitude towards Ireland—were sufficient to condemn his address in the estimation of nationalist Irishmen. "We commend the speech of D'Arcy McGee at Wexford to the attention of all intending emigrants to America—to the attention of all the discontented classes in Ireland—to the attention of all who believe that there is anything to be gained by plots and conspiracies against the British government." The DublinNation, in whose columns McGee as a Young Irelander had written regularly, admitted regretfully a marked falling away from his attitude in 1848. "Irish nationalists of the generation which has entered public life since 1848 will surely be startled by the boldness and severity of Mr. McGee's judgments on men and movements amongst which he himself figured so prominently seventeen years ago.... They reveal a fact long known—and which indeed Mr. McGee has never affected to conceal—that of all the Young Ireland leaders, he has receded farthest in the rebound or reaction which followed upon the collapse of that unhappy year of revolutions."
Amongst many Irish in Montreal McGee's Wexford speech aroused anger and resentment. Six hundred of his constituents issued an emphatic disclaimer. At some public meetings his name was hissed as a Judas. During the Hibernian society picnic at Niagara Falls, three groans were given for the traitor McGee. But he had put his hand to the plough, and he was determined not to turn back on the furrow. During a speech in November he attacked with increased severity the folly of those who supported Fenianism. He sneered upon the mock republic which the Fenians had established in New York, with O'Mahony, an escaped lunatic, as president. With withering scorn he declared: "Many of my friends complain that in my Wexford speech I ought to have diluted my address with some strictures on the Irish grievances, which badly call for redress. I recognize these grievances as well as they do. I will go as far as any man in a constitutional effort to obtain redress. I will resign, if necessary, my place in the ministry, so as to move a resolution in parliament along this line. God knows the Ireland I loved in my youth is near and dear to my heart. She was a fair and radiant vision, full of the holy self-sacrifice of the older time, but this Billingsgate beldame, reeling and dishevelled from the purlieus of New York, with blasphemy on her lips, and all uncleanliness in her breast, this shameless impostor I resist with scorn and detestation." Such provocative words merely widened the breach between McGee and his Fenian countrymen. They may have restrained many Canadian Irish from joining the Fenian conspiracy, but they infuriated the extremists, who did not bury their hate.
In June, 1866, the crisis in the history of Fenianism occurred. The long projected invasion of Canada took place. One thousand American Irish under the command of Col. O'Neill, a man who had fought with distinction under Sherman, crossed the Niagara river. They won a slight skirmish at Ridgeway, but the threatened interference of the American government combined with the difficulty of bringing up reinforcements forced them back across the river. The gathering storm had passed, but it left bitter memories behind. The trials of arrested Fenians kept feeling high, and in this state of ferment the last year of the old régime in Canada passed. The failure of the invasion left Canadians free to complete the work of Confederation.
In November, 1866, the delegation of ministers appointed to represent Canada at the final drafting of the federal constitution sailed for England. McGee was not a member of the party, but some months later, in February, 1867, he also left on what was destined to be his last visit to Europe. He went primarily to represent Canada at the international exposition which Louis Napoleon in a burst of goodwill held in Paris. At this time his mind continued to be distressed by the Fenian movement in Ireland and in America, and his imagination grappled with plans whereby Irish discontent might be allayed. It was characteristic that one of his first acts on reaching England was to address letters on the question to the two leaders of the government, Lord Derby and his brilliant lieutenant, Benjamin Disraeli. He emphasized that the first task of Britain was to re-establish confidence among the Irish people in the good intentions of imperial statesmen. The blundering policy of the past had blasted such confidence. The surest means to its repair was to refer the whole state of Ireland to a royal commission of leading Irishmen in whom the people might have faith. Thus the local confidence felt in the individuals might by a natural effect be transferred to the government which appointed them, and the first step in the reconciliation of the two islands be attained. Future advances might then be made upon the lines laid down by the commission. McGee's suggestion was at the time apparently too bold for imperial statesmen, yet it was substantially carried into effect fifty years later when the famous convention under the chairmanship of Sir Horace Plunkett met in the Dublin rotunda.
Hurrying on from London, McGee reached Rome in March. Professional business called him there. A dispute had arisen in Montreal between St. Patrick's parish church and the Roman Catholic bishop in ordinary, who sought to divide the parish. An appeal was made to the Pope. McGee, with Thomas Ryan, represented the case of St. Patrick's, and obtained a favourable answer to their suit. It is to be expected that with his deep Catholic sympathies and sensitive imagination, McGee would be much impressed by the ancient capital of the Catholic world. "I shall never," he wrote, "be able to get this city out of my memory and imagination." But he was soon in an atmosphere very different from the haunting impressiveness of Rome.
In April he was back in Paris for the opening of the exposition on May 1. The French capital seldom seemed so gay as in the spring of 1867. Although the Second Empire was undermined and was soon to tumble like a house of cards, it had all the glitter of tinsel splendour. Louis Napoleon, in the heyday of his career, presided royally over the exhibition which his government had assembled, and he honoured Canada, the youngest nation, by the appointment of McGee as an examiner for prizes. But amid Parisian magnificence, McGee was not forgetful of those affairs which surrounded the birth of the Canadian Dominion. One political event filled him with uneasiness. The Reformers who followed George Brown began to kick against the traces of the coalition. They had agreed to support the government upon all questions directly affecting confederation, but they announced that just as soon as the constitution became law they would withdraw their support. Brown with his pronounced puritan earnestness and sledge-hammer methods preached that all coalitions were evil, and none more evil than that formed by John A. Macdonald. In the estimation of McGee, there were grave dangers involved in the renewal of party warfare. Federation was by no means out of the woods. The hostile attitude of large numbers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick combined with the recommencement of party strife in the Canadas might well imperil the structure so painfully erected. On April 9, 1867, he penned his fears to Macdonald who was then in London. "There seem some rather embarrassing symptoms of old party warfare getting up again, before confederation has even had a trial. Theoretically, it is true, the work is done, but practically it is only beginning. At such a real crisis personal and party politics might afford to listen awhile."
Of more significance was his political circular dispatched from Paris in May. In the main it was an attack on the revival of the old parties, besmeared as they were with the mud of former conflicts. It contained the plea that "parties may, or rather must, arise under the operations of the new constitution itself; but let them arise out of conflicts of interpretation; out of the sequence of events; out of the merits or demerits of the policy or want of policy of the first federal administration. Do not let us, for our common country's sake—for the dear sake of our existence, not to say establishment, as a distinct free people, in North America—usher in our new condition of things, by raking up old sores and pelting each other with old nicknames". There was danger not merely of party conflict hampering the new institutions, but of Canadian statesmen meeting the venture of the young Dominion with minds insufficiently occupied with constructive plans. McGee briefly outlined his own views on such pressing questions as colonization, railway building, protective legislation, and educational institutions. On all these matters action had soon to be taken, and it was the path of wisdom to think about them early.
On May 25, he was back in Montreal. The civic reception was warm and sincere, but it was not without its shadows. It was clear that McGee no longer had the unanimous homage of his constituents. His truceless war upon Fenianism had left him many enemies amongst the Irish population, and mingled with the voices of welcome were those of criticism. Yet the message with which he greeted his constituents was the same plea of good will, reinforced with his artistry of words, which he had so long generously advanced. "Many of the young men here to-day will live to see the proof of what I am about to state, that all other politics that have been preached in British America will grow old and lose their lustre, but the conciliation of class and class, the policy of linking together all our people in one solid chain, and making up for the comparative paucity of our members, being as we are a small people in this respect, by the moral influence of our unity; the policy of smoothing down the sharp and wounding edges of hostile prejudices; the policy of making all feel an interest in the country, and each man in the character of each section of the community, and of each other—each for all, and all for each—this policy will never grow old, never will lose its lustre. The day never will come when the excellency of its beauty will depart, so long as there is such a geographic denomination as Canada."
An incident soon occurred which showed how ready was McGee to sacrifice his own ambitions for the cause he eloquently pleaded. In June, John A. Macdonald grappled with the task of forming the first ministry of the Dominion which was to be proclaimed on July 1. His difficulties were acute. Cartier, with Gallic petulance, insisted upon having in the cabinet three French-Canadian representatives. The Protestant minority of Lower Canada, with Galt as leader, also demanded representation. McGee, as the most distinguished of the Irish Roman Catholics, and as one of the most influential champions of federation, was unquestionably entitled to office. Thus there would have been five ministers from the province of Quebec. But Howland and McDougall, reformers from the upper province who supported Macdonald, demanded that Ontario, in virtue of its larger population, should have one more member than Quebec. To satisfy all parties would mean that Ontario and Quebec should have between them eleven cabinet seats. With two representatives from each of the maritime provinces the cabinet would in the estimation of Macdonald be unworkably large. So much was he repelled by the prospect that he was on the point of advising the governor-general to send for Brown when Tupper and McGee volunteered to facilitate matters by declining office. One of the two Nova Scotian members might then be a representative of the Roman Catholics, and Tupper proposed Edward Kenny of Halifax as a suitable man. Macdonald accepted this generous offer, which on his own confession enabled him to patch together the first cabinet of the Dominion.
The sacrifice on the part of McGee and Tupper was considerable. They were men in that lusty prime of life when the passion for building a career is strong. Both had worked for confederation with a zeal exceeded by none. For McGee an office in the first cabinet of the Dominion, whose emergence he had long heralded, would have been a deep satisfaction. His mind was charged with plans for the strengthening of the young nation. All the imaginative schemes which the "Canada First" party later championed were in his thoughts, and would have found in him an eloquent exponent. Yet he stepped aside from such prospects of attaining a certain distinction, without the slightest attempt to bargain for place or office, and the self-denial was the keener in that his pecuniary means were slender.
Following soon upon the announcement of the new government on July 1, the election campaign for the first Canadian parliament began. It was McGee's last and most strenuous contest. The issue in his constituency was Fenianism. For the first time, a large body of his constituents chose as an opponent an Irish Roman Catholic, a Mr. Devlin, who canvassed for the radical vote. From the outset the campaign was tumultuous. McGee's first meeting was broken up by the violence of a mob and he himself narrowly escaped injury. But he was not cowed. He had learned that in public life one must be prepared to pass the fierce test of election trials. He was determined to fight the opposition without gloves. In August he published a series of letters reviewing the growth of the Fenian brotherhood in Montreal. With an indiscreet boldness, he named the men who had been leaders in conspiracy and made public their communications with the headquarters in New York. Such an exposure, incriminating many leading Montreal Irishmen, intensified the bitterness of the contest. Among his opponents were relentless men who were determined to make it now a fight to the death. His life came to be in danger, and during the remainder of the campaign he was under police protection. On nomination day, August 20, a mob jostled him from the hustings, and the lives of his friends were threatened. In spite of this he carried the election, although with a much depleted majority. One ominous fact stood out amid the tumults of these weeks. He had lost the unanimous homage of his Catholic countrymen. Formal evidence of this was exhibited some months later when his name was struck from the lists of the St. Patrick's society, of which he had formerly been the president.
In November the parliament of the Dominion assembled. It might seem that Confederation, being carried, was no longer an issue. Such was by no means the case. Nova Scotia had repented her action in joining with the other colonies, and in a mood of sulkiness sent to parliament a solid phalanx of anti-unionists directed by a veteran political strategist, Joseph Howe. It was a singular twist of circumstances and personal motives which pushed Howe to the front as an opponent of federation. Little more than four years before, when on the mention of colonial union the heart of the average politician failed him with fear, Joseph Howe had stood at Halifax on the same platform with McGee and used his eloquent tongue for the advancement of colonial co-operation. As a popularizer of the idea of union, he ranked close to McGee, as in native eloquence he was scarcely inferior. But while the member for Montreal without deviation pleaded in season and out of season the great cause which had captivated his imagination, Howe at the critical time drew back, and blemished a great career by endeavouring to block what he had formerly advocated. Whatever were the reasons influencing him—and they were not all selfish—he was not found reaping in the field where he, McGee, and others had sown. In November he was attacking Confederation in the House, and McGee with stern admonishing eloquence was defending it against his assault.