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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #69431 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69431)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, by Alexander
-Brady
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Thomas D'Arcy McGee
-
-Author: Alexander Brady
-
-Release Date: November 26, 2022 [eBook #69431]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Al Haines
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS D'ARCY MCGEE ***
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-[Frontispiece: THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE]
-
-
-
-  THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE
-
-  BY
-
-  ALEXANDER BRADY
-
-  Lecturer in Political Science,
-  University of Toronto
-
-
-
-  TORONTO
-  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
-  1925
-
-
-
-
-Copyright, Canada, 1925
-
-BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
-
-
-Printed in Canada
-
-
-
-
-PREFATORY NOTE
-
-In seeking information for this modest story of the life of Thomas
-D'Arcy McGee, I received the kind assistance of the staff in the
-Reference Library, Toronto, and also that of Dr. Doughty and his
-staff in the Dominion Archives, Ottawa.  I must particularly
-acknowledge a debt to Mr. J. J. McGee of Ottawa, brother of T. D'Arcy
-McGee.  He kindly allowed me to examine the material which he had
-collected concerning his distinguished brother.  Finally, I am
-indebted to the editor of this series, Mr. W. S. Wallace, for helpful
-suggestions and criticisms.
-
-A. B.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-I YOUTH
-
-II THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE
-
-III THE PROPHET OF CANADIAN NATIONALITY
-
-IV IN OFFICE AND OUT OF IT
-
-V CONFEDERATION AND FENIANISM
-
-VI CLOSING YEARS
-
-VII CONCLUSION
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
-
-
-
-THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-YOUTH
-
-Thomas D'Arcy McGee had a unique place among the Canadian statesmen
-of his time.  His life was replete with dramatic interest.  Most of
-those who stood by the cradle of Confederation, wherever they had
-been born, were fashioned in their development by commonplace
-Canadian conditions and environment.  Such was not the case with
-McGee.  When he came to Canada, a young man of thirty-two, he had
-already gone through the crucible of varied experiences.  In another
-land and under different conditions he had battled for a lost cause.
-He had risen quickly from impoverished boyhood to distinction.  He
-had been a leader in an attempted revolution, a conspirator, a
-fugitive rebel, an exile.  He had felt the thrill that comes to a
-poet, and the less intense satisfaction that comes to the public
-leader.  In the work that brought him fame, journalism, he had a
-career equalled by few in its meteoric character.  He had been the
-editor or assistant editor of five newspapers, and on both sides of
-the Atlantic had borne a large share in intense controversies.  He
-came to Montreal, in 1857, almost in the guise of an adventurer; and
-the portion of his life woven into the story of Canada was no less
-dramatic than that which preceded it.  Within a few months of his
-arrival, he was elected to the colonial legislature; within a few
-years, he was honoured as one of the outstanding statesmen of the
-British colonies.  In that venture of political faith which resulted
-in the establishment of the Dominion, he took a dominant share, and
-was generally acclaimed its most eloquent champion.  His public life
-in Canada was crushed into ten years, but within that period his
-achievements had won him a permanent place in Canadian history.  Yet
-in his career tragedy kept pace with brilliant success.  He had no
-more than seen his cherished cause triumph when his life was cut
-short by the bullet of a Fenian assassin, who mistook him for an
-enemy of Ireland.
-
-Like Abraham Lincoln, also the victim of an assassin, McGee was born
-in a cottage.  But the country and circumstances surrounding the
-birth of the two men were strikingly different.  The hero of the
-American Civil War was reared amid the uncouth surroundings of the
-frontier.  He never became freed from the social rawness of a
-community arising from a wilderness.  McGee was born in the year
-1825, at Carlingford, in the beautiful coast country of County Louth,
-Ireland.  Carlingford is a shrine of natural beauty.  It is washed by
-the blue waters of Carlingford Lough, and in the background are the
-Mourne Mountains with their ever alternating shadows and sunshine.
-In such congenial surroundings, rich in their associations with
-Ireland's heroic past, McGee's childhood was spent.
-
-His father was a coast-guard, whose remote ancestors had been the
-famous Magees of Ulster.  But it was chiefly from his mother, not his
-father, that McGee received his mental inheritance.  She was the
-daughter of a Dublin bookseller, by name Morgan, who had been
-implicated in the rebellion of 1798, and whose business as a
-consequence had been ruined.  She was a woman of imagination, who
-cherished the memory of her father's espousal of the national cause
-and preserved all his national enthusiasms, which she sedulously fed
-to her son, Thomas D'Arcy.  Her nationalism was not limited to the
-mere aspiration that Ireland possess political independence.  She was
-interested in all the old Irish myths, traditions, and poetry, and
-these she related to her little "Tommie".  Thus, from infancy, he
-grew up saturated in Irish literary lore, and an ardent idealist for
-the nationality of his country.
-
-The simple facts respecting McGee's childhood scarcely need
-narrating.  They are facts that might be recounted with respect to
-thousands of Irish boys of the same period.  His father brought his
-family to Wexford when Thomas D'Arcy was eight years old, and McGee
-later in life always associated Wexford with his youth.  In this city
-he obtained the slender advantages of a day school education, and
-came under the influence of a stimulating personality, the famous
-Father Mathew.  This marvellously effective apostle of temperance,
-who swayed the conduct of Irishmen as with a magic wand, was at the
-time carrying on his triumphant campaign in southern Ireland.  His
-appeal touched McGee.  Under Father Mathew's influence a juvenile
-temperance society was established in Wexford.  One evening a slight
-boy with flat face, dark skin and hair, and wonderfully expressive
-eyes, delivered before the society a spell-binding oration, on which
-he received the hearty congratulations of the great priest.  The boy
-was young McGee, and this was his first public speech.  During the
-next two years, 1840-1842, "little Tommy McGee's" speeches drew large
-numbers to the society's meetings.  But Wexford was not long to claim
-the boy orator.  His mother had died, his father had remarried, and
-the family were not in affluent circumstances.  Ireland in the
-forties held out few prospects to the children of the indigent.  The
-economic structure of Irish society was diseased.  Approximately
-seven million were vainly endeavouring to wring a lean subsistence
-from the land, and hundreds of thousands were on the verge of famine.
-Gloom and misery were written broad over the southern counties, lit
-up but not relieved by the sputterings of political agitation.  The
-one hope of the impoverished was the continent in the west, and a
-mighty stream of emigration to that land of promise set in.  McGee
-joined the emigrant throng.
-
-Accompanied by a sister, he arrived in the United States with few
-material possessions beyond the clothes on his back and a prize book
-won at school.  The latter he disposed of during his first day in
-Boston in order that he might be able to sleep under a roof.  His
-destination had been the home of an aunt in Rhode Island, but Boston,
-with its commercial activities and its hum of life, attracted him.
-In June, 1842, he repaired there to seek his fortune.  Boston, like
-every large American city, had many immigrant boys seeking fortunes,
-and the hopes of the Irish lad must have shrunk away as the days of
-unemployment passed and the empty future opened out.  Then, suddenly,
-one of the many incidents which give a dramatic interest to McGee's
-life occurred.  It was the practice of Bostonians, a patriotic people
-mindful of their history, to commemorate the Fourth of July with a
-civic celebration.  At the close of a much applauded public address,
-a strange and very uncouth youth feverishly jumped on an old cart,
-and for half an hour delivered in a voice of thrilling melody an
-oration on the virtues of liberty.  Unknown by a soul in the large
-throng, McGee was cheered for his audacity and success.  Next
-morning, with still little hope of getting employment, he prepared to
-return to his aunt in Rhode Island.  The story is related that he
-called at the office of the _Boston Pilot_ with the purpose of
-procuring something to read on his journey.  He was there recognized
-by the observant proprietor as the silver-tongued youth of the
-previous day.  A conversation was opened which resulted in the offer
-of a position with the paper.  This offer he accepted, and thus he
-became launched on the career of journalism which dragged him, as it
-has dragged many obscure but talented youths, into the glaring light
-of publicity.
-
-He had the powers certain to extract success: a quick and
-assimilative mind, an imagination that could clothe the dullest facts
-in the most appealing colours, and a marvellous facility in
-expressing himself.  Within a few months he revealed that he was
-worth more than a mere clerkship, and became a travelling agent and
-special correspondent.  To retain the support of those subscribers
-who were immigrant Irish, the prominent questions of Irish politics
-were threshed out in the columns of the _Pilot_.  McGee proved
-invaluable in the presentation of Irish issues and in the vigorous
-championship of the chief plank in O'Connell's platform, repeal of
-the union of Great Britain and Ireland.  The powers of his
-journalistic pen extended his fame throughout New England, and within
-two years he became, with Walter J. Walsh, joint editor of the
-_Pilot_.  An editor of the age of twenty is not a common phenomenon.
-Still more uncommon is it when the youth in question is at the same
-time winning a widely-extended reputation as a public speaker.  In
-the forties, on both sides of the Atlantic, there was a passion for
-public lectures.  Such great names as those of Carlyle, Emerson, and
-Dickens were associated with the movement.  McGee's zeal to find
-expression led him to deliver public lectures throughout New England,
-and the magnetic charm of the born orator insured his success.  Few
-public speakers could equal him in holding an audience enthralled.
-
-The true instinct of the journalist--the desire to move public
-opinion--acting on a mind naturally brilliant, won for the young
-immigrant a local reputation in New England, but it also brought him
-into all those dusty controversies and conflicts inseparable from
-journalism.  He found himself in vital battle with the settled
-prejudices of New England.  The large immigration from Ireland had in
-this period begun to disturb old Bostonians, proud of their descent,
-fictitious or real, from the Pilgrim fathers.  The leaven of
-Puritanism made them detest the faith of the immigrants; their belief
-in the wholesome virtues of their racial stock made them resent the
-intrusion of the Celtic Irish; and their material well-being gave
-them a snobbish dislike of ragged and impoverished peasants from the
-bogs of Leinster and the rocky hillsides of Connaught.  A boycott of
-Irish immigrants was launched, and against it McGee contended with
-all his youthful fire.  Thus the first public cause for which he
-expended his energies was the recognition of his race and faith in
-the community life of New England.  In essence his plea was for
-tolerance between class and class and sect and sect.  The arguments
-that he advanced as youthful editor find a surprising echo in those
-which he used twenty years later in the Canadian provinces.  It was
-only through the tolerant recognition of different sects and races
-that a new American community could be constituted.  Prejudices and
-jealousies must be erased from social life, and the spirit of
-goodwill developed.  It was a simple and ancient message, but one
-that McGee both in the United States and in Canada never failed to
-plead.
-
-The defence of his countrymen led him in 1845 to publish his first
-book, _Historical Sketches of O'Connell and His Friends_.  It is
-written with the nervous eloquence and facility of all his later
-works.  The most significant fact about it was the hero-worship which
-he lavished upon the great Irish liberator.  "In him," he
-enthusiastically wrote, "liberty will boast a model for all her
-future reformers."  In his later Canadian career McGee showed himself
-a consistent disciple of his hero of 1845.  He was a follower of
-O'Connell in his implicit faith in attaining political visions by
-moving first the popular mind through oratory and the press.
-O'Connell is generally remembered as an agitator, but he was
-something more than the word ordinarily connotes.  He was a political
-educator, and a political educator of O'Connell's type McGee always
-aspired to be.
-
-In the year which witnessed the publication of his eulogy of
-O'Connell, McGee's fame spread beyond Boston and its New England
-environs.  Indeed, his articles on Repeal were read with keen and
-satisfied interest in the club rooms of Dublin.  O'Connell himself
-paid him a compliment by publicly referring to his editorials as "the
-inspired writings of a young exiled Irish boy in America."  John
-Gray, proprietor of the _Freeman's Journal_, which was O'Connell's
-pillar of support, considered McGee's journalistic talent worthy of
-enlistment in the service of his paper.  He offered him a liberally
-paid position.  The result was that McGee returned to Dublin.  Only
-three years had elapsed since his departure, but they were years
-which had witnessed his rise from the position of a poor immigrant
-boy, not unlike thousands who yearly crossed in the steerage to be
-lost in the human eddies of American cities, to that of a newspaper
-editor with a reputation in America and a certain distinction in
-Ireland.  The rapid pace of his rise measures in some degree his
-quantity of inborn talent and his determination to hew success from
-the most untoward circumstances.
-
-His position with the _Freeman_ brought him to London as a political
-correspondent.  He had thus the advantage of viewing from the close
-range of the press gallery the working of parliamentary institutions,
-and we may assume that it enabled him to store away political and
-constitutional precedents for future use.  But his political articles
-did not please the proprietor of the _Freeman_.  The cause is to be
-found in the fact that they showed the influence of a group of young
-men with whom McGee on his return came to be associated, and who
-profoundly influenced his whole development.  This group was the
-party of Young Ireland.  At this period, Thomas Davis, a blending of
-poet and man of affairs, was the guiding mind of the group, and the
-Dublin _Nation_ was its organ of opinion.  The leaders were all men
-of talent; a few were men of genius.  Next to Davis as an active and
-persuasive writer was Charles Gavan Duffy, destined later to win
-political laurels in Australia, and to leave no mean name in the
-records of imperial statesmanship.  John Blake Dillon, father of a
-subsequent Irish nationalist leader, was another forceful member of
-the group.  Thomas Francis Meagher, in whose character were entwined
-the chivalry of the soldier, the clear judgment of the statesman, and
-the emotional intensity of the poet, was a third.  Other names might
-be mentioned.  There was John Mitchel, a man of uncompromising mind
-and a writer of powerful prose; Devin Reilly, a brilliant but
-rancorous youth, who in the next year was to consider McGee as his
-rival; and James Mangan, a poet of wasted genius.
-
-All of these men were young.  Few of them were over thirty.  With
-that hopefulness which is the gift of youth, they were driven by the
-ideal of recreating Ireland by awakening her national consciousness.
-Their task was similar to that of their great contemporary, Mazzini,
-in Italy.  They sought to arouse the Irish people to act for the
-national good, to sink all sectarian animosities and class prejudices
-which tended to dissipate the nation's energy on trifling ends.
-Their outlook was not limited to material welfare or bare political
-liberty.  They endeavoured to revivify the cultural life of Ireland,
-to give a more vital direction to its art, and to develop a more
-intense literature.  Their cherished motto was "Educate that you may
-be free."
-
-Soon after his return from America, McGee met the members of this
-group, and readily subscribed to their doctrines and shared their
-enthusiasms.  Their ideas were new food for his mind, and he never
-wholly shed the influence of their fervid idealism.  When he later
-pleaded the cause of Canadian nationality, he did so in the spirit
-and through the inspiration of the Young Ireland creed.  We have from
-the pen of Gavan Duffy an interesting impression of McGee, when he
-became a disciple of Young Ireland: "The young man was not
-prepossessing.  He had a face of almost African type, his dress was
-slovenly even for the careless class to which he belonged, he looked
-unformed and had a manner which struck me at first sight as too
-deferential for self-respect.  But he had not spoken three sentences
-in a singularly sweet and flexible voice till it was plain that he
-was a man in whom one might dimly discover rudiments of the orator,
-poet and statesman hidden under the ungainly disguise."  Needless to
-say, Duffy gladly welcomed such a promising recruit in his loosely
-formed association.
-
-McGee's new alliance damaged his connection with the _Freeman_.  His
-articles tended to be too speculative and not sufficiently of the
-sober-suited type desired by the commercial classes who supported
-O'Connell and the _Freeman_.  Moreover, he came to spend more time in
-the British Museum digging up the materials for Irish history than in
-the press gallery following the ingenuities of Peel's politics.  His
-best literary efforts, which absorbed most of his time, were his
-articles for the _Nation_, and the tone of these was not acceptable
-to O'Connell.  Finally, Gray, becoming dissatisfied, brought his
-engagement to a close.  Duffy, who valued McGee's talent highly,
-immediately employed him as London correspondent for the _Nation_,
-and until his flight from Ireland in 1848 he remained an expounder,
-through the press, of Young Ireland's varying hopes and policies.
-Sectarian prejudices and colourless enthusiasm for the national cause
-all encountered his virulent denunciation, and he sought in
-accordance with the _Nation's_ prospectus "to direct the popular mind
-and the sympathies of educated men of all parties to the great end of
-nationality."
-
-Meanwhile events in Ireland were hurrying to a dismal crisis.  At the
-end of 1845 the famine had begun to creep gloomily over the land, and
-within the next nine months it had the country in its relentless
-grip.  Despair prevailed everywhere, except in Dublin, where the
-calamity merely drove the political parties to more feverish
-controversies.  The Young Irelanders were breaking with O'Connell and
-his repeal agitation.  On the founding of the _Nation_ in 1842, Davis
-and his associates had strongly supported the O'Connellite movement,
-but as time passed the difficulties of co-operation between the
-younger men and the old agitator became manifest.  For a generation
-O'Connell had been the uncrowned king of Ireland.  He had swayed her
-masses with his fertile brain and facile tongue.  His triumph in the
-movement of Catholic emancipation, when he had conquered Wellington
-and convinced Peel, had given him a confidence which was now proving
-fatal.  In the forties of the century he was reaching the sere and
-yellow leaf of his career, but his ambition to maintain an
-unquestioned control of Irish affairs remained as keen as ever, and
-prompted him to look with critical suspicion upon the Young Ireland
-group.  It is the lot of old men seldom to understand the generation
-that hurriedly presses behind them with its new hopes and fresh
-methods.  They view its visions with frank uneasiness, and in the
-rheumy conservatism of age condemn its vibrant actions as erratic and
-destructive.  It was so with O'Connell.  He mocked the Young Ireland
-talk of recreating the nation, he scorned its literary aspirations,
-he suspected its condemnation of sectarianism, and he distrusted its
-methods.  In 1846, the Young Irelanders under the stress of the
-famine had begun to talk of following the precedent of Pym and
-Hampden and winning political liberty for Ireland by the sword; they
-who had been content merely to champion the Irish cultural
-renaissance, now proclaimed that Ireland could not be saved alone by
-poetry.  She must have action.  But O'Connell, who had been taught
-prudence by long and exacting experiences, condemned this rash talk.
-The younger generation in Ireland took his prudence as timidity, and
-spurned his words of caution.
-
-The elements of disruption long existing between O'Connell and the
-Young Irelanders ripened in July, 1846, when the younger men seceded
-from the Repeal Association.  But the critical nature of affairs
-consequent upon the famine once more herded together the national
-leaders, and in February, 1847, a Repeal Confederation was formed
-with objects somewhat similar to those of the former association.
-The formation of this Confederation marked McGee's first
-participation in active politics.  He had hurried back from the calm
-atmosphere of London to the hectic politics of Dublin, and was made a
-councillor of the Confederation.  It is unnecessary to follow his
-manœuvres amongst the Dublin politicians.  We catch a glimpse of
-him in the comments of a country gentleman who had dropped in to hear
-the debates in the Confederation.  He was at the outset very much
-displeased at seeing a mere boy, ill-dressed and singularly ugly,
-rise to address an assembly which had as its object the saving of
-Ireland.  But his displeasure vanished, and he was seized with
-amazement when he found the boy with smiling confidence deliver a
-statesmanlike oration that captivated his audience.  McGee had,
-moreover, other acquirements in addition to oratory, for the council
-sufficiently prized his executive ability to make him its secretary.
-
-The fates quickly precipitated events in Ireland.  In the spring of
-1847 O'Connell died, and his death plunged the nationalist movement
-into a morass.  "The king of the forest is dead," wrote a
-contemporary, "and there is neither lion nor lion's cub to fill his
-vacant place."  John O'Connell, the Liberator's son, aspired to the
-leadership formerly held by his father, but he was not a lion.  He
-was wholly unable to act with McGee and the Young Irelanders, and all
-possibility of united action on Irish affairs vanished.  Following
-the French Revolution of February, 1848, which transferred
-revolutionary enthusiasm to Ireland as to every other country in
-Europe, John Mitchel, with the recklessness and Ishmaelite
-characteristics of a born revolutionist, preached an armed uprising.
-Others, including McGee, suddenly echoed his sentiments, and
-revolutionary clubs sprang into being.  These constituted in June a
-special executive to which they were to yield obedience.
-
-McGee became a member of the executive committee of five and went to
-his task of creating a revolution with flushed enthusiasm.  A venture
-promising a quick fame and success to the public cause presented
-itself.  A delegate arrived from the Irish Confederates at Glasgow
-stating that they had a considerable supply of arms and ammunition,
-and if a known and daring leader were sent them, four or five hundred
-men would volunteer for an expedition to Ireland.  They might seize a
-steamer on the Clyde, and sail for Sligo or Killala.  Thus, by a
-diversion in the west, they could strike British power a blow from
-the rear.  There was too much of a dramatic appeal in this adventure
-for McGee to refuse when it was suggested that he be the leader.
-Visions of emulating Paul Jones danced before his mind, and away he
-sped the same evening for Scotland, while his associates matured
-their plans in Ireland.
-
-With rapid dispatch McGee consulted the Irish revolutionists in
-Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Greenock, and enrolled four hundred
-volunteers.  The crew of a steamer sailing from Greenock was won
-over, and it was arranged that the arms should be placed on board as
-merchandise.  While he was developing his plans, McGee was recognized
-by the police; and, his arrest being under consideration, the
-revolutionary committee insisted that he leave immediately and
-proceed to Sligo, where he could extemporize arrangements for the
-landing of the expedition.  He reached Sligo early in August, and
-there awaited developments, scanning the rocky and picturesque shores
-of Lough Gill in the character of a Dublin student on holiday.
-
-The news that finally reached him shattered his hopes.  He learned
-how Smith O'Brien had led his insurgents to the so-called battle of
-Ballingarry, which ended, pantomime-like, in Widow McCormack's
-cabbage patch.  O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and other leaders, he
-heard, were in the hands of the government, and the revolutionary
-organization had collapsed like a punctured balloon.  The peasantry,
-on whom the success of the movement finally depended, were more eager
-to escape in emigrant ships from an impoverished country than to
-fight for a revolutionary government.
-
-To America McGee's eyes were immediately turned.  He made his way to
-Derry, where the bishop and his clergy sheltered him.  Thence in the
-dress of a priest, with his breviary in his hand and with a sad
-heart, he boarded a brig at the mouth of the Foyle, and sailed for
-the United States.  He became one of the many disillusioned who in
-this year of unfulfilled revolutions streamed across the Atlantic.
-His departure from Ireland was not, however, as he might have
-thought, the close, but the more vital opening, of his career.  In
-America he began at the age of twenty-three a new life in which he
-was destined to plead for causes that were to prove more successful
-than that of Irish independence in 1848.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE
-
-In early October, 1848, McGee arrived in Philadelphia, and before the
-close of the month he was in the exciting swirl of American
-journalism.  He established the _New York Nation_, patterned much
-after the Dublin _Nation_.  It was frankly an Irish-American organ
-which gave special attention to the politics of Ireland, and to the
-means whereby Irishmen in the new world might advance the interests
-of their native country.  It was written with that intense bitterness
-towards Britain characteristic of the journals of most exiled
-Irishmen.  It is interesting to find the man who in 1868 was
-described by Lord Mayo as "the most eloquent advocate of British rule
-on the face of the world" vowing in 1848 to dedicate all his days to
-the ruin of British power.  But McGee's opinions were to travel a
-changeful journey between these two dates.
-
-His prospects in New York were promising.  Although young, he had
-already a wide reputation as an Irish leader, and a large population
-in New York and the neighbouring states was prepared to support his
-paper.  But youthful rashness damaged his prospective success.  Soon
-after his arrival in America, he wrote some public letters
-attributing the failure of the Irish revolutionary movement to the
-influence of the clergy.  He argued that they were primarily
-responsible for the fact that the peasantry had not risen at the
-critical moment.  Such a reflection upon the patriotism of the Irish
-clergy brought into the field against McGee an experienced and
-formidable controversialist in Bishop Hughes of New York.  The bishop
-had proved his steel in many a public duel, and his ardent Irish
-patriotism had given him a vast prestige over his flock.  Having
-closely followed affairs in Ireland, he was well prepared to meet
-McGee's challenge.  He argued that blame for the failure of the
-insurrection must not be placed upon the clergy, but upon the leaders
-of Young Ireland, prominent among whom was McGee himself.  They had
-precipitated a rebellion for which they had made no serviceable
-preparation, and thus exposed the peasantry to destruction by British
-soldiery.  The priests, by restraining their flocks from rebellion,
-had alone saved them from disaster.  Bishop Hughes was not content
-with such argument.  He denounced McGee as being faithless to his
-church and creed, which elicited from the latter the reply that "My
-crime is not that I do not believe in the creed of my fathers and my
-affections, but that I have failed to pay my court to some great
-unknown who sits chafing on his chair, impatient of his daily dose of
-honied praises."
-
-The futile controversy that ensued proved fatal to the fortunes of
-McGee's paper.  His joust with the most powerful Catholic
-ecclesiastic in America alienated the sympathies of those who might
-otherwise have given him support.  He had jockeyed himself into the
-false position of being anti-clerical, a position which in the
-nineteenth century seldom won the support of Irish Catholics.  The
-situation was all the more unfortunate in that he held many views in
-common with Bishop Hughes, and was later to become his warm friend.
-In the midst of the controversy, he received from Gavan Duffy an
-invitation to assist once more in the editing of the Dublin _Nation_.
-Duffy wrote with the enticing remark that "as a writer and a speaker
-there is not any Irishman living whose help I would as soon have as
-yours."  All the weight of pleasant associations tugged at him to
-return.  In his youthful verse a dominant note was a longing for his
-native land:
-
-  Where'er I turned, some emblem still
-  Roused consciousness upon my track;
-  Some hill was like an Irish hill,
-  Some wild-bird's whistle call'd me back.
-
-But the vision of leading the Irish in America had captivated his
-imagination, and he refused Duffy's offer.  None the less he
-determined to shift the scene of his work.  He sold out the _Nation_,
-went to Boston, and in August, 1850, established his second paper,
-the _American Celt_.
-
-During the next seven years, his career was that of an itinerant and
-rather restless journalist.  In 1851 he was publishing the _Celt_,
-and championing the interests of the Irish in Buffalo.  The following
-year, he was in New York, feverishly dashing off editorials to guide
-his Catholic countrymen through the stormy passages of mid-century
-American politics.  There are few recess periods in the career of
-political journalism.  It is an incessant battle demanding continuous
-vigilance and tireless effort.  McGee, in New York, fully experienced
-its exacting claims, and satisfied them sufficiently to make his
-paper the most powerful Irish-American organ of the period.
-
-The fifties were a stirring decade in the history of the American
-republic.  They were marked by an intense feverishness in politics as
-the question of slavery loomed higher on the horizon.  The giant
-strides of material development, the pushing back of the frontier by
-the advancing lines of railway, the expansion of commerce, the
-marvellous growth of population, all added a buoyancy to American
-life which tended to draw newcomers into its tide.  Carl Schurz, the
-young German revolutionist of 1848, was only a few years in the
-country when he became a party leader, swinging the votes of the
-western Germans in support of the Republican platform.  Similarly
-many of McGee's fellow Young Irelanders became champions of American
-parties.  John Mitchel's brilliant, but bitter pen was enlisted in
-the service of the Democrats.  McGee, however, kept free from the
-meshes of party affiliations.  Throughout his career of journalism in
-New York, he continued to consider himself as a new immigrant
-fighting the battles of the new immigrants.  He set himself to be the
-sentinel and champion of his people, to safeguard their interests,
-and to direct their development amid the plastic conditions of
-American society.  It was no easy task.  In the twelve odd years
-following the famine, emigration from Ireland to the United States
-continued in a steady stream.  Between 1846 and 1851, a quarter of a
-million left Ireland each year; between 1851 and 1861, over 100,000
-left annually.  Most of these found their destination in the American
-cities of the Atlantic seaboard.  McGee saw their need of leadership.
-They were chiefly peasants and small farmers, pushed from their land
-in Ireland by famine and eviction.  Concerning the relentless
-struggle of city life they knew nothing.  Of the political issues of
-American cities they had no knowledge, and their ignorance exposed
-them to the ready wiles of ward bosses in search of votes.  Promises
-were readily made to them and as readily unfulfilled.  But, above
-all, their political position and interests were endangered in the
-fifties by the rise of the famous Know-Nothing party, with which
-McGee was in warfare during the greater portion of his residence in
-New York.
-
-Know-Nothingism was a development of the native American movement of
-the forties.  The support tendered by the Irish immigrants to the
-Democrats had assisted in the disorganization and severe defeat of
-the Republican party.  Hence many disappointed Republican leaders
-determined to form an organization which should withhold political
-rights from European newcomers.  At first they organized a secret
-fraternity called the "Know-Nothings" from "I don't know," the
-ever-repeated reply of its members to inquiry about its nature.  The
-original name bestowed upon the fraternity by its founders was "The
-Sons of '76", or the "Order of the Star-Spangled Banner"; and its
-slogan was "America for the Americans."  Its favourite counter-sign
-was the traditional order of Washington, "Put none but Americans on
-guard to-night."  The national sentiment behind the society was
-reinforced by Protestant sectarian zeal, since its organizers were
-concerned not merely with depriving immigrants of power, but with
-excluding all Catholics from office.
-
-Thanks to the allure of its novelty, this party developed with
-phenomenal rapidity.  In 1854 its candidates swept the elections in
-Massachusetts, and Gardiner, its nominee, became governor of the
-state.  Its members sought to control nomination for office by secret
-conventions of delegates.  They bound themselves to cast no votes for
-any except Protestant-born citizens, and endeavoured to alter the
-naturalization laws so that foreigners might not be allowed to vote
-until they had resided twenty-one years in the country.  The
-Know-Nothing party could never have had more than temporary success.
-As Horace Greeley, the noted editor of the New York _Tribune_,
-remarked, it "would seem as devoid of the elements of persistence as
-an anti-cholera or an anti-potato-rot party would be."  But McGee,
-like other leaders of the swelling Irish population, was alarmed at
-its growing strength.  It threatened to proscribe the men of his
-faith, and to exclude from the exercise of political rights
-immigrants like himself who sought a new home in the republic.  In
-the columns of the _Celt_, he attacked its aims, assailed its
-champions, and marshalled Irish-American opinion against it.  There
-is little doubt that this conflict, in which McGee was engaged during
-the last five years of his residence in New York, did much to
-disillusion him in respect to American life and institutions.
-
-A few years before he had written the lines:
-
-  Hail to the land whose broad domain
-  Rejoices under Freedom's reign
-  Where neither right nor race is banned.
-
-But he no longer viewed the republic as a Utopia.  He now discovered
-that the so-called land of freedom was a land of intolerance, and his
-migration to Canada was largely due to the action of the Know-Nothing
-faction.  As he later remarked, "I did not want to be a citizen on
-sufferance, as it were, courted one day and proscribed the next."
-
-But McGee served the immigrants in other ways than by fighting the
-Know-Nothing platform.  He encouraged them to seek their own
-self-development.  He preached the homely precepts of industry, and
-urged them to study the laws and customs of their new country in
-order to be able to view intelligently its problems.  The most
-helpful assistance that could be rendered to the indigent newcomers
-was to provide them with the facilities for education.  During his
-early residence in Boston, McGee had realized this, and it was due
-largely to his labours that night schools for adults were engrafted
-on the educational system.  The same work he now earnestly promoted
-in New York, with benefit to immigrants of every race.  But his most
-emphatic plea was that his countrymen should move from the crowded
-tenements and congested industries of the eastern cities to the
-homestead lands of the West.  "We must," he wrote in the _Celt_,
-"urge them on and on.  We must shame them out of cellars and sewers,
-and endeavour by every art to awaken in their hearts the passion for
-competency, so natural and laudable in a new and unsettled country."
-For a time he had the dream of establishing an Irish state in the
-western territories--an inland Erin--which should draw thither the
-Irish immigrants.  For this purpose, in 1856, he took a leading part
-in calling a conference of leading Irish Americans at Buffalo.
-Although the dream of an Irish state in the west was not realized,
-McGee's advocacy of western settlement was not futile.  Many
-flourishing homesteads in Illinois and Wisconsin bore witness to the
-zeal with which he advocated western colonization.
-
-By 1852 a considerable change had taken place in McGee's thought.
-When he had reached Philadelphia in the autumn of 1848, he was a
-revolutionist with all that lack of compromise which accompanies
-youth.  He shared the idealism of the ardent patriots who had been
-prepared to take any and every means for the quick attainment of
-Irish freedom.  As one Young Irelander had said: "If the altar stood
-in the way of national liberty, then down with the altar."  The path
-to Ireland's freedom should, if necessary, cut through every
-institution and be impeded by no consideration.  But four years of
-controversial journalism in America shook McGee's former
-revolutionary faith.  In a letter to a friend, published in the
-_Celt_, he confessed that in the past he had been on the wrong track.
-He found that he had neglected some of the primary principles which
-govern the world.  In the future he was determined to put all
-political action to the test of a simple creed, the chief tenet of
-which was a belief in Christendom and the Catholic church.  The
-revolutionary liberalism which sought in the name of liberty to tear
-down the church and other institutions was reprehensible, and to be
-resisted.  It is not to be assumed that by this profession of faith
-McGee suddenly, in 1852, saw, like Paul on the Damascus road, a new
-light.  The fact is that in Ireland he had been a revolutionist
-largely by the accident of events.  By temperament he had none of
-those Ishmaelite characteristics which go to make the revolutionary.
-"My native disposition," he declared in the Canadian parliament some
-years later, "is towards reverence for things old, and veneration for
-the landmarks of the past."  Away from Ireland's hectic politics his
-temperament reasserted itself.  His reverence for things old fed his
-loyalty to his church, and led him henceforth to discountenance all
-movements for the freeing of Ireland which did not receive its
-conservative sanction.  As subsequent events show, he remained the
-champion of reform for his native land, as for the country of his
-adoption, but he was ever emphatic in his denunciation of the violent
-methods of conspiracy and revolution.  His change of front brought
-him into friction with many Irish Americans like John Mitchel and the
-founders of Fenianism, and this fact, linked with the existence of
-Know-Nothingism, largely explained his departure to Canada in 1857.
-
-McGee at various times had made visits to the British colonies.  He
-had delivered public lectures in Montreal.  He had summered on Lake
-Huron, had written letters to his paper from the upper Ottawa, and
-had passed through the rich meadows and orchards of the Annapolis
-valley in Nova Scotia.  At all times he was struck with the orderly
-and secure society of the British provinces, while his imagination
-had been kindled by the magnificent future which stretched before
-them.  He early visualized them as the germ cells of a new nation.
-He was, therefore, prepared in 1857 to accept readily the invitation
-of some Canadian Irishmen to become their leader in Lower Canada.  A
-delegation consisting of such prominent Irish Canadians of the period
-as Frank Smith, Patrick Brennan, and James Donnelly went to New York,
-interviewed McGee, and obtained his acceptance of their invitation.
-In the spring of 1857 he moved to Montreal, and there began his
-Canadian career.
-
-To McGee British North America seemed on the threshold of a new and
-promising era.  The steam-boat was drawing the provinces closer to
-Britain.  The telegraph and Atlantic cable were making possible more
-intimate co-operation between the various provinces themselves, and
-between them and the mother country.  The building of railways
-promised in the near future to bridge the dreary distances of forest
-and rock which severed the various colonies from one another and kept
-them as far apart as Europe is from America.  In addition to these
-facts was another laden with rich hope, the prospective annexation to
-the Canadas of the vast hinterland then under the dominion of the
-Hudson's Bay Company.  What are now the rolling wheat fields of
-Manitoba and Saskatchewan were in 1857 merely the hunting grounds of
-trappers, employed by one of the mightiest of British mercantile
-corporations.  Yet there were some men who had caught a glimpse of
-the potential value of those extensive lands beyond Lake Superior.
-They described them as the natural field of expansion for the eastern
-colonies and advocated their annexation.  Under the inspiration of
-these pregnant facts, McGee in May, 1857, established in Montreal a
-tri-weekly paper, called the _New Era_ as indicative of the time of
-its birth.
-
-The paper had too brief a career to exercise much influence on public
-life.  Moreover, in 1857, McGee, as a newcomer, was of necessity
-feeling his way amid the shoals and narrows of Canadian politics, and
-was unable to discuss local issues with intimacy.  None the less, the
-_New Era_ has an outstanding significance in Canadian history.  It
-was the first newspaper in the British colonies dedicated to the
-cause of colonial union and the establishment of a British American
-nationality under the rule of a royal prince.  It advanced the chief
-arguments for union employed eight years later at the conferences of
-Charlottetown and Quebec.  It pleaded an aspiration not finally
-realized for another ten years.  To McGee nothing seemed more
-apparent than that the Canadas and the colonies by the sea should
-form the nucleus of a nation.  The essential means was the
-development of a common will strong enough to overcome the obstacles
-in the way of closer co-operation.
-
-The vision of a united British America was not new.  It was as old as
-the existence of the colonies.  It grew naturally out of the presence
-of a number of scattered communities whose common interests could
-best be served by a common government.  Previous to the American
-Revolution the great Franklin had advocated such a union for the
-thirteen colonies.  After the Revolution it found many champions in
-the territories which remained under the British crown.  In 1790,
-while the Constitutional Act for the Canadian provinces was being
-fashioned, Chief Justice Smith suggested a plan for the comprehensive
-government of all the colonies.  In the succeeding years, many others
-made similar suggestions--Uniacke in Nova Scotia, Sewell in Quebec,
-William Lyon Mackenzie, the fiery Canadian agitator, and John
-Beverley Robinson, an Upper Canadian who had pondered long and
-carefully on colonial issues.  Even the distinguished name of Lord
-Durham was associated with the idea.  He recommended it as the one
-means of developing for the colonies a British American nationality,
-which should rival the robust and aggressive nationality across the
-southern frontier.
-
-After 1850, the conception was dragged into the daylight of practical
-politics.  A number of prominent Canadians saw in it the one solvent
-of the constitutional difficulties arising from the Union Act of
-1841.  In April, 1856, A. A. Dorion, leader of the Lower Canadian
-Liberals, pleaded in parliament for the federal union of the two
-Canadas.  Thus, the idea had already entered the stage of practical
-discussion when McGee established his _New Era_.  But with the
-politicians it was entertained largely as a gateway of escape from
-the political embarrassments of the existing system, and was made
-subsidiary to party considerations.  McGee in his paper fired it with
-a wider emotional appeal.  With him it was not the product of close
-grappling with the political difficulties of the Union Act, but a
-poet's vision.  It was a dream in the fulfilment of which lay a
-mighty future for all the peoples of British North America.  With a
-newcomer's freshness of observation, he saw in the colonies
-possibilities of development which had lain largely unnoticed by the
-public men of the colonies.  He thought as much of the social and
-spiritual consequences of union as of the political.  It would not
-merely provide the British provinces with the strength of a common
-government, but would knit the scattered colonists into a united,
-self-reliant people, with a common will and common hopes, the true
-evidence of nationality.  Union would carve the way for the emergence
-of a great new northern nation.  It would provide the people with
-vision, and destroy the cramping parochialism of their existing
-political life.
-
-In British American union, McGee at last discovered a cause that
-vividly appealed to his imagination.  He found it on taking up
-residence in Montreal, and it shaped his career in the succeeding ten
-years.  It replaced in his sentiments his former fervour for Irish
-liberty.  In its advocacy he never grew weary, and the decade
-previous to Confederation found no more fervid apostle of British
-American union and nationality than McGee.  He pleaded it, not merely
-through the press, but on the public platform.  Being in demand as a
-lecturer, he used every occasion to unfold his favourite subject.  In
-one of his most famous addresses, delivered at Ottawa on October 9,
-1857, he arrayed the various arguments for union.  "If we extend our
-vision so as to embrace all British North America, we survey a region
-larger than all Europe.  If we have no coal, Nova Scotia has
-abundance.  If Newfoundland has an indifferent soil, this Ottawa
-valley can grow wheat enough to supply all that is required.
-Throughout this wider view we find at least four millions already in
-the field--one quarter more than laid the neighbouring republic.
-Nature pronounces for the union of the provinces.  Canada needs a
-sea-coast."
-
-In addition to the arguments drawn from geography and economic needs
-were others no less cogent.  Union was imperative for defence.
-Political weakness was always a tempting bait to a neighbouring
-power.  The great resources of the British colonies combined with
-their lack of unity might well induce the American republic to
-attempt conquest.  Especially was the St. Lawrence waterway tempting
-to the United States, since in the course of time it must become the
-shipping route for the wheat harvests of the West.  The power in
-possession of it would control the chief roadway to the grain fields.
-In addition the colonies had other resources for which union alone
-could give adequate protection, rich fisheries, extensive forests,
-fertile lands.  "Facts are logical, and unless we dream that the laws
-of cause and effect will be suspended in our favour, we must look
-either to the internal union or the political extinction of these
-provinces at no distant day."  Not merely would the wealthy natural
-resources of British North America be preserved, but they would best
-be developed by the consolidation of the colonies into one state.
-With such a system McGee looked forward to Canada possessing, by the
-close of the century, 25,000,000 people.  Moreover, he anticipated
-the appearance of all the other more brilliant, if less tangible,
-accomplishments of national life, which had difficulty in arising
-under the existing political disunion, a native literature, with
-developments in art, science, and philosophy.
-
-McGee went further than marshalling arguments for union.  He
-described in general terms the nature of the constitution suitable
-for the colonies.  He considered it neither desirable nor possible
-that the various provinces with their diverse geographical characters
-and economic interests should be fused into one political unit.  "Our
-river system indicates our union, railroads and canals will
-strengthen these natural bonds, but complete oneness of political
-life must still be wanting to sea-beaten Newfoundland and the
-wheat-bearing West."  The same geographical facts which pressed the
-need of union made the recognition of local autonomy imperative.  The
-new constitution must be federal, allowing a large measure of local
-autonomy, while constituting a central government to deal with common
-interests.  Many of the leading Fathers of Confederation, most
-prominent among whom was Sir John A. Macdonald, began with the
-suggestion of a legislative union, and only with reluctance in the
-heat of constitution-building recognized the need of federal
-institutions.  But with keen insight McGee saw from the outset that
-only federation could be the goal of British Americans.  Provincial
-governments with the recognition of certain provincial rights would
-be a guarantee of liberty in the new state.
-
-In December, 1857, an additional field was opened in which McGee
-might extend the advocacy of his new found cause.  A body of citizens
-in Montreal nominated him for parliament, and in the ensuing contest
-he was elected as one of the three representatives of the city.  Thus
-began the most constructive venture of his career.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE PROPHET OF CANADIAN NATIONALITY
-
-McGee entered Canadian politics at a crucial period.  Most of the old
-issues over which political battles had been fought were
-disappearing.  Responsible Government in principle at least was
-recognized by all parties.  The Clergy Reserves, which had frequently
-ruffled the peace of provincial politics, had in 1854 been settled
-with reasonable satisfaction to those concerned.  In the same year
-the thorny question of seigniorial tenure in Lower Canada had
-received its quietus.  A chapter of hoary Canadian controversies was
-closed, and a chapter with the newer problems of the United Canadas
-opened.  One of the most prominent aspects of the new era was the
-appearance of railways.  Quaint locomotives, mere playtoys in
-comparison with the huge masses of steel which now rumble over the
-Canadian lines, began to glide by the snake fences of the farmer, and
-introduced a new touch to the Canadian landscape and a new issue to
-Canadian politics.  The incorporation of railways as the promised
-means of developing the Canadas became the absorbing subject with
-provincial statesmen, and the parliamentary debates became bulky with
-all the dry details of railway management.  But the most ominous
-problem of the time was that of attempting to work the scheme of
-union established by the Act of 1841.  In the years immediately
-following 1858 the union underwent its severest tests, and began to
-fail as an effective means of government.  Amid the accumulating
-difficulties of politicians, the Confederation movement had its rise.
-In this movement McGee from the outset played a vital role.
-
-The first important question confronting McGee in 1857 was the choice
-of a party.  Canadian parties in the period were notoriously
-unsteady.  Prominent men readily shed old alliances for new ones, and
-this readiness for change gave a makeshift appearance to party
-affiliations.  The legislature was like a ballroom in its quick
-shifting of political partners.  There were four distinct groups.  In
-Lower Canada the Reformers were known as the _Parti Rouge_, and were
-led by A. A. Dorion, a very able but doctrinaire Liberal.  Following
-the elections of December, 1857, this group was a small minority,
-thanks largely to the nimble-mindedness and dynamic energy of George
-E. Cartier, leader of the _Bleus_, the opposing group.  In Upper
-Canada the government party, known as Liberal-Conservatives, was led
-by John A. Macdonald, and the Reformers were under the command of
-George Brown.  With the latter were loosely associated a small band
-who followed Sandfield Macdonald, and were known as Sandfield
-Macdonald's "tail".  On McGee's entrance to the legislature, the
-government was described as the Macdonald-Cartier administration.
-During the next four years it was preserved in power by the majority
-of Lower Canadian members, marshalled by Cartier, and a number of
-Upper Canadians drawn by the winning personality of John A. Macdonald.
-
-In view of McGee's subsequent career, it is possible that he might in
-1857 have accepted a nomination from the party of Macdonald and
-Cartier.  Certain considerations drew him to support Dorion and the
-_Parti Rouge_, but they were hardly of a nature to overcome the
-strong attraction of a warm welcome from the government party.  Such
-a welcome was not extended.  The fact is that those in power were
-somewhat dubious concerning this new man, with his chequered career
-and his reputation for brilliance.  One who, only ten years before,
-had been a rebel against the Queen might not prove of much help to a
-party in a colony where loyalty was fashionable.  Political leaders
-before investing in new stock must be sure of a good return, and in
-this case they were in doubt.  McGee did not receive their
-nomination.  Hence he gave his support to the _Rouges_, with whom he
-had more genuine sympathy.  It is interesting that he thus entered
-Canadian political life as an advanced reformer, the opponent of John
-A. Macdonald, with whom his name was later linked.  In the election
-of December, 1857, Dorion stood at the top of the poll in Montreal
-with his follower, McGee, a close second.  The other four candidates
-trailed behind with Cartier at the bottom, five hundred votes below
-McGee.
-
-Some eighteen months after his election, McGee outlined in four
-public letters to his Irish-Canadian constituents his views on
-Canadian parties.  They adequately explain why for four years he
-supported the Opposition, consorting with Dorion, George Brown, and
-other uncompromising opponents of the Cartier-Macdonald ministry.  He
-attributed to the _Bleus_ an exclusive Canadianism.  They had no wish
-to welcome immigrants, for they dreamed of a French Canada existing
-isolated, alone, and still French on the map of North America.  Their
-conception of French-Canadian nationality was too narrow to allow the
-development of a broad conception of Canadian nationality, so
-essential in a land of warring sects and races.  The _Rouges_, on the
-other hand, were more in touch with modern tendencies, and more
-disposed to recognize as their Canadian countrymen the newer
-immigrants who spoke a different tongue and were of another race.  In
-them the Irish Canadians of Lower Canada could find more congenial
-allies than among the _Bleus_.  McGee on this occasion worked in his
-own fervid gospel of a nationality, which would recognize
-distinctions of neither race nor creed: "For my own part, I respect
-every nationality represented on our soil; but yet I hold we should
-consider them rather as invaluable materials to a desired end, than
-as finalities themselves.  I hope to see the day, or at least the eve
-of the day, when there will be no other term to our patriotism, but
-the common name of Canadian, without the prefix of either French or
-British."
-
-He advised his Catholic countrymen in Upper Canada that they support
-in their section of the province the Reform party of George Brown.
-Brown was something of a knight errant.  He was bold in tilting with
-abuses, and ever ready to ride about the colony in search of them.
-McGee was won by Brown's frank, fearless character.  Moreover, he
-believed that the Irish Catholics of Upper Canada could subscribe
-with little reservation to the Reform leader's principles.  They
-shared with Brown a hostility to the intolerant Toryism of the old
-school, and entertained his faith in the widest extension of popular
-suffrage, economy in public expenditure, and reduction in taxation.
-But there were two issues on which McGee was not in harmony with
-Brown.  He did not believe that the adoption of representation by
-population would, as Brown so ardently argued, heal the ills of
-Canadian government.  Also, contrary to the belief of the Upper
-Canadian, he thought that separate religious schools should receive
-more definite recognition by the provincial legislature.  These
-questions were to arise frequently during his political career, and a
-statement of his position on them may be conveniently postponed.
-
-In March, 1858, the parliamentary session began.  From the outset,
-McGee hurried into the leading debates, and attacked the
-"corruptionists", as the government party was described, with all the
-weapons of polished wit and searching sarcasm.  His reputation as an
-orator had preceded him, and his maiden speech was eagerly awaited.
-None of the assembled legislators was disappointed.  A press
-correspondent wrote that McGee had scarcely spoken three sentences in
-a silvery, penetrating mezzo-soprano before he had the audience in
-that pleasurable grip which only the highly endowed orator can
-attain.  "Of loud declamation," wrote another contemporary observer,
-"there was not a vestige, and scarcely a change of attitude.  He
-merely placed the finger of his right hand occasionally on the palm
-of his left, then let both hands fall by his sides, or on occasion
-lifted the right hand in solemn warning, but as he warmed up a
-magnificent period with an appeal to the justice of his cause, or the
-manhood of his country, his whole frame shook, light darted from his
-eyes, he was so to say transfigured."  The correspondent of the
-_Globe_ wrote that he was "undoubtedly the most finished orator in
-the House....  He has the peculiar power of impressing an audience,
-which can only be accounted for by attributing to those who possess
-it some magnetic influence not common to everyone."
-
-The methods of the government in the previous election gave him an
-opportunity of displaying facetiousness and extracting roars of
-laughter from all sides of the chamber.  Cayley, the
-inspector-general, had unsuccessfully contested a seat in the
-counties of Huron and Bruce.  One of his electioneering devices had
-been that of presenting several Orange lodges of these counties with
-beautifully bound copies of the sacred scriptures.  "It was a
-spectacle," remarked McGee, "rare and refreshing to see the
-inspector-general, the chancellor of the exchequer, the finance
-minister of the province, voluntarily turn missionary and act the
-part of a colporteur in the neighbourhood of Lake Huron.  He must
-further remark that the good people of these counties seemed to have
-studied the sacred volume presented to them from so high a source to
-good effect.  They appeared to have learnt the lesson of retributive
-justice, for although they accepted the gospel, they rejected the
-missionary."
-
-There is something in parliamentary life that appeals to the fighting
-instinct, and men in opposition feel more free to indulge in it.
-McGee did so with undisguised recklessness.  In the opinion of
-sober-minded people he seemed over-ready to engage in the battles of
-debate.  One of the most controversial questions of the period was
-the choice of a site for the government.  Up to 1858 the capital had
-been shunted about almost in the manner of a freight car, remaining
-at the most only four years in any one city.  Such an arrangement was
-obviously not satisfactory.  Yet there was real difficulty in
-deciding which of the rival cities should be the permanent capital.
-Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, Hamilton--all had their
-advocates who fought for their respective centres with the public
-enthusiasm of men whose parliamentary seats depended upon the extent
-to which they promoted local interests.  A decision in favour of any
-one city might spell the death of the ministry.  The
-Macdonald-Cartier government of 1858, unwilling to enter an early
-grave, hit upon an expedient which might remove responsibility from
-their heads.  They passed a resolution requesting the Queen to choose
-among the rival cities.  The Queen or her ministers could have little
-knowledge of the respective merits of the various Canadian cities,
-and it is likely that she acted on advice from Canada.  In any case
-she decided in favour of a village, Bytown, in the backwoods of the
-Ottawa river.  From a ragged settlement, in the country of lumbermen,
-the village has since grown into the beautiful Ottawa.  The
-Opposition was up in arms against the Queen's decision.  McGee, who
-was frankly a champion of Montreal, flung himself into the debate,
-pleading the advantages of Lower Canada's largest city.
-
-The final upshot was the resignation of the government, and the
-calling of Brown and Dorion to form a ministry.  Then occurred the
-famous incident in Canadian history known as the Double Shuffle.  The
-governor, Sir Edmund Head, refused Brown the privilege of a
-dissolution whereby the Reform leader might have obtained a more
-substantial majority.  To add to the latter's misfortunes, the
-Opposition without giving the Reform ministry a trial carried a vote
-of censure.  The new ministry, only a few hours old, was thus forced
-out of power, and Cartier and Macdonald were once more called upon.
-Constitutional precedent required that the ministers upon accepting
-office should seek re-election.  But Macdonald feared that the
-ministers from Upper Canada would not be returned, if at this
-juncture they faced their constituents.  Hence the ministers by
-shuffling their offices made use of a legal technicality to avoid
-re-election, and carried on the government as if nothing had occurred
-to disturb their former possession of power.
-
-Bitter were the complaints of the Opposition against such juggling.
-McGee's voice joined the chorus of denunciation.  He slashed the
-Cartier-Macdonald group for pushing difficulties in the path of the
-Brown government, and even accused the governor of an unseemly
-partiality for Macdonald.  His heavy-fisted criticisms aroused
-intense resentment in the government ranks, and every effort was made
-to discredit him.  The press was wheeled into the sordid task of
-endeavouring to damage his reputation and ruin his public life.  The
-Toronto _Leader_ and the _Catholic Witness_ of Montreal were
-truceless in their attacks.  Much was made out of the fact that he
-had been a fugitive rebel, and the hostile Catholic press endeavoured
-to prove that his orthodoxy was in question.  Even an effort was made
-to get the board of Catholic bishops to condemn him publicly.
-Innuendoes were thrown out that he had some association with a
-revolutionary society which threatened the overthrow of Canadian
-institutions.  John A. Macdonald was led to describe him as a rebel
-in his own country, who had come to Canada to propagate rebellion.
-Indeed, the party of Macdonald and Cartier procured a complete file
-of McGee's New York _Nation_, in order that they might be able to
-taunt him with the revolutionary and anti-British sentiments which he
-had expressed between the years 1848 and 1850.
-
-If he had been a man of ordinary ability and troubled with
-super-sensitiveness, McGee would not have survived this ordeal of his
-first parliamentary year.  But ten years of American journalism had
-hardened him sufficiently to go buoyantly and successfully through
-the disagreeable rough-and-tumble of Canadian politics.  His rebel
-antecedents did not encumber him.  He boldly defended his
-revolutionary career in Ireland on the ground that he had rebelled
-against conditions which did not exist in Canada, and against which
-any Canadian would have rebelled.  As to his position in his new
-home, he was emphatic in his profession of faith: "I am as loyal to
-the institutions under which I live in Canada as any Tory of the old
-or new schools."
-
-Throughout this period he was not always on the side of Brown and the
-Opposition stalwarts.  On the important question of the tariff he
-voted with the government.  In 1858 Cayley had introduced a budget
-with additions to existing duties.  He was bending to the drift of
-opinion in favour of protection for the juvenile industries of
-Canada, and was also in search of increased revenue.  Galt, who
-became finance minister in 1858, was influenced by similar
-considerations.  He imposed duties of 20% and 25% on manufactured
-goods, with the aim of seeking more public revenue and incidentally
-providing protection to Canadian manufacturers.  To George Brown and
-his followers who had absorbed the free trade doctrines of British
-liberalism Galt's protective principles were heresy.  Brown's organ,
-the Toronto _Globe_, thundered against them as pernicious.  But
-McGee, a frank protectionist, championed them as necessary for the
-development of industrial as well as agrarian activity.  "Where there
-were no producing cities as well as consuming cities, there had been
-no prosperity--the urban and the rural population must bear some
-adequate proportion to each other before security and safety could be
-established."  This creed was similar to that preached in the same
-period by Horace Greeley in the republic to the south.  It has
-continued since to have an influence on Canadian and American
-statesmen.
-
-In the four years that McGee sat on the opposition benches, the
-gravest question facing the United Canadas was the fate of the union.
-Largely on the recommendation of Lord Durham and Lord Sydenham, the
-two provinces had been united in 1841.  But, contrary to Durham's
-intention, little attempt had been made to merge into one the two
-peoples, the French of the lower province and the British of the
-upper.  Complete fusion was perhaps impossible.  In any case it had
-been made difficult by the provision of the Union Act that equal
-representation should be conceded to each province.  The two sections
-of the country thus being recognized as distinct units, the members
-of the legislature, as representatives of one or the other unit,
-contended for sectional advantages.  At the outset the population of
-Lower Canada had been larger by 150,000, but in the passage of a few
-years the situation was reversed.  The Upper Canadian members now
-became sensitive that their province was not receiving benefits
-commensurate with their numbers.  In George Brown they had an
-eloquent and fearless advocate.  In his opinion, the union was a
-complete failure because it did not succeed in creating a united
-people.  In addition he considered that it upheld an injustice, for
-it allowed one community to govern another more numerous.  His case
-was stated emphatically in the _Globe_ "It must be obvious to every
-intelligent man that to accomplish the great ends contemplated by the
-union, and to draw closer the bonds of sympathy uniting the people of
-Canada--it is imperatively necessary that legislation wherever
-practicable, shall be for the whole province and not sectional, and
-that the local institutions of Upper and Lower Canada shall be
-gradually assimilated.  With two languages--two law codes--two
-judicial systems--two systems of national instruction--two systems of
-municipal government--two systems of land tenure--two systems of
-title registration--two systems of mercantile partnership and right
-of kin--two systems of relief to solvents--two systems of raising
-money for local purposes--two systems in everything--how can we hope
-to create a united people?"
-
-Brown's solution was the concession of representation by population.
-Through the recognition of this principle the various differences
-between the two portions of the province would be sponged out by the
-action of the majority in the legislature.  In addition it would
-redress the injustice suffered by Upper Canada.  That province in
-Brown's estimate had an excess population over Lower Canada of
-225,000, and this excess, according to the Reformers, was virtually
-unrepresented.  In plain terms majority rule in the Canadas was
-impossible and majority interests suffered.  Brown raised the
-principle of representation by population into a slogan cry, and no
-Highland chief could have been more effective in stirring his
-impassioned followers.  The French were as relentless in their
-resistance.  They rightly feared that representation by population
-would bring a majority of English into the chamber, and their most
-cherished interests would be imperilled.  Yet Brown, like a
-representative of Fate, in season and out of season drove home his
-arguments, and made an ominous deadlock in the legislature.  In 1858,
-when McGee entered the chamber, the majority of French under Cartier,
-leagued with a minority of British from Upper Canada under Macdonald,
-were like a threatening army opposed to the followers of Brown, who
-constituted a majority of the Upper Canadians.  The feverish
-intensity of Canadian politics at the time was the consequence of
-this strained battle to decide whether the union was to fall under
-the weight of Brown's attack.  One side added as much bitterness to
-the struggle as the other.  On one occasion Cartier stirred up great
-irritation by expressing the opinion that the excess population of
-Upper Canada had no more right of representation than the numerous
-codfish in Gaspé Bay.
-
-What was McGee's position?  He was in the ranks of the Opposition,
-but his views on the momentous question of the time did not entirely
-square with those of Brown and the Upper Canadian Reformers.  He
-admitted the justice of the claim that numbers should be the basis of
-representation.  "Property should have its weight, intelligence
-should have its weight, but any man who, on this continent and in
-this age of the world, did not believe that numbers should be the
-basis, was as little to be reasoned with as a man who believed in the
-philosopher's stone."  Yet he did not think that a change in the
-basis of representation would constitute a permanent solution of the
-difficulties of Canadian government.  In October, 1859, he, Dorion,
-and two other members of the Lower Canadian opposition, L. T.
-Drummond and L. A. Dessaulles, explored carefully the constitutional
-problem, and drew up an able report, which has considerable
-significance in the light of later events.  They examined in turn the
-various suggestions made to relieve the constitutional conflict:
-repeal of the union, representation by population, the double
-majority.  Repeal of the union was practically impossible.  The
-provinces had so many things in common as to make it imperative that
-they remain under the same roof.  Representation by population, they
-summarily rejected on the ground that it would still leave room for
-bitter conflict between the representatives of the respective
-provinces over the justice of particular legislation.  They similarly
-rejected the double majority, whereby no measure should be considered
-as carried until it had not merely a majority of the legislature as a
-whole, but also a majority of members from the section of the country
-which it affected.  They considered that the double majority would
-give rise to confusions, not least of which would be the difficulty
-of distinguishing between the cases where it should and should not
-apply.  Moreover, the remedy would be worse than the disease, because
-it would leave in the chamber two majorities and two minorities.
-
-The true statesmanlike solution in their estimation would be the
-substitution of a purely federal for the existing legislative union.
-The federal government should have powers defined to such subjects as
-were common to the two provinces, leaving supreme jurisdiction in all
-other matters to the provincial legislatures.  The committee even
-went into some of the details of their suggested system, making it
-clear throughout that the pervading idea of the new constitution
-should be the delegation of powers from the province to the federal
-government.  Everything relating to local affairs, such as education,
-administration of justice, and militia should be under provincial
-jurisdiction.
-
-This document is symptomatic of McGee's thought.  In the _New Era_,
-he had painted the vision of a united British North America, but he
-had not, while a journalist, come to close grips with a scheme of
-union.  His year of parliamentary experiences had brought him nearer
-to constitutional needs, and his co-operation with Dorion in the
-projection of a definite plan was the result.  Although he later
-departed from the details of this programme, to the principle of
-federation he remained faithful.  Such was not the case with Dorion.
-It was the irony of his career that the confederation scheme of 1864,
-under which Canada grew into lusty young nationhood, found in him its
-severest critic.  In the years following 1859 McGee continued as
-zealously as before to plead in parliament and on public platforms
-the cause of federal union.  He looked even far beyond the mere
-federation of the two Canadas.  With an extended foresight he
-advocated a union of all the colonies.  In 1860, in the debates on
-Brown's resolutions, favouring a federal union of the two
-provinces--to which Brown had now turned--McGee argued that much more
-desirable would be a union of all the North American provinces.
-Common interests demanded it.  The existing arrangement with its
-tariff barriers between the colonies hampered trade and economic
-development.  Union would widen intercolonial markets and stimulate
-the entire material progress of the colonies, while without union
-they must lag far behind the United States in the working of their
-natural resources.  But federation was imperative for another reason.
-It was a necessary means of attaining for the colonies a national
-existence.  McGee fervidly looked forward to a day, not distant,
-"when we should be known not as Upper or Lower Canadians, Nova
-Scotians, or New Brunswickers, but as members of a nation designated
-as the Six United Provinces."  The establishment of a federal state
-for the nurturing of a British North American nationality was the
-shining goal that he held before Canadians.  The wider union would
-not merely solve the political difficulties of the Canadas, but would
-insure the great destiny of all the colonies.
-
-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 York _Herald_, 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 the _Trent_ affair of 1861, when two
-southern gentlemen were removed from the British steamer _Trent_ by
-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 the
-_New 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
-entitled _Nova 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-IN OFFICE AND OUT OF IT
-
-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
-the _Globe_, 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 the _Globe_, "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.  The
-_Globe_ lucidly 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.  The
-_Globe_, 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
-the _Globe_ attributed 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.  Another _impasse_
-was 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 the _British American Magazine_ for 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 the
-_Canadien_, 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 the _Citizen_.  In its
-place he substituted the _Freeman_, 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-CONFEDERATION AND FENIANISM
-
-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--a _cordon sanitaire_ around 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 of _The 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 Dublin _Nation_, 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-CLOSING YEARS
-
-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.
-
-In the succeeding months McGee's activity was as varied and ceaseless
-as ever.  He was still in very large demand as a lecturer, and with
-personal trouble and expense he went long distances to deliver
-lectures for the benefit of charities.  One of his most famous
-addresses was on _The Mental Outfit of the New Dominion_, delivered
-in Montreal on November 4, 1867, in which he pleaded for the
-development of mental self-reliance as an essential condition of
-political independence.  A literature to shape and express the mind
-of the new nation was as imperative as self-governing institutions.
-At the time Canada had no literature.  Journalism, it is true,
-flourished like a green bay tree.  In the four provinces there were
-about one hundred and thirty journals, thirty of which were published
-daily.  But this ephemeral literature was characterized by a
-narrowness of view, a local egotism, and a lamentable absence of
-anything approaching a catholic spirit.  In addition to elevating the
-tone of journalism, McGee believed that Canadians with national
-development at heart must encourage a literature "calculated to our
-own meridian, and hitting home our own society, either where it is
-sluggish or priggish, or wholly defective in its present style of
-culture".  Literary talent should be cherished as precious.  He hoped
-that "if a native book should lack the finish of a foreign one, as a
-novice may well be less expert than an old hand, yet if the book be
-honestly designed, and conscientiously worked up, the author shall be
-encouraged, not only for his own sake, but for the sake of the better
-things which we look forward to with hopefulness.  I make this plea
-on behalf of those who venture upon authorship among us because I
-believe the existence of a recognized literary class will by and by
-be felt as a state and social necessity."  The new northern nation,
-notwithstanding that it possessed all the benefits which Nature could
-possibly bestow, would still in his estimation be impoverished if it
-failed to develop a cultural life.  He endeavoured to direct the
-attention of Canadians to the fact that there should be built upon
-the political unity already attained a life of the mind on which the
-vitality of a nation finally depended.
-
-The cause of union which had fired McGee's mind since his immigration
-to Canada was now attained.  What was to be his future?  Political
-life had never failed to attract him, for he liked its intensities of
-struggle.  His future in Canadian politics was secure.  Few public
-men of the time were held in such esteem throughout the British
-provinces, and none had so quickly jumped into prominence.  His
-career was not closed by his absence from the first cabinet of the
-Dominion.  Macdonald had confessed that his admission to a cabinet
-office could only be a matter of short delay.  Yet work other than
-that of public life attracted him.  He had never lost the ideal, born
-in his youth, of devoting himself to literature.  By temperament he
-was a man of letters.  His vivid imagination sought expression in the
-creation of what might be a permanent addition to literature:
-
-  I dreamed a dream when the woods were green,
-  And my April heart made an April scene,
-    In the far, far distant land,
-  That even I might something do
-  That would keep my memory for the true,
-    And my name from the spoiler's hand!
-
-From the summer of 1867, he looked forward to obtaining a
-commissionership under the government, which would maintain him and
-his family, while providing leisure for literary work.  These were
-the hopes shattered suddenly by his murder.
-
-During January and February, 1868, McGee was seriously ill in
-Montreal, but in March he was back in Ottawa for the opening of
-parliament.  The crucial issue of the period was the inclusion of
-Nova Scotia in the federation.  A delegation of Nova Scotians headed
-by the redoubtable Howe had gone to Britain to obtain the support of
-British statesmen in the endeavour to release their province from the
-federation.  To neutralize their influence by stating the counter
-case, the Canadian government in March sent over Tupper.  To the Nova
-Scotian anti-unionists--and they constituted a majority of the
-representatives of the province--the little energetic doctor was
-anathema.  With painstaking bitterness, they assailed his
-appointment.  On the evening of April 6, Dr. Parker, a Nova Scotian
-representative, made a personal attack on Tupper, demanding his
-recall.  He declared that he was "utterly disqualified for being a
-representative of the Dominion, and sending him only deepened the
-disaffection of the sister province of Nova Scotia".
-
-In reply to Parker, McGee declared that the motion to recall Tupper
-was delivering Confederation a stab in the dark.  "If he had been in
-earnest in wishing to give the new system a fair trial, he would have
-said: I do not think Mr. Tupper was the best choice, but since he has
-gone I wish him all success for the sake of the union."  In
-impassioned words which show how poignantly his own bitter struggle
-with Fenianism was on his mind, he argued that Tupper should not be
-judged by the transitory ill-esteem in which he was held by his
-countrymen.  "We should not make a mere local or temporary popularity
-the test of the qualification of a public servant.  He who built on
-popularity built on a shifting sand.  The man who showed he was ready
-to suffer for his principles as well as triumph with his principles
-was far beyond comparison with the mere popularity hunter.  It would
-be a base spirit to sacrifice the man who had sacrificed himself for
-the sake of the union."  No attentive parliamentarian who heard these
-words could have foreseen that in little more than an hour McGee
-himself was to be sacrificed for his opinions.
-
-No less significant than his defence of Tupper was his plea that Nova
-Scotia should await the action of time for the consolidation of the
-provinces into a great nation, all parts of which would find justice.
-"I have great reliance on the mellowing effects of time.  It is not
-the lime, and the sand, and the hair of the mortar, but the time
-which has taken to temper it.  And if time be so necessary an element
-in so rudimentary a process as the mixing of mortar, of how much
-greater importance must it be in the work of consolidating the
-confederation of these provinces.  Time, sir, will heal all existing
-irritations; time will mellow and refine all points of contrast that
-seem so harsh to-day; time will come to the aid of the pervading
-principles of impartial justice, which happily permeate the whole
-land.  By and by time will show the constitution of this Dominion as
-much cherished in the hearts of the people of all its provinces, not
-excepting Nova Scotia, as is the British constitution itself."  Such
-was McGee's last confession of faith.  It lost none of its force in
-the grace and beauty of its language.
-
-He spoke at midnight.  Shortly after one o'clock on the morning of
-the 7th, the debate closed.  The members, while putting on their
-coats, commented generally on McGee's speech; some thought that it
-was the most effective they had ever heard him deliver.  He lit his
-cigar, and in company with Macfarlane, a very intimate friend, went
-down the board walk towards his lodging.  It was an exhilarating
-night, with a bright full moon and the tonic air of early spring.
-McGee was in elated spirits.  Perhaps part of his light-heartedness
-was caused by the reflection that on the morrow he would return to
-Montreal, where his wife and daughters were, within a few days to
-celebrate his forty-third birthday.  Letters from home had informed
-him of the preparations.  At what is now one of Ottawa's busy
-corners, that of Sparks and Metcalfe Streets, he left his friend, and
-alone walked to his lodging on Sparks Street.  As he endeavoured to
-open his door with a latch key, a slight figure glided up and at
-close range fired a bullet into his head.  There was no cry, only the
-deadly crack of the pistol, and McGee pitched forward on his
-doorstep.  His work done, the assassin dashed away in the night, but
-left tell-tale steps in the snow, later to assist in his conviction.
-Some inmates of the house, who had not retired, immediately
-discovered the body, and soon the dreary news was circulating through
-Ottawa and across the telegraph wires to all parts of the Dominion.
-
-The following afternoon, Sir John Macdonald before a gloomy chamber
-gave expression to the public sorrow, and in token of it adjourned
-the House.  Meanwhile Ottawa was feverishly searched for the
-assassin.  The prison was soon filled with suspects.  The Dominion
-government offered $5,000 reward for information concerning the
-culprit or culprits, and the two provinces, Quebec and Ontario, each
-offered $2,500.  Incriminating evidence quickly accumulated against
-Patrick James Whelan, a comparatively young man, whose trial began on
-the 17th of the month.  From the outset the chain of circumstantial
-evidence against him was strong.  He had long been implicated in the
-Fenian movement, having been discharged from the army in Quebec for
-Fenian sentiments.  He had but recently come to Ottawa, and on the
-night of the murder had been seen in the gallery of the house.  After
-his arrest there was found in his possession a revolver, one chamber
-of which had been recently discharged.  But the most conclusive of
-the many facts of evidence was submitted by a French Canadian,
-Lacroix, who declared that he saw Whelan commit the deed.
-Notwithstanding the weighty case relentlessly built up by the
-prosecuting attorney the trial dragged wearily into the following
-year.  Finally, on February 11, 1869, Whelan, pleading innocence to
-the end, met his death on the scaffold.  It has remained
-problematical how far he was the fatal instrument of the Fenian
-brotherhood or how far his action, like that of the man who shot
-Lincoln, was due merely to personal hate.  The evidence would seem to
-make it clear that Whelan did not receive instructions from a head
-centre outside the country, but that he performed the deed to satisfy
-the hatred of himself and a few Canadian Fenians whose identity is
-uncertain.
-
-McGee died a martyr for the young Dominion.  Such was the judgment of
-contemporaries, and history need not reject it.  On the day following
-the murder, Sir John Macdonald described "how easy it would have been
-for him, had he chosen, to have sailed along the full tide of
-popularity with thousands and hundreds of thousands, without the loss
-of a single plaudit, but he has been slain, and I fear slain because
-he preferred the path of duty".  From the time that he resolved to
-fight Fenianism, his life was in danger.  Had he been more passive,
-and allowed the movement to wreck itself, he would not have incurred
-the enmity of Whelan and his associates.  But McGee never entered a
-cause half-heartedly.  He had the firm conviction that Fenianism was
-a menace, not merely to Canada, but to Ireland.  It represented an
-anarchical and revolutionary spirit which long ago he had come to
-dread.  It endeavoured to overthrow the British Empire, which he
-considered a magnificent instrument in spreading civilization.  Hence
-he fought it with as much intensity as he had formerly struggled for
-Irish independence, and his guilt, to the minds of his opponents, was
-that of an apostate as well as of an enemy.
-
-As McGee's last speech was a plea for the conciliation of all members
-of the new Dominion, so his last letter of public significance was a
-passionate plea for reform in Ireland.  Just two days before his
-death he had dined with an old Ottawa friend, Alderman Goodwin, and
-after dinner had excused himself to pen a letter to Lord Mayo, then
-chief secretary for Ireland, which was described aptly by a
-contemporary as having "struck the heart of the British nation like a
-cry for justice from the grave".  In a parliamentary speech, Lord
-Mayo had referred to McGee's loyalty as that of a Canadian Irishman.
-McGee in his letter endeavoured to make clear why Irishmen like
-himself were loyal in Canada, and how the loyalty of those in Ireland
-might be won.  Canada did not have the abuses which in Ireland was
-the prime source of discontent.  There was no established church, no
-system of tenancy at will, no poor laws, nor any need of them.
-Instead there was the recognition of complete religious equality, a
-general acquisition of property as the reward of well-directed
-industry, and the fullest local control of revenues and resources.
-Such was the head-spring of Irish loyalty in Canada, and "were it
-otherwise, we would be otherwise".  This letter is the best apology
-for the chequered career of the young Irish rebel of 1848, who died
-twenty years later the champion of a British American nationality,
-linked by bonds of sentiment to the Britain across the seas.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-CONCLUSION
-
-McGee's position among the few outstanding fathers of Confederation
-is secure.  His work was not that of a constitutional architect
-giving expression to political needs in the legal terms of a
-constitution.  Nor was he a party leader, subtly pulling together the
-strings guiding political groups, and through the resulting
-combination carrying measures beneficial to the community.  In both
-these fields Sir John Macdonald easily carries away most of the
-honours.  McGee's task was that of inspiration.  His position was
-that of a prophet and a guide.  Creative statesmen fall into two
-categories--those who inspire a people to establish new structures,
-and those who build in under their influence the bricks and mortar of
-the new creation.  McGee, in the most plastic period of Canadian
-history, belonged to the former class.  Throughout the brief span of
-his life in Canada, he had been the untiring advocate of union
-amongst the colonies.  He had championed it in the press and on
-public platforms from Lake Huron to the Atlantic.  In the
-legislature, he had pushed it forward through the weary bickerings
-over much smaller issues.  He had made the colonists realize that to
-them there was no subject of equal magnitude.  This was the prime
-question of their destiny.
-
-Coming to the Canadas as a stranger, his mind was not cramped by
-local patriotism nor handicapped by the shortness of vision
-characteristic of many colonial leaders.  He saw the common interests
-of all the colonies to a degree that was difficult with men who had
-matured within the confines of one, and who were content to worship
-only at its shrine.
-
-He had an additional advantage.  He had been reared in an old
-community with long traditions and in possession of that virile
-community-consciousness which we call nationality.  His mind had
-developed in contact with a group of young brilliant men who sought
-to revivify the life of their nation, and who went to its traditions
-for inspiration.  McGee never lost the effect of such experiences and
-aspirations.  The vision of giving new vitality to a nation and
-setting it on the path of fresh development continued to stir his
-imagination.  When he came to Canada, he did not find an old
-community, as in Ireland, in need of inspiration for fresh
-accomplishments; he found all the elements necessary for the building
-of a new northern nation, and the prospect of assisting its creation
-was the spur of his Canadian career.
-
-Union of the colonies was the first and most important step towards
-the attainment of a national existence.  It was the essential
-foundation for everything else.  But McGee did not overlook other and
-subsidiary policies necessary for the same end.  That on which he had
-laid most emphasis was the development of a broad-minded national
-spirit which would sponge out from politics the influence of
-sectarian and sectional interests.  Tolerance of the differences of
-race and creed must, he argued, be the corner stone of the Dominion.
-There was need of emphasizing this doctrine, for the parochialism of
-colonial government and the seclusion of colonial society tended to
-shut out the healthy air of large affairs, and develop a pettiness of
-mind and an intolerance of spirit.  The differences between the
-French and the English--differences of race and creed--seemed to be
-an insurmountable obstacle to the emergence of a national community
-embracing them all.  But McGee was not despondent over such
-differences.  He believed that the task of the new nationality was to
-reconcile them through toleration.  In 1865, in St. John, he declared
-that "the bilingual line which divides us socially is one of the
-difficulties of the government of the country.  But though a
-difficulty it is by no means a serious danger, unless it were to be
-aggravated by a sense of injustice, inflicted either by the local
-French majority on the English minority, or by the English majority
-on the French minority.  So long as we respect in Canada the rights
-of minorities, told either by tongue or creed, we are safe, for so
-long it will be possible for us to be united; but when we cease to
-respect those rights, we will be in the full tide towards that
-madness which the ancients considered the gods sent to those whom
-they wished to destroy."
-
-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?
-
-
-
-The memory and influence of McGee lived not merely in the counsels of
-the "Canada First" party, but in the efforts of Canadian statesmen in
-succeeding years to make Canada strong within herself.  Even when
-leaders appeared who may have forgotten his name and had not heard in
-the legislature or on the public platform his silver speech, their
-work for the completion of Canadian autonomy was but a fulfilment of
-what he had advocated.  Canada as a self-governing nation, linked
-fraternally to Britain and other parts of the Empire, was McGee's
-goal for the Canadian people.  Since Confederation they have been
-steadily advancing towards it, and thus paying homage to the strength
-and vision of McGee's ideals.
-
-McGee has importance in Canadian history for other reasons than his
-statesmanship.  He holds no mean place in Canadian literature.
-Historical myth puts into the mouth of Wolfe the remark that he would
-sooner have written Gray's "Elegy" than take Quebec.  The poet may be
-greater than the soldier, and similarly the literary artist may be
-placed above the statesman; yet statecraft has drawn fervid minds
-from poetry to political action.  It drew McGee.  While, in
-temperament and aspiration, he was a man of letters, so resistless
-was the attraction of politics that in it he expended most of his
-energies.  But any account of his life which would leave out of
-consideration McGee as a _littérateur_ would be incomplete.
-Something has already been said about his oratory.  A native oratory
-was one of the most distinctive elements in his equipment as he
-started on the path to fame.  Yet from the outset he used his pen
-more frequently than his tongue.  From his first arrival in America
-to his death, he wrote continuously prose and poetry.
-
-Most of this literary output found expression in the journals with
-which he had been connected, but he left to his name a goodly number
-of volumes dealing with historical and biographical subjects.  Of
-these two have already been mentioned as contributing to the cause of
-Canadian Confederation, _Notes on Federal Government Past and
-Present_ and _Speeches on British American Union_.  All the others
-deal with Irish history and biography, which next to living political
-causes engaged McGee's imagination.  The most noted of these books
-was his _Popular History of Ireland_, on which he had begun earnest
-labour in 1858, but which exacting political activities had prevented
-him from finishing till 1863.  On many an evening within these years,
-he would retire to his room from the battles of parliamentary debate
-and, forgetful for the time being of Canadian problems, would trace
-out the struggle of the Vikings for Ireland or some other dramatic
-phase of Irish history.
-
-Within his life-time no complete collection of his poems was made.
-They appeared chiefly in the various newspapers on both sides of the
-Atlantic to which he had contributed.  The year after his death they
-were collected and published by his friend Mrs. Sadlier.  One little
-volume he himself published in 1858, _Canadian Ballads and Occasional
-Verses_.  It was a worthy tribute to his interest in the history of
-his newly adopted country, and was addressed to those who looked
-forward to the development of the colonies into a great new northern
-nation.  The subject matter of his verses is varied.  Many deal with
-the affections; others are religious in sentiment; but the greater
-number are patriotic and historical.  They are concerned with the
-saints and heroes of Ireland's story, from St. Patrick to Smith
-O'Brien.  They throb with the fervour of a patriot as they tell of
-Innisfail, the Ireland of ancient times, and of how
-
-  Long, long ago, beyond the misty space
-    Of twice a thousand years,
-  In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race,
-    Taller than Roman spears;
-  Like oaks and towers, they had a giant grace,
-    Were fleet as deers,
-  With winds and wave they made their 'biding place,
-    These Western shepherd-seers.
-
-
-McGee's imagination revelled in the traditions and myths of the
-Celts.  He expressed that brooding melancholy over the past which has
-ever been the pervading sentiment of Irish poetry.  He believed that
-the Celtic race had a soul that was chastened by past misfortunes,
-and yet was not without hope in the present.  He invoked it in the
-lines:
-
-  Soul of my race!  Soul eternal!
-  That liveth through evil and time--
-  That twineth still laurels all vernal,
-  As if laurels could once more be thine!
-  Oh hear me, oh cheer me, be near me,
-  Oh guide me or chide me alway,
-  But do not fly from me or fear me--
-  I'm all clay when thou, Soul, art away.
-
-
-McGee's poetry was shaped largely by the group of Young Ireland who
-taught that verse might be used as a convenient means of drawing upon
-Irish traditions for the purpose of arousing a national
-consciousness.  From its nature such poetry has limitations.  It must
-fail to win the universal appeal of verse with no national end to
-serve.  McGee was not limited in his allegiance to Ireland.  His
-_Canadian Ballads_ were inspired by incidents in Canadian history,
-and were intended to show the fertility of Canadian annals in
-subjects adaptable to verse.  It was his belief that "of all the
-forms of patriotism, a wise, public-spirited patriotism in literature
-is not the least admirable.  It is, indeed, glorious to die in battle
-in defence of our homes or altars; but not less glorious is it to
-live to celebrate the virtues of our heroic countrymen, to adorn the
-history, or to preserve the traditions of our country".
-
-As might be expected in the work of a man enmeshed in the ceaseless
-activities of public life, to whom poetry was of necessity an
-embroidery to other activities, his compositions are uneven.  They
-are always spontaneous, but frequently show a roughness that a
-painstaking workmanship would have removed.  Yet there are bursts of
-genuine lyric quality that will receive the commendation of even the
-critical.  Of a simple beauty are the lines imitated from the Irish
-and named _A Contrast_:
-
-
-  I.
-
-  Bebinn is straight as a poplar,
-    Queenly and comely to see,
-  But she seems so fit for a sceptre,
-    She never could give it to me.
-  Aine is lithe as a willow,
-    And her eye, whether tearful or gay,
-  So true to her thought, that in Aine
-    I find a new charm every day.
-
-  II.
-
-  Bebinn calmly and silently sails
-    Down life's stream like a snow-breasted swan;
-  She's so lonesomely grand, that she seems
-    To shrink from the presence of man.
-  Aine basks in the glad summer sun,
-    Like a young dove let loose in the air;
-  Sings, dances, and laughs--but for me
-    Her joy does not make her less fair.
-
-  III.
-
-  Oh! give me the nature that shows
-    Its emotions of mirth or of pain,
-  As the water that glides, and the corn that grows,
-    Show shadow and sunlight again.
-  Oh! give me the brow that can bend,
-    Oh! give me the eyes that can weep,
-  And give me a heart like Lough Neagh,
-    As full of emotions and deep.
-
-
-To Gavan Duffy, the warmest of his friends among the Young Ireland
-group, he wrote lines that expressed a yearning for an old
-companionship amid old scenes:
-
-  Oh! for one week amid the emerald fields,
-    Where the Avoca sings the song of Moore;
-  Oh! for the odor the brown heather yields,
-    To glad the pilgrim's heart on Glenmalur!
-
-  Yet is there still what meeting could not give,
-    A joy most suited of all joys to last;
-  For, ever in fair memory there must live
-    The bright, unclouded picture of the past.
-
-  Old friend! the years wear on, and many cares
-    And many sorrows both of us have known;
-  Time for us both a quiet couch prepares--
-    A couch like Jacob's, pillow'd with a stone.
-
-  And oh! when thus we sleep may we behold
-    The angelic ladder of the Patriarch's dream;
-  And may my feet upon its rungs of gold
-    Yours follow, as of old, by hill and stream!
-
-
-Of his Canadian ballads one of the best known is _The Arctic Indian's
-Faith_:
-
-
-  I.
-
-  We worship the spirit that walks unseen
-  Through our land of ice and snow:
-  We know not His face, we know not His place,
-  But His presence and power we know.
-
-  II.
-
-  Does the Buffalo need the Pale-face word
-  To find his pathway far?
-  What guide has he to the hidden ford,
-  Or where the green pastures are?
-  Who teacheth the Moose that the hunter's gun
-  Is peering out of the shade--
-  Who teacheth the doe and the fawn to run
-  In the track the Moose has made?
-
-  III.
-
-  Him do we follow, Him do we fear--
-  The spirit of earth and sky;--
-  Who hears with the Wapiti's eager ear
-  His poor red children's cry.
-  Whose whisper we note in every breeze
-  That stirs the birch canoe--
-  Who hangs the reindeer moss on the trees
-  For the food of the Caribou.
-
-  IV.
-
-  That Spirit we worship who walks unseen
-  Through our land of ice and snow:
-  We know not His face, we know not His place,
-  But His presence and power we know.
-
-
-McGee's power as an orator deserves special mention in this
-concluding chapter.  There are few orators whose speeches have
-literary value.  Supreme eloquence is rare and generally transitory.
-It is inspired by the gravity of great events or dramatic situations.
-When the vivid circumstances have passed, the printed sentences
-divorced from the inspiring presence of the orator lose their former
-magic influence.  Thus, most great speeches come down in history as a
-feeble echo of what they had been when delivered.  Those of Edmund
-Burke are an exception that prove the rule.  McGee was an orator of
-great power, and his orations, delivered without the use of notes,
-live as literature.  Something of the beauty of his expressions may
-be gathered from the few quotations on preceding pages.  But these
-quotations do little to recall their thrilling effect when they were
-delivered by McGee.  Leading contemporaries agreed in giving him the
-first position amongst the orators of Confederation, and the verdict
-of contemporaries on such a subject must be accepted.  Sir Charles
-Tupper, on hearing the news of McGee's death, remarked that "the
-grave has closed over the most eloquent man in Canada."  The _Globe_,
-in an editorial the day after his assassination, stated that "whether
-his hearers sympathized or not with what he said, it was impossible
-for anyone not to acknowledge that he was marvellously eloquent; that
-his words were fitly chosen, and gave every intimation of masterly
-power....  His wit--his power of sarcasm---his readiness in
-reply--his aptness in quotation--his pathos which melted to tears,
-and his broad humour which convulsed with laughter--were all
-undoubtedly of a very high order.  Among the orators of Canada,
-either within or without the House, he has not, we believe, left his
-equal, and even his opponents will miss the speeches in which he
-developed his plans for promoting the greatness of Canada."  This
-judgment is all the more convincing in that the _Globe_ had been for
-some years previous hostile to McGee.
-
-Joseph Howe had won many laurels as an orator, yet the brilliant
-French-Canadian writer, Hector Fabre, considered him inferior to
-McGee.  "Mr. Howe is well adapted to the tribune; he pleases, he
-amuses, he charms; but a severer taste would say that his is far from
-the brilliant eloquence, the irreproachable diction, the constantly
-pure style, the breadth of views and the rectitude of ideas of Mr.
-McGee.  To my mind Mr. McGee is a nearly perfect orator, and one who
-in many senses has no superior."
-
-Of McGee's domestic and private life, little need be said.  It was
-happy in the highest degree.  He was married in the period of his
-association with Young Ireland, and his wife shared the subsequent
-adventures of his chequered career, and survived his tragic death.
-His home presented to all who entered it a charming circle.  McGee,
-with his family, was like a joyous boy.  He would often be found
-romping on the floor with his baby daughter.  Of his children only
-two daughters survived, one of whom took the veil.  A genial,
-convivial nature and an ever sparkling humour won him friends in
-every part of Canada.  One of the many tokens of esteem on the part
-of his townsfolk in Montreal was the present of a handsome furnished
-house in one of the best districts of the city.  Although an Irishman
-and a very devout Catholic, he gained the warm homage of the Scotch
-Presbyterian population in Lower Canada, a homage deeper than that
-bestowed by the Scotch on any of their own countrymen.  At the old
-Irish and Scottish festival of Hallowe'en he had been an ever welcome
-speaker in the St. Andrew's Society.  It is interesting to note that
-on the Hallowe'en after his death, thirty-seven of the forty-six
-poems competing for prizes contained some allusion to him, and one
-lamented his absence in Scotland's old dialect:
-
-  Ah! wad that he were here the nicht,
-    Whase tongue was like a faerie lute!
-  But vain the wish: McGee! thy might
-    Lies low in death--thy voice is mute.
-  He's gane, the noblest o' us a'--
-    Aboon a' care o' worldly fame;
-  An' wha sae proud as he to ca'
-    Our Canada his hame?
-
-  The gentle maple weeps an' waves
-    Aboon our patriot-statesman's heed;
-  But if we prize the licht he gave,
-    We'll bury feuds of race and creed.
-  For this he wrocht, for this he died;
-    An' for the luve we bear his name,
-  Let's live as brithers, side by side,
-    In Canada, our hame.
-
-
-These simple Scotch verses strike the most memorable fact respecting
-McGee.  His name should live in Canadian History as a statesman,
-orator, and poet.  But he should be remembered for an additional
-reason.  The Dominion, for which he laboured, grew, as he prophesied
-that it would grow, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and its
-scattered provinces, flattened out over a vast territory, are bound
-together by the steel lines of trans-continental railways.  Yet such
-material bases of union must fail to hold together the different
-sects and races inhabiting the Dominion, unless Canadians cherish
-what McGee passionately advanced, the spirit of toleration and
-goodwill as the best expression of Canadian nationality.
-
-
-
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
-No adequate biography of Thomas D'Arcy McGee has hitherto been
-written.  Consequently the student of his life must depend upon
-sundry sources of information.  Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's books,
-_Young Ireland _(New York, 1881), _Four Years of Irish History_
-(London, 1883), and _My Life in Two Hemispheres_ (London, 1898)
-contain material on McGee's adventures as a Young Irelander.
-
-For the study of his Canadian career, his own _Speeches and
-Addresses, chiefly on the Subject of British-American Union_ (London,
-1865) is of prime interest.  This volume comprises his leading
-speeches on the subject of Confederation, but many more of his
-addresses must be sought for in the columns of Canadian newspapers,
-particularly in the _Montreal Gazette_.  The _Canadian Freeman_,
-published in Toronto from 1858 to 1869, was a Catholic paper which
-gave special place to McGee's views.  Of course, the _New Era_ is
-also of interest.  In the _British American Magazine_ for August and
-October, 1863, McGee wrote articles on British American nationality.
-A few of his remarks in parliament on the same subject may be found
-in Thompson's _Mirror of Parliament_ for 1860.  Much interesting
-material will be found in the _Memoirs of Ralph Vansittart_ (Toronto,
-1924) by Edward Robert Cameron, a personal friend of McGee.  W. A.
-Foster, _Canada First_ (Toronto, 1890; with intr. by Goldwin Smith)
-is worth consulting for a contemporary opinion on McGee's influence
-over the younger generation of Canadians.  George W. Ross, _Getting
-into Parliament and After_ (Toronto, 1913) has a good, if brief,
-description of McGee as an orator.  Joseph Pope, _The Memoirs of the
-Right Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald_ (Ottawa, 1894) contains some
-information of interest.  The _Macdonald Papers_ in the Dominion
-Archives, have a fund of material on the movement of Confederation,
-with which McGee was so intimately connected.  Sir Charles Tupper,
-_Recollections of Sixty Years_ (London, 1914) has a few notes of
-interest.
-
-The following brief sketches and studies may be mentioned: Fennings
-Taylor, _Thomas D'Arcy McGee: Sketch of His Life and Death_
-(Montreal, 1868).  Henry J. O'C. Clarke, _A Short Sketch of the Life
-of Thomas D'Arcy McGee_ (Montreal, 1868).  N. F. Davin, _The Irishman
-in Canada_ (Toronto, 1877), devotes a few pages to McGee.  Charles
-Dent, _Canadian Portrait Gallery_, (Toronto, 1881), volume III, has a
-sketch of McGee's life.  Robert McGibbon, _Thomas D'Arcy McGee: An
-Address Before the St. Patrick's Society of Sherbrooke_ (Montreal
-1884).  J. K. Foran, _Thomas D'Arcy McGee as an Empire Builder_
-(Ottawa, 1906), an address before the Empire Club of Toronto.  H. O.
-Hammond, _Confederation and Its Leaders_ (Toronto, 1917), contains a
-brief chapter on McGee.  W. S. Wallace, _Growth of Canadian National
-Feeling_ (Canadian Historical Review, June, 1920), discusses McGee's
-part in the creation of a Canadian national sentiment.  D. C. Harvey,
-_Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the Prophet of Canadian Nationality_
-(University of Manitoba, 1923) describes McGee as a Canadian
-nationalist and quotes from his speeches.
-
-McGee's collected poems were edited and published by Mrs. Sadlier
-(New York, 1869).  Mrs. Sadlier's introduction contains some valuable
-information concerning McGee's life.
-
-The following is a list of the more important of McGee's other books:
-_O'Connell and His Friends_ (Boston, 1845); _Historical Sketches of
-Irish Settlers in America_ (Boston, 1855); _Catholic History of North
-America_ (Boston, 1855); _Life of Bishop Maginn_ (New York, 1857);
-_Canadian Ballads and Occasional Verses_ (Toronto, 1858); _The Irish
-Writers of the 17th Century_ (Dublin, 1863); _Popular History of
-Ireland_ (New York, 1863); and _Notes on Federal Governments Past and
-Present_ (Montreal, 1865).
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS D'ARCY MCGEE ***
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-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Thomas D&#039;Arcy McGee</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Alexander Brady</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 26, 2022 [eBook #69431]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Al Haines</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS D&#039;ARCY MCGEE ***</div>
-
-<p><br><br></p>
-
-<p class="capcenter">
-<a id="img-front"></a>
-<br>
-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-front.jpg" alt="THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE">
-<br>
-THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE
-</p>
-
-<h1>
-<br><br>
-  THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE<br>
-</h1>
-
-<p class="t3b">
-  BY<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="t2">
-  ALEXANDER BRADY<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="t4">
-  Lecturer in Political Science,<br>
-  University of Toronto<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-  TORONTO<br>
-  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED<br>
-  1925<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p class="t4">
-Copyright, Canada, 1925
-<br>
-BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
-<br><br>
-Printed in Canada
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p class="t3b">
-PREFATORY NOTE
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In seeking information for this modest
-story of the life of Thomas D'Arcy McGee,
-I received the kind assistance of the staff in
-the Reference Library, Toronto, and also
-that of Dr. Doughty and his staff in the
-Dominion Archives, Ottawa.  I must particularly
-acknowledge a debt to Mr. J. J. McGee
-of Ottawa, brother of T. D'Arcy McGee.  He
-kindly allowed me to examine the material
-which he had collected concerning his
-distinguished brother.  Finally, I am indebted
-to the editor of this series, Mr. W. S. Wallace,
-for helpful suggestions and criticisms.
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-A. B.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p class="t3b">
-CONTENTS
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#chap01">YOUTH</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#chap02">THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#chap03">THE PROPHET OF CANADIAN NATIONALITY</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#chap04">IN OFFICE AND OUT OF IT</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#chap05">CONFEDERATION AND FENIANISM</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#chap06">CLOSING YEARS</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#chap07">CONCLUSION</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<a href="#chap08">BIBLIOGRAPHY</a>
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap01"></a></p>
-
-<p class="t2">
-THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br></p>
-
-<h3>
-CHAPTER I
-<br><br>
-YOUTH
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-Thomas D'Arcy McGee had a unique
-place among the Canadian statesmen of
-his time.  His life was replete with dramatic
-interest.  Most of those who stood by the
-cradle of Confederation, wherever they had
-been born, were fashioned in their
-development by commonplace Canadian conditions
-and environment.  Such was not the case with
-McGee.  When he came to Canada, a young
-man of thirty-two, he had already gone
-through the crucible of varied experiences.
-In another land and under different conditions
-he had battled for a lost cause.  He had
-risen quickly from impoverished boyhood to
-distinction.  He had been a leader in an
-attempted revolution, a conspirator, a fugitive
-rebel, an exile.  He had felt the thrill that
-comes to a poet, and the less intense
-satisfaction that comes to the public leader.  In the
-work that brought him fame, journalism, he
-had a career equalled by few in its meteoric
-character.  He had been the editor or
-assistant editor of five newspapers, and on both
-sides of the Atlantic had borne a large share
-in intense controversies.  He came to
-Montreal, in 1857, almost in the guise of an
-adventurer; and the portion of his life woven
-into the story of Canada was no less dramatic
-than that which preceded it.  Within a few
-months of his arrival, he was elected to the
-colonial legislature; within a few years, he
-was honoured as one of the outstanding
-statesmen of the British colonies.  In that venture
-of political faith which resulted in the
-establishment of the Dominion, he took a
-dominant share, and was generally acclaimed
-its most eloquent champion.  His public life
-in Canada was crushed into ten years, but
-within that period his achievements had
-won him a permanent place in Canadian
-history.  Yet in his career tragedy kept
-pace with brilliant success.  He had no more
-than seen his cherished cause triumph when
-his life was cut short by the bullet of a Fenian
-assassin, who mistook him for an enemy of
-Ireland.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Like Abraham Lincoln, also the victim
-of an assassin, McGee was born in a cottage.
-But the country and circumstances surrounding
-the birth of the two men were strikingly
-different.  The hero of the American Civil
-War was reared amid the uncouth surroundings
-of the frontier.  He never became freed
-from the social rawness of a community
-arising from a wilderness.  McGee was born in
-the year 1825, at Carlingford, in the beautiful
-coast country of County Louth, Ireland.
-Carlingford is a shrine of natural beauty.  It
-is washed by the blue waters of Carlingford
-Lough, and in the background are the Mourne
-Mountains with their ever alternating shadows
-and sunshine.  In such congenial surroundings,
-rich in their associations with Ireland's
-heroic past, McGee's childhood was spent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-His father was a coast-guard, whose
-remote ancestors had been the famous Magees
-of Ulster.  But it was chiefly from his mother,
-not his father, that McGee received his mental
-inheritance.  She was the daughter of a
-Dublin bookseller, by name Morgan, who had
-been implicated in the rebellion of 1798, and
-whose business as a consequence had been
-ruined.  She was a woman of imagination,
-who cherished the memory of her father's
-espousal of the national cause and preserved all
-his national enthusiasms, which she sedulously
-fed to her son, Thomas D'Arcy.  Her
-nationalism was not limited to the mere
-aspiration that Ireland possess political
-independence.  She was interested in all the old Irish
-myths, traditions, and poetry, and these she
-related to her little "Tommie".  Thus, from
-infancy, he grew up saturated in Irish literary
-lore, and an ardent idealist for the nationality
-of his country.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The simple facts respecting McGee's
-childhood scarcely need narrating.  They are
-facts that might be recounted with respect to
-thousands of Irish boys of the same period.
-His father brought his family to Wexford
-when Thomas D'Arcy was eight years old,
-and McGee later in life always associated
-Wexford with his youth.  In this city he
-obtained the slender advantages of a day school
-education, and came under the influence of a
-stimulating personality, the famous Father
-Mathew.  This marvellously effective apostle
-of temperance, who swayed the conduct of
-Irishmen as with a magic wand, was at the
-time carrying on his triumphant campaign in
-southern Ireland.  His appeal touched McGee.
-Under Father Mathew's influence a
-juvenile temperance society was established
-in Wexford.  One evening a slight boy with
-flat face, dark skin and hair, and wonderfully
-expressive eyes, delivered before the society
-a spell-binding oration, on which he received
-the hearty congratulations of the great priest.
-The boy was young McGee, and this was his
-first public speech.  During the next two
-years, 1840-1842, "little Tommy McGee's"
-speeches drew large numbers to the society's
-meetings.  But Wexford was not long to
-claim the boy orator.  His mother had died,
-his father had remarried, and the family were
-not in affluent circumstances.  Ireland in the
-forties held out few prospects to the children
-of the indigent.  The economic structure of
-Irish society was diseased.  Approximately
-seven million were vainly endeavouring to
-wring a lean subsistence from the land, and
-hundreds of thousands were on the verge of
-famine.  Gloom and misery were written
-broad over the southern counties, lit up but
-not relieved by the sputterings of political
-agitation.  The one hope of the impoverished
-was the continent in the west, and a mighty
-stream of emigration to that land of promise
-set in.  McGee joined the emigrant throng.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Accompanied by a sister, he arrived in the
-United States with few material possessions
-beyond the clothes on his back and a prize
-book won at school.  The latter he disposed of
-during his first day in Boston in order that he
-might be able to sleep under a roof.  His
-destination had been the home of an aunt in
-Rhode Island, but Boston, with its commercial
-activities and its hum of life, attracted him.
-In June, 1842, he repaired there to seek his
-fortune.  Boston, like every large American
-city, had many immigrant boys seeking fortunes,
-and the hopes of the Irish lad must have
-shrunk away as the days of unemployment
-passed and the empty future opened out.
-Then, suddenly, one of the many incidents
-which give a dramatic interest to McGee's
-life occurred.  It was the practice of
-Bostonians, a patriotic people mindful of their
-history, to commemorate the Fourth of
-July with a civic celebration.  At the close
-of a much applauded public address, a
-strange and very uncouth youth feverishly
-jumped on an old cart, and for half an hour
-delivered in a voice of thrilling melody an
-oration on the virtues of liberty.  Unknown
-by a soul in the large throng, McGee was
-cheered for his audacity and success.  Next
-morning, with still little hope of getting
-employment, he prepared to return to his aunt
-in Rhode Island.  The story is related that
-he called at the office of the <i>Boston Pilot</i> with
-the purpose of procuring something to read on
-his journey.  He was there recognized by the
-observant proprietor as the silver-tongued
-youth of the previous day.  A conversation
-was opened which resulted in the offer of a
-position with the paper.  This offer he accepted,
-and thus he became launched on the career
-of journalism which dragged him, as it has
-dragged many obscure but talented youths,
-into the glaring light of publicity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had the powers certain to extract
-success: a quick and assimilative mind, an
-imagination that could clothe the dullest
-facts in the most appealing colours, and a
-marvellous facility in expressing himself.  Within
-a few months he revealed that he was worth
-more than a mere clerkship, and became a
-travelling agent and special correspondent.
-To retain the support of those subscribers who
-were immigrant Irish, the prominent questions
-of Irish politics were threshed out in
-the columns of the <i>Pilot</i>.  McGee proved
-invaluable in the presentation of Irish issues
-and in the vigorous championship of the chief
-plank in O'Connell's platform, repeal of the
-union of Great Britain and Ireland.  The
-powers of his journalistic pen extended his
-fame throughout New England, and within
-two years he became, with Walter J. Walsh,
-joint editor of the <i>Pilot</i>.  An editor of the age
-of twenty is not a common phenomenon.
-Still more uncommon is it when the youth in
-question is at the same time winning a
-widely-extended reputation as a public speaker.  In
-the forties, on both sides of the Atlantic, there
-was a passion for public lectures.  Such great
-names as those of Carlyle, Emerson, and
-Dickens were associated with the movement.
-McGee's zeal to find expression led him to
-deliver public lectures throughout New
-England, and the magnetic charm of the born
-orator insured his success.  Few public
-speakers could equal him in holding an audience
-enthralled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The true instinct of the journalist&mdash;the
-desire to move public opinion&mdash;acting on a
-mind naturally brilliant, won for the young
-immigrant a local reputation in New
-England, but it also brought him into all those
-dusty controversies and conflicts inseparable
-from journalism.  He found himself in vital
-battle with the settled prejudices of New
-England.  The large immigration from Ireland
-had in this period begun to disturb old
-Bostonians, proud of their descent, fictitious
-or real, from the Pilgrim fathers.  The leaven
-of Puritanism made them detest the faith of
-the immigrants; their belief in the wholesome
-virtues of their racial stock made them resent
-the intrusion of the Celtic Irish; and their
-material well-being gave them a snobbish
-dislike of ragged and impoverished peasants
-from the bogs of Leinster and the rocky
-hillsides of Connaught.  A boycott of Irish
-immigrants was launched, and against it McGee
-contended with all his youthful fire.  Thus
-the first public cause for which he expended
-his energies was the recognition of his race
-and faith in the community life of New
-England.  In essence his plea was for tolerance
-between class and class and sect and sect.
-The arguments that he advanced as youthful
-editor find a surprising echo in those which he
-used twenty years later in the Canadian
-provinces.  It was only through the tolerant
-recognition of different sects and races that a new
-American community could be constituted.
-Prejudices and jealousies must be erased from
-social life, and the spirit of goodwill developed.
-It was a simple and ancient message, but one
-that McGee both in the United States and in
-Canada never failed to plead.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The defence of his countrymen led him
-in 1845 to publish his first book, <i>Historical
-Sketches of O'Connell and His Friends</i>.  It is
-written with the nervous eloquence and facility
-of all his later works.  The most significant
-fact about it was the hero-worship which he
-lavished upon the great Irish liberator.  "In
-him," he enthusiastically wrote, "liberty will
-boast a model for all her future reformers."  In
-his later Canadian career McGee showed
-himself a consistent disciple of his hero of
-1845.  He was a follower of O'Connell in his
-implicit faith in attaining political visions by
-moving first the popular mind through oratory
-and the press.  O'Connell is generally
-remembered as an agitator, but he was something
-more than the word ordinarily connotes.
-He was a political educator, and a political
-educator of O'Connell's type McGee always
-aspired to be.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the year which witnessed the publication
-of his eulogy of O'Connell, McGee's fame
-spread beyond Boston and its New England
-environs.  Indeed, his articles on Repeal were
-read with keen and satisfied interest in the
-club rooms of Dublin.  O'Connell himself
-paid him a compliment by publicly referring
-to his editorials as "the inspired writings of a
-young exiled Irish boy in America."  John
-Gray, proprietor of the <i>Freeman's Journal</i>,
-which was O'Connell's pillar of support,
-considered McGee's journalistic talent worthy of
-enlistment in the service of his paper.  He
-offered him a liberally paid position.  The
-result was that McGee returned to Dublin.
-Only three years had elapsed since his
-departure, but they were years which had witnessed
-his rise from the position of a poor
-immigrant boy, not unlike thousands who
-yearly crossed in the steerage to be lost in the
-human eddies of American cities, to that of a
-newspaper editor with a reputation in America
-and a certain distinction in Ireland.  The
-rapid pace of his rise measures in some degree
-his quantity of inborn talent and his
-determination to hew success from the most
-untoward circumstances.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-His position with the <i>Freeman</i> brought
-him to London as a political correspondent.
-He had thus the advantage of viewing from
-the close range of the press gallery the working
-of parliamentary institutions, and we may
-assume that it enabled him to store away
-political and constitutional precedents for
-future use.  But his political articles did not
-please the proprietor of the <i>Freeman</i>.  The
-cause is to be found in the fact that they
-showed the influence of a group of young men
-with whom McGee on his return came to be
-associated, and who profoundly influenced
-his whole development.  This group was the
-party of Young Ireland.  At this period,
-Thomas Davis, a blending of poet and man
-of affairs, was the guiding mind of the group,
-and the Dublin <i>Nation</i> was its organ of opinion.
-The leaders were all men of talent; a few were
-men of genius.  Next to Davis as an active
-and persuasive writer was Charles Gavan
-Duffy, destined later to win political laurels
-in Australia, and to leave no mean name in
-the records of imperial statesmanship.  John
-Blake Dillon, father of a subsequent Irish
-nationalist leader, was another forceful
-member of the group.  Thomas Francis Meagher,
-in whose character were entwined the chivalry
-of the soldier, the clear judgment of the
-statesman, and the emotional intensity of the
-poet, was a third.  Other names might be
-mentioned.  There was John Mitchel, a man
-of uncompromising mind and a writer of
-powerful prose; Devin Reilly, a brilliant but
-rancorous youth, who in the next year was to
-consider McGee as his rival; and James
-Mangan, a poet of wasted genius.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All of these men were young.  Few of
-them were over thirty.  With that hopefulness
-which is the gift of youth, they were
-driven by the ideal of recreating Ireland by
-awakening her national consciousness.  Their
-task was similar to that of their great
-contemporary, Mazzini, in Italy.  They sought
-to arouse the Irish people to act for the
-national good, to sink all sectarian animosities
-and class prejudices which tended to dissipate
-the nation's energy on trifling ends.  Their
-outlook was not limited to material welfare
-or bare political liberty.  They endeavoured
-to revivify the cultural life of Ireland, to
-give a more vital direction to its art, and to
-develop a more intense literature.  Their
-cherished motto was "Educate that you may
-be free."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Soon after his return from America,
-McGee met the members of this group, and
-readily subscribed to their doctrines and
-shared their enthusiasms.  Their ideas were
-new food for his mind, and he never wholly
-shed the influence of their fervid idealism.
-When he later pleaded the cause of Canadian
-nationality, he did so in the spirit and through
-the inspiration of the Young Ireland creed.
-We have from the pen of Gavan Duffy an
-interesting impression of McGee, when he
-became a disciple of Young Ireland: "The
-young man was not prepossessing.  He had
-a face of almost African type, his dress was
-slovenly even for the careless class to which
-he belonged, he looked unformed and had a
-manner which struck me at first sight as too
-deferential for self-respect.  But he had not
-spoken three sentences in a singularly sweet
-and flexible voice till it was plain that he was
-a man in whom one might dimly discover
-rudiments of the orator, poet and statesman
-hidden under the ungainly disguise."  Needless
-to say, Duffy gladly welcomed such
-a promising recruit in his loosely formed
-association.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-McGee's new alliance damaged his connection
-with the <i>Freeman</i>.  His articles tended
-to be too speculative and not sufficiently of
-the sober-suited type desired by the
-commercial classes who supported O'Connell and
-the <i>Freeman</i>.  Moreover, he came to spend
-more time in the British Museum digging
-up the materials for Irish history than in the
-press gallery following the ingenuities of
-Peel's politics.  His best literary efforts, which
-absorbed most of his time, were his articles
-for the <i>Nation</i>, and the tone of these was not
-acceptable to O'Connell.  Finally, Gray,
-becoming dissatisfied, brought his engagement
-to a close.  Duffy, who valued McGee's
-talent highly, immediately employed him as
-London correspondent for the <i>Nation</i>, and
-until his flight from Ireland in 1848 he
-remained an expounder, through the press, of
-Young Ireland's varying hopes and policies.
-Sectarian prejudices and colourless enthusiasm
-for the national cause all encountered his
-virulent denunciation, and he sought in
-accordance with the <i>Nation's</i> prospectus "to
-direct the popular mind and the sympathies
-of educated men of all parties to the great
-end of nationality."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Meanwhile events in Ireland were hurrying
-to a dismal crisis.  At the end of 1845
-the famine had begun to creep gloomily over
-the land, and within the next nine months
-it had the country in its relentless grip.
-Despair prevailed everywhere, except in
-Dublin, where the calamity merely drove the
-political parties to more feverish controversies.
-The Young Irelanders were breaking with
-O'Connell and his repeal agitation.  On the
-founding of the <i>Nation</i> in 1842, Davis and his
-associates had strongly supported the
-O'Connellite movement, but as time passed the
-difficulties of co-operation between the
-younger men and the old agitator became
-manifest.  For a generation O'Connell had
-been the uncrowned king of Ireland.  He
-had swayed her masses with his fertile brain
-and facile tongue.  His triumph in the
-movement of Catholic emancipation, when he had
-conquered Wellington and convinced Peel,
-had given him a confidence which was now
-proving fatal.  In the forties of the century
-he was reaching the sere and yellow leaf of
-his career, but his ambition to maintain an
-unquestioned control of Irish affairs remained
-as keen as ever, and prompted him to look
-with critical suspicion upon the Young Ireland
-group.  It is the lot of old men seldom to
-understand the generation that hurriedly
-presses behind them with its new hopes and
-fresh methods.  They view its visions with
-frank uneasiness, and in the rheumy
-conservatism of age condemn its vibrant actions
-as erratic and destructive.  It was so with
-O'Connell.  He mocked the Young Ireland
-talk of recreating the nation, he scorned its
-literary aspirations, he suspected its
-condemnation of sectarianism, and he distrusted
-its methods.  In 1846, the Young Irelanders
-under the stress of the famine had begun to
-talk of following the precedent of Pym and
-Hampden and winning political liberty for
-Ireland by the sword; they who had been
-content merely to champion the Irish cultural
-renaissance, now proclaimed that Ireland
-could not be saved alone by poetry.  She
-must have action.  But O'Connell, who had
-been taught prudence by long and exacting
-experiences, condemned this rash talk.  The
-younger generation in Ireland took his
-prudence as timidity, and spurned his words of
-caution.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The elements of disruption long existing
-between O'Connell and the Young Irelanders
-ripened in July, 1846, when the younger men
-seceded from the Repeal Association.  But
-the critical nature of affairs consequent upon
-the famine once more herded together the
-national leaders, and in February, 1847, a
-Repeal Confederation was formed with objects
-somewhat similar to those of the former
-association.  The formation of this
-Confederation marked McGee's first participation
-in active politics.  He had hurried back from
-the calm atmosphere of London to the hectic
-politics of Dublin, and was made a councillor
-of the Confederation.  It is unnecessary to
-follow his manœuvres amongst the Dublin
-politicians.  We catch a glimpse of him in
-the comments of a country gentleman who
-had dropped in to hear the debates in the
-Confederation.  He was at the outset very
-much displeased at seeing a mere boy,
-ill-dressed and singularly ugly, rise to address
-an assembly which had as its object the
-saving of Ireland.  But his displeasure
-vanished, and he was seized with amazement
-when he found the boy with smiling confidence
-deliver a statesmanlike oration that
-captivated his audience.  McGee had, moreover,
-other acquirements in addition to oratory,
-for the council sufficiently prized his
-executive ability to make him its secretary.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The fates quickly precipitated events in
-Ireland.  In the spring of 1847 O'Connell
-died, and his death plunged the nationalist
-movement into a morass.  "The king of the
-forest is dead," wrote a contemporary, "and
-there is neither lion nor lion's cub to fill his
-vacant place."  John O'Connell, the Liberator's
-son, aspired to the leadership formerly
-held by his father, but he was not a lion.  He
-was wholly unable to act with McGee and
-the Young Irelanders, and all possibility of
-united action on Irish affairs vanished.
-Following the French Revolution of February,
-1848, which transferred revolutionary
-enthusiasm to Ireland as to every other country
-in Europe, John Mitchel, with the recklessness
-and Ishmaelite characteristics of a born
-revolutionist, preached an armed uprising.
-Others, including McGee, suddenly echoed
-his sentiments, and revolutionary clubs sprang
-into being.  These constituted in June a
-special executive to which they were to yield
-obedience.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-McGee became a member of the executive
-committee of five and went to his task of
-creating a revolution with flushed enthusiasm.
-A venture promising a quick fame and success
-to the public cause presented itself.  A
-delegate arrived from the Irish Confederates
-at Glasgow stating that they had a considerable
-supply of arms and ammunition, and if
-a known and daring leader were sent them,
-four or five hundred men would volunteer
-for an expedition to Ireland.  They might
-seize a steamer on the Clyde, and sail for
-Sligo or Killala.  Thus, by a diversion in
-the west, they could strike British power
-a blow from the rear.  There was too much
-of a dramatic appeal in this adventure for
-McGee to refuse when it was suggested that
-he be the leader.  Visions of emulating Paul
-Jones danced before his mind, and away he
-sped the same evening for Scotland, while
-his associates matured their plans in Ireland.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-With rapid dispatch McGee consulted
-the Irish revolutionists in Edinburgh,
-Glasgow, and Greenock, and enrolled four hundred
-volunteers.  The crew of a steamer sailing
-from Greenock was won over, and it was
-arranged that the arms should be placed on
-board as merchandise.  While he was
-developing his plans, McGee was recognized
-by the police; and, his arrest being under
-consideration, the revolutionary committee
-insisted that he leave immediately and proceed
-to Sligo, where he could extemporize
-arrangements for the landing of the expedition.
-He reached Sligo early in August, and there
-awaited developments, scanning the rocky
-and picturesque shores of Lough Gill in the
-character of a Dublin student on holiday.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The news that finally reached him
-shattered his hopes.  He learned how Smith
-O'Brien had led his insurgents to the so-called
-battle of Ballingarry, which ended, pantomime-like,
-in Widow McCormack's cabbage patch.
-O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and other
-leaders, he heard, were in the hands of the
-government, and the revolutionary organization
-had collapsed like a punctured balloon.
-The peasantry, on whom the success of the
-movement finally depended, were more eager
-to escape in emigrant ships from an
-impoverished country than to fight for a
-revolutionary government.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To America McGee's eyes were
-immediately turned.  He made his way to
-Derry, where the bishop and his clergy
-sheltered him.  Thence in the dress of a priest,
-with his breviary in his hand and with a
-sad heart, he boarded a brig at the mouth of
-the Foyle, and sailed for the United States.
-He became one of the many disillusioned who
-in this year of unfulfilled revolutions streamed
-across the Atlantic.  His departure from
-Ireland was not, however, as he might have
-thought, the close, but the more vital opening,
-of his career.  In America he began at the
-age of twenty-three a new life in which he
-was destined to plead for causes that were to
-prove more successful than that of Irish
-independence in 1848.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap02"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-CHAPTER II
-<br><br>
-THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-In early October, 1848, McGee arrived
-in Philadelphia, and before the close of
-the month he was in the exciting swirl of
-American journalism.  He established the
-<i>New York Nation</i>, patterned much after the
-Dublin <i>Nation</i>.  It was frankly an
-Irish-American organ which gave special attention
-to the politics of Ireland, and to the means
-whereby Irishmen in the new world might
-advance the interests of their native country.
-It was written with that intense bitterness
-towards Britain characteristic of the journals
-of most exiled Irishmen.  It is interesting to
-find the man who in 1868 was described by
-Lord Mayo as "the most eloquent advocate
-of British rule on the face of the world"
-vowing in 1848 to dedicate all his days to the
-ruin of British power.  But McGee's opinions
-were to travel a changeful journey between
-these two dates.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-His prospects in New York were promising.
-Although young, he had already a wide
-reputation as an Irish leader, and a large
-population in New York and the neighbouring
-states was prepared to support his paper.  But
-youthful rashness damaged his prospective
-success.  Soon after his arrival in America,
-he wrote some public letters attributing
-the failure of the Irish revolutionary
-movement to the influence of the clergy.  He
-argued that they were primarily responsible
-for the fact that the peasantry had not risen
-at the critical moment.  Such a reflection upon
-the patriotism of the Irish clergy brought into
-the field against McGee an experienced and
-formidable controversialist in Bishop Hughes
-of New York.  The bishop had proved his
-steel in many a public duel, and his ardent
-Irish patriotism had given him a vast prestige
-over his flock.  Having closely followed
-affairs in Ireland, he was well prepared to
-meet McGee's challenge.  He argued that
-blame for the failure of the insurrection must
-not be placed upon the clergy, but upon the
-leaders of Young Ireland, prominent among
-whom was McGee himself.  They had precipitated
-a rebellion for which they had made
-no serviceable preparation, and thus exposed
-the peasantry to destruction by British
-soldiery.  The priests, by restraining their
-flocks from rebellion, had alone saved them
-from disaster.  Bishop Hughes was not
-content with such argument.  He denounced
-McGee as being faithless to his church and
-creed, which elicited from the latter the reply
-that "My crime is not that I do not believe
-in the creed of my fathers and my affections,
-but that I have failed to pay my court to some
-great unknown who sits chafing on his chair,
-impatient of his daily dose of honied praises."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The futile controversy that ensued proved
-fatal to the fortunes of McGee's paper.  His
-joust with the most powerful Catholic
-ecclesiastic in America alienated the sympathies
-of those who might otherwise have given him
-support.  He had jockeyed himself into the
-false position of being anti-clerical, a position
-which in the nineteenth century seldom won
-the support of Irish Catholics.  The situation
-was all the more unfortunate in that he held
-many views in common with Bishop Hughes,
-and was later to become his warm friend.  In
-the midst of the controversy, he received from
-Gavan Duffy an invitation to assist once more
-in the editing of the Dublin <i>Nation</i>.  Duffy
-wrote with the enticing remark that "as a
-writer and a speaker there is not any Irishman
-living whose help I would as soon have as
-yours."  All the weight of pleasant associations
-tugged at him to return.  In his youthful
-verse a dominant note was a longing for
-his native land:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Where'er I turned, some emblem still<br>
-  Roused consciousness upon my track;<br>
-  Some hill was like an Irish hill,<br>
-  Some wild-bird's whistle call'd me back.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-But the vision of leading the Irish in America
-had captivated his imagination, and he
-refused Duffy's offer.  None the less he
-determined to shift the scene of his work.  He
-sold out the <i>Nation</i>, went to Boston, and in
-August, 1850, established his second paper, the
-<i>American Celt</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-During the next seven years, his career
-was that of an itinerant and rather restless
-journalist.  In 1851 he was publishing the
-<i>Celt</i>, and championing the interests of the
-Irish in Buffalo.  The following year, he was
-in New York, feverishly dashing off editorials
-to guide his Catholic countrymen through the
-stormy passages of mid-century American
-politics.  There are few recess periods in the
-career of political journalism.  It is an
-incessant battle demanding continuous vigilance
-and tireless effort.  McGee, in New York, fully
-experienced its exacting claims, and satisfied
-them sufficiently to make his paper the most
-powerful Irish-American organ of the period.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The fifties were a stirring decade in the
-history of the American republic.  They were
-marked by an intense feverishness in politics
-as the question of slavery loomed higher on
-the horizon.  The giant strides of material
-development, the pushing back of the frontier
-by the advancing lines of railway, the expansion
-of commerce, the marvellous growth of
-population, all added a buoyancy to American
-life which tended to draw newcomers into its
-tide.  Carl Schurz, the young German
-revolutionist of 1848, was only a few years in the
-country when he became a party leader,
-swinging the votes of the western Germans in
-support of the Republican platform.  Similarly
-many of McGee's fellow Young Irelanders
-became champions of American parties.
-John Mitchel's brilliant, but bitter pen was
-enlisted in the service of the Democrats.
-McGee, however, kept free from the meshes
-of party affiliations.  Throughout his career
-of journalism in New York, he continued to
-consider himself as a new immigrant fighting
-the battles of the new immigrants.  He set
-himself to be the sentinel and champion of his
-people, to safeguard their interests, and to
-direct their development amid the plastic
-conditions of American society.  It was no
-easy task.  In the twelve odd years following
-the famine, emigration from Ireland to the
-United States continued in a steady stream.
-Between 1846 and 1851, a quarter of a million
-left Ireland each year; between 1851 and 1861,
-over 100,000 left annually.  Most of these
-found their destination in the American cities
-of the Atlantic seaboard.  McGee saw their
-need of leadership.  They were chiefly
-peasants and small farmers, pushed from their
-land in Ireland by famine and eviction.
-Concerning the relentless struggle of city life
-they knew nothing.  Of the political issues
-of American cities they had no knowledge,
-and their ignorance exposed them to the
-ready wiles of ward bosses in search of votes.
-Promises were readily made to them and as
-readily unfulfilled.  But, above all, their
-political position and interests were endangered
-in the fifties by the rise of the famous
-Know-Nothing party, with which McGee was
-in warfare during the greater portion of his
-residence in New York.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Know-Nothingism was a development of
-the native American movement of the forties.
-The support tendered by the Irish immigrants
-to the Democrats had assisted in the
-disorganization and severe defeat of the
-Republican party.  Hence many disappointed
-Republican leaders determined to form an
-organization which should withhold political
-rights from European newcomers.  At first
-they organized a secret fraternity called the
-"Know-Nothings" from "I don't know," the
-ever-repeated reply of its members to inquiry
-about its nature.  The original name bestowed
-upon the fraternity by its founders was "The
-Sons of '76", or the "Order of the Star-Spangled
-Banner"; and its slogan was "America for
-the Americans."  Its favourite counter-sign
-was the traditional order of Washington,
-"Put none but Americans on guard
-to-night."  The national sentiment behind the
-society was reinforced by Protestant sectarian
-zeal, since its organizers were concerned not
-merely with depriving immigrants of power,
-but with excluding all Catholics from office.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thanks to the allure of its novelty, this
-party developed with phenomenal rapidity.
-In 1854 its candidates swept the elections in
-Massachusetts, and Gardiner, its nominee,
-became governor of the state.  Its members
-sought to control nomination for office by
-secret conventions of delegates.  They bound
-themselves to cast no votes for any except
-Protestant-born citizens, and endeavoured to
-alter the naturalization laws so that foreigners
-might not be allowed to vote until they had
-resided twenty-one years in the country.  The
-Know-Nothing party could never have had
-more than temporary success.  As Horace
-Greeley, the noted editor of the New York
-<i>Tribune</i>, remarked, it "would seem as devoid
-of the elements of persistence as an anti-cholera
-or an anti-potato-rot party would be."  But
-McGee, like other leaders of the swelling
-Irish population, was alarmed at its growing
-strength.  It threatened to proscribe the men
-of his faith, and to exclude from the exercise
-of political rights immigrants like himself who
-sought a new home in the republic.  In the
-columns of the <i>Celt</i>, he attacked its aims,
-assailed its champions, and marshalled
-Irish-American opinion against it.  There is little
-doubt that this conflict, in which McGee
-was engaged during the last five years of his
-residence in New York, did much to disillusion
-him in respect to American life and institutions.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A few years before he had written the lines:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Hail to the land whose broad domain<br>
-  Rejoices under Freedom's reign<br>
-  Where neither right nor race is banned.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-But he no longer viewed the republic as a
-Utopia.  He now discovered that the so-called
-land of freedom was a land of intolerance, and
-his migration to Canada was largely due to the
-action of the Know-Nothing faction.  As he
-later remarked, "I did not want to be a
-citizen on sufferance, as it were, courted one
-day and proscribed the next."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But McGee served the immigrants in
-other ways than by fighting the Know-Nothing
-platform.  He encouraged them to seek
-their own self-development.  He preached the
-homely precepts of industry, and urged them
-to study the laws and customs of their new
-country in order to be able to view intelligently
-its problems.  The most helpful assistance
-that could be rendered to the indigent
-newcomers was to provide them with the
-facilities for education.  During his early
-residence in Boston, McGee had realized this,
-and it was due largely to his labours that
-night schools for adults were engrafted on the
-educational system.  The same work he now
-earnestly promoted in New York, with benefit
-to immigrants of every race.  But his most
-emphatic plea was that his countrymen should
-move from the crowded tenements and
-congested industries of the eastern cities to the
-homestead lands of the West.  "We must,"
-he wrote in the <i>Celt</i>, "urge them on and on.
-We must shame them out of cellars and
-sewers, and endeavour by every art to awaken
-in their hearts the passion for competency, so
-natural and laudable in a new and unsettled
-country."  For a time he had the dream of
-establishing an Irish state in the western
-territories&mdash;an inland Erin&mdash;which should
-draw thither the Irish immigrants.  For this
-purpose, in 1856, he took a leading part in
-calling a conference of leading Irish Americans
-at Buffalo.  Although the dream of an Irish
-state in the west was not realized, McGee's
-advocacy of western settlement was not futile.
-Many flourishing homesteads in Illinois and
-Wisconsin bore witness to the zeal with which
-he advocated western colonization.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-By 1852 a considerable change had taken
-place in McGee's thought.  When he had
-reached Philadelphia in the autumn of 1848,
-he was a revolutionist with all that lack of
-compromise which accompanies youth.  He
-shared the idealism of the ardent patriots
-who had been prepared to take any and every
-means for the quick attainment of Irish
-freedom.  As one Young Irelander had said:
-"If the altar stood in the way of national
-liberty, then down with the altar."  The path
-to Ireland's freedom should, if necessary, cut
-through every institution and be impeded by
-no consideration.  But four years of controversial
-journalism in America shook McGee's
-former revolutionary faith.  In a letter to a
-friend, published in the <i>Celt</i>, he confessed that
-in the past he had been on the wrong track.
-He found that he had neglected some of the
-primary principles which govern the world.
-In the future he was determined to put all
-political action to the test of a simple creed,
-the chief tenet of which was a belief in
-Christendom and the Catholic church.  The
-revolutionary liberalism which sought in the name of
-liberty to tear down the church and other
-institutions was reprehensible, and to be
-resisted.  It is not to be assumed that by this
-profession of faith McGee suddenly, in 1852,
-saw, like Paul on the Damascus road, a new
-light.  The fact is that in Ireland he had been
-a revolutionist largely by the accident of
-events.  By temperament he had none of
-those Ishmaelite characteristics which go to
-make the revolutionary.  "My native
-disposition," he declared in the Canadian
-parliament some years later, "is towards reverence
-for things old, and veneration for the landmarks
-of the past."  Away from Ireland's
-hectic politics his temperament reasserted
-itself.  His reverence for things old fed his
-loyalty to his church, and led him henceforth
-to discountenance all movements for the
-freeing of Ireland which did not receive its
-conservative sanction.  As subsequent events
-show, he remained the champion of reform
-for his native land, as for the country of his
-adoption, but he was ever emphatic in his
-denunciation of the violent methods of
-conspiracy and revolution.  His change of front
-brought him into friction with many Irish
-Americans like John Mitchel and the founders
-of Fenianism, and this fact, linked with the
-existence of Know-Nothingism, largely
-explained his departure to Canada in 1857.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-McGee at various times had made visits
-to the British colonies.  He had delivered
-public lectures in Montreal.  He had
-summered on Lake Huron, had written letters to
-his paper from the upper Ottawa, and had
-passed through the rich meadows and orchards
-of the Annapolis valley in Nova Scotia.  At
-all times he was struck with the orderly and
-secure society of the British provinces, while
-his imagination had been kindled by the
-magnificent future which stretched before
-them.  He early visualized them as the germ
-cells of a new nation.  He was, therefore,
-prepared in 1857 to accept readily the
-invitation of some Canadian Irishmen to become
-their leader in Lower Canada.  A delegation
-consisting of such prominent Irish Canadians
-of the period as Frank Smith, Patrick Brennan,
-and James Donnelly went to New York,
-interviewed McGee, and obtained his acceptance
-of their invitation.  In the spring of 1857 he
-moved to Montreal, and there began his
-Canadian career.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To McGee British North America seemed
-on the threshold of a new and promising era.
-The steam-boat was drawing the provinces
-closer to Britain.  The telegraph and Atlantic
-cable were making possible more intimate
-co-operation between the various provinces
-themselves, and between them and the mother
-country.  The building of railways promised
-in the near future to bridge the dreary
-distances of forest and rock which severed the
-various colonies from one another and kept
-them as far apart as Europe is from America.
-In addition to these facts was another laden
-with rich hope, the prospective annexation to
-the Canadas of the vast hinterland then under
-the dominion of the Hudson's Bay Company.
-What are now the rolling wheat fields of
-Manitoba and Saskatchewan were in 1857
-merely the hunting grounds of trappers,
-employed by one of the mightiest of British
-mercantile corporations.  Yet there were some
-men who had caught a glimpse of the potential
-value of those extensive lands beyond
-Lake Superior.  They described them as the
-natural field of expansion for the eastern
-colonies and advocated their annexation.
-Under the inspiration of these pregnant facts,
-McGee in May, 1857, established in Montreal
-a tri-weekly paper, called the <i>New Era</i> as
-indicative of the time of its birth.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The paper had too brief a career to
-exercise much influence on public life.
-Moreover, in 1857, McGee, as a newcomer, was of
-necessity feeling his way amid the shoals and
-narrows of Canadian politics, and was unable
-to discuss local issues with intimacy.  None
-the less, the <i>New Era</i> has an outstanding
-significance in Canadian history.  It was the
-first newspaper in the British colonies
-dedicated to the cause of colonial union and the
-establishment of a British American nationality
-under the rule of a royal prince.  It
-advanced the chief arguments for union
-employed eight years later at the conferences
-of Charlottetown and Quebec.  It pleaded an
-aspiration not finally realized for another ten
-years.  To McGee nothing seemed more
-apparent than that the Canadas and the
-colonies by the sea should form the nucleus of
-a nation.  The essential means was the
-development of a common will strong enough
-to overcome the obstacles in the way of closer
-co-operation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The vision of a united British America
-was not new.  It was as old as the existence
-of the colonies.  It grew naturally out of the
-presence of a number of scattered communities
-whose common interests could best be served
-by a common government.  Previous to the
-American Revolution the great Franklin had
-advocated such a union for the thirteen
-colonies.  After the Revolution it found many
-champions in the territories which remained
-under the British crown.  In 1790, while the
-Constitutional Act for the Canadian provinces
-was being fashioned, Chief Justice Smith
-suggested a plan for the comprehensive government
-of all the colonies.  In the succeeding
-years, many others made similar
-suggestions&mdash;Uniacke in Nova Scotia, Sewell in Quebec,
-William Lyon Mackenzie, the fiery Canadian
-agitator, and John Beverley Robinson, an
-Upper Canadian who had pondered long and
-carefully on colonial issues.  Even the
-distinguished name of Lord Durham was
-associated with the idea.  He recommended it as
-the one means of developing for the colonies
-a British American nationality, which should
-rival the robust and aggressive nationality
-across the southern frontier.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After 1850, the conception was dragged
-into the daylight of practical politics.  A
-number of prominent Canadians saw in it the
-one solvent of the constitutional difficulties
-arising from the Union Act of 1841.  In April,
-1856, A. A. Dorion, leader of the Lower
-Canadian Liberals, pleaded in parliament for the
-federal union of the two Canadas.  Thus, the
-idea had already entered the stage of practical
-discussion when McGee established his <i>New
-Era</i>.  But with the politicians it was entertained
-largely as a gateway of escape from the
-political embarrassments of the existing
-system, and was made subsidiary to party
-considerations.  McGee in his paper fired it
-with a wider emotional appeal.  With him
-it was not the product of close grappling with
-the political difficulties of the Union Act, but
-a poet's vision.  It was a dream in the
-fulfilment of which lay a mighty future for all
-the peoples of British North America.  With
-a newcomer's freshness of observation, he saw
-in the colonies possibilities of development
-which had lain largely unnoticed by the
-public men of the colonies.  He thought as
-much of the social and spiritual consequences
-of union as of the political.  It would not
-merely provide the British provinces with the
-strength of a common government, but would
-knit the scattered colonists into a united,
-self-reliant people, with a common will and
-common hopes, the true evidence of nationality.
-Union would carve the way for the emergence
-of a great new northern nation.  It would
-provide the people with vision, and destroy
-the cramping parochialism of their existing
-political life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In British American union, McGee at
-last discovered a cause that vividly appealed
-to his imagination.  He found it on taking up
-residence in Montreal, and it shaped his
-career in the succeeding ten years.  It
-replaced in his sentiments his former fervour for
-Irish liberty.  In its advocacy he never grew
-weary, and the decade previous to Confederation
-found no more fervid apostle of British
-American union and nationality than McGee.
-He pleaded it, not merely through the press,
-but on the public platform.  Being in demand
-as a lecturer, he used every occasion to unfold
-his favourite subject.  In one of his most
-famous addresses, delivered at Ottawa on
-October 9, 1857, he arrayed the various
-arguments for union.  "If we extend our
-vision so as to embrace all British North
-America, we survey a region larger than all
-Europe.  If we have no coal, Nova Scotia has
-abundance.  If Newfoundland has an indifferent
-soil, this Ottawa valley can grow wheat
-enough to supply all that is required.  Throughout
-this wider view we find at least four millions
-already in the field&mdash;one quarter more
-than laid the neighbouring republic.  Nature
-pronounces for the union of the provinces.
-Canada needs a sea-coast."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In addition to the arguments drawn from
-geography and economic needs were others no
-less cogent.  Union was imperative for
-defence.  Political weakness was always a
-tempting bait to a neighbouring power.  The
-great resources of the British colonies
-combined with their lack of unity might well
-induce the American republic to attempt
-conquest.  Especially was the St. Lawrence
-waterway tempting to the United States,
-since in the course of time it must become the
-shipping route for the wheat harvests of the
-West.  The power in possession of it would
-control the chief roadway to the grain fields.
-In addition the colonies had other resources
-for which union alone could give adequate
-protection, rich fisheries, extensive forests,
-fertile lands.  "Facts are logical, and unless
-we dream that the laws of cause and effect will
-be suspended in our favour, we must look
-either to the internal union or the political
-extinction of these provinces at no distant
-day."  Not merely would the wealthy natural
-resources of British North America be
-preserved, but they would best be developed by
-the consolidation of the colonies into one
-state.  With such a system McGee looked
-forward to Canada possessing, by the close of
-the century, 25,000,000 people.  Moreover,
-he anticipated the appearance of all the other
-more brilliant, if less tangible, accomplishments
-of national life, which had difficulty in
-arising under the existing political disunion, a
-native literature, with developments in art,
-science, and philosophy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-McGee went further than marshalling
-arguments for union.  He described in
-general terms the nature of the constitution
-suitable for the colonies.  He considered it
-neither desirable nor possible that the various
-provinces with their diverse geographical
-characters and economic interests should be
-fused into one political unit.  "Our river
-system indicates our union, railroads and
-canals will strengthen these natural bonds,
-but complete oneness of political life must still
-be wanting to sea-beaten Newfoundland and
-the wheat-bearing West."  The same
-geographical facts which pressed the need of
-union made the recognition of local autonomy
-imperative.  The new constitution must be
-federal, allowing a large measure of local
-autonomy, while constituting a central
-government to deal with common interests.
-Many of the leading Fathers of Confederation,
-most prominent among whom was Sir
-John A. Macdonald, began with the suggestion
-of a legislative union, and only with reluctance
-in the heat of constitution-building recognized
-the need of federal institutions.  But with
-keen insight McGee saw from the outset that
-only federation could be the goal of British
-Americans.  Provincial governments with the
-recognition of certain provincial rights would
-be a guarantee of liberty in the new state.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In December, 1857, an additional field
-was opened in which McGee might extend the
-advocacy of his new found cause.  A body of
-citizens in Montreal nominated him for
-parliament, and in the ensuing contest he was
-elected as one of the three representatives of
-the city.  Thus began the most constructive
-venture of his career.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap03"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-CHAPTER III
-<br><br>
-THE PROPHET OF CANADIAN NATIONALITY
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-McGee entered Canadian politics at a
-crucial period.  Most of the old issues
-over which political battles had been fought
-were disappearing.  Responsible Government
-in principle at least was recognized by all
-parties.  The Clergy Reserves, which had
-frequently ruffled the peace of provincial
-politics, had in 1854 been settled with
-reasonable satisfaction to those concerned.  In the
-same year the thorny question of seigniorial
-tenure in Lower Canada had received its
-quietus.  A chapter of hoary Canadian
-controversies was closed, and a chapter with the
-newer problems of the United Canadas opened.
-One of the most prominent aspects of the new
-era was the appearance of railways.  Quaint
-locomotives, mere playtoys in comparison
-with the huge masses of steel which now
-rumble over the Canadian lines, began to
-glide by the snake fences of the farmer, and
-introduced a new touch to the Canadian
-landscape and a new issue to Canadian
-politics.  The incorporation of railways as
-the promised means of developing the Canadas
-became the absorbing subject with provincial
-statesmen, and the parliamentary
-debates became bulky with all the dry
-details of railway management.  But the most
-ominous problem of the time was that of
-attempting to work the scheme of union
-established by the Act of 1841.  In the years
-immediately following 1858 the union underwent
-its severest tests, and began to fail as an
-effective means of government.  Amid the
-accumulating difficulties of politicians, the
-Confederation movement had its rise.  In
-this movement McGee from the outset played
-a vital role.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The first important question confronting
-McGee in 1857 was the choice of a party.
-Canadian parties in the period were notoriously
-unsteady.  Prominent men readily shed
-old alliances for new ones, and this readiness
-for change gave a makeshift appearance to
-party affiliations.  The legislature was like a
-ballroom in its quick shifting of political
-partners.  There were four distinct groups.
-In Lower Canada the Reformers were known
-as the <i>Parti Rouge</i>, and were led by A. A. Dorion,
-a very able but doctrinaire Liberal.
-Following the elections of December, 1857,
-this group was a small minority, thanks
-largely to the nimble-mindedness and dynamic
-energy of George E. Cartier, leader of the
-<i>Bleus</i>, the opposing group.  In Upper Canada
-the government party, known as
-Liberal-Conservatives, was led by John A. Macdonald,
-and the Reformers were under the command
-of George Brown.  With the latter were
-loosely associated a small band who followed
-Sandfield Macdonald, and were known as
-Sandfield Macdonald's "tail".  On McGee's
-entrance to the legislature, the government
-was described as the Macdonald-Cartier
-administration.  During the next four years it
-was preserved in power by the majority of
-Lower Canadian members, marshalled by
-Cartier, and a number of Upper Canadians
-drawn by the winning personality of John
-A. Macdonald.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In view of McGee's subsequent career, it
-is possible that he might in 1857 have accepted
-a nomination from the party of Macdonald
-and Cartier.  Certain considerations drew him
-to support Dorion and the <i>Parti Rouge</i>, but
-they were hardly of a nature to overcome the
-strong attraction of a warm welcome from the
-government party.  Such a welcome was not
-extended.  The fact is that those in power
-were somewhat dubious concerning this new
-man, with his chequered career and his
-reputation for brilliance.  One who, only ten years
-before, had been a rebel against the Queen
-might not prove of much help to a party in a
-colony where loyalty was fashionable.  Political
-leaders before investing in new stock must
-be sure of a good return, and in this case they
-were in doubt.  McGee did not receive their
-nomination.  Hence he gave his support to
-the <i>Rouges</i>, with whom he had more genuine
-sympathy.  It is interesting that he thus
-entered Canadian political life as an advanced
-reformer, the opponent of John A. Macdonald,
-with whom his name was later linked.  In
-the election of December, 1857, Dorion stood
-at the top of the poll in Montreal with his
-follower, McGee, a close second.  The other
-four candidates trailed behind with Cartier
-at the bottom, five hundred votes below
-McGee.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Some eighteen months after his election,
-McGee outlined in four public letters to his
-Irish-Canadian constituents his views on
-Canadian parties.  They adequately explain
-why for four years he supported the Opposition,
-consorting with Dorion, George Brown,
-and other uncompromising opponents of the
-Cartier-Macdonald ministry.  He attributed
-to the <i>Bleus</i> an exclusive Canadianism.  They
-had no wish to welcome immigrants, for they
-dreamed of a French Canada existing isolated,
-alone, and still French on the map of North
-America.  Their conception of French-Canadian
-nationality was too narrow to allow the
-development of a broad conception of Canadian
-nationality, so essential in a land of
-warring sects and races.  The <i>Rouges</i>, on the
-other hand, were more in touch with modern
-tendencies, and more disposed to recognize
-as their Canadian countrymen the newer
-immigrants who spoke a different tongue and
-were of another race.  In them the Irish
-Canadians of Lower Canada could find more
-congenial allies than among the <i>Bleus</i>.  McGee
-on this occasion worked in his own fervid
-gospel of a nationality, which would recognize
-distinctions of neither race nor creed: "For
-my own part, I respect every nationality
-represented on our soil; but yet I hold we
-should consider them rather as invaluable
-materials to a desired end, than as finalities
-themselves.  I hope to see the day, or at least
-the eve of the day, when there will be no other
-term to our patriotism, but the common name
-of Canadian, without the prefix of either
-French or British."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He advised his Catholic countrymen in
-Upper Canada that they support in their
-section of the province the Reform party of
-George Brown.  Brown was something of a
-knight errant.  He was bold in tilting with
-abuses, and ever ready to ride about the
-colony in search of them.  McGee was won by
-Brown's frank, fearless character.  Moreover,
-he believed that the Irish Catholics of Upper
-Canada could subscribe with little reservation
-to the Reform leader's principles.  They
-shared with Brown a hostility to the intolerant
-Toryism of the old school, and entertained
-his faith in the widest extension of
-popular suffrage, economy in public expenditure,
-and reduction in taxation.  But there
-were two issues on which McGee was not in
-harmony with Brown.  He did not believe
-that the adoption of representation by
-population would, as Brown so ardently argued,
-heal the ills of Canadian government.  Also,
-contrary to the belief of the Upper Canadian,
-he thought that separate religious schools
-should receive more definite recognition by
-the provincial legislature.  These questions
-were to arise frequently during his political
-career, and a statement of his position on them
-may be conveniently postponed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In March, 1858, the parliamentary session
-began.  From the outset, McGee hurried into
-the leading debates, and attacked the
-"corruptionists", as the government party was
-described, with all the weapons of polished
-wit and searching sarcasm.  His reputation as
-an orator had preceded him, and his maiden
-speech was eagerly awaited.  None of the
-assembled legislators was disappointed.  A
-press correspondent wrote that McGee had
-scarcely spoken three sentences in a silvery,
-penetrating mezzo-soprano before he had
-the audience in that pleasurable grip which
-only the highly endowed orator can attain.
-"Of loud declamation," wrote another
-contemporary observer, "there was not a vestige,
-and scarcely a change of attitude.  He merely
-placed the finger of his right hand occasionally
-on the palm of his left, then let both hands fall
-by his sides, or on occasion lifted the right
-hand in solemn warning, but as he warmed up
-a magnificent period with an appeal to the
-justice of his cause, or the manhood of his
-country, his whole frame shook, light darted
-from his eyes, he was so to say transfigured."  The
-correspondent of the <i>Globe</i> wrote that he
-was "undoubtedly the most finished orator in
-the House....  He has the peculiar power of
-impressing an audience, which can only be
-accounted for by attributing to those who
-possess it some magnetic influence not common
-to everyone."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The methods of the government in the
-previous election gave him an opportunity of
-displaying facetiousness and extracting roars
-of laughter from all sides of the chamber.
-Cayley, the inspector-general, had unsuccessfully
-contested a seat in the counties of
-Huron and Bruce.  One of his electioneering
-devices had been that of presenting several
-Orange lodges of these counties with beautifully
-bound copies of the sacred scriptures.
-"It was a spectacle," remarked McGee,
-"rare and refreshing to see the inspector-general,
-the chancellor of the exchequer, the
-finance minister of the province, voluntarily
-turn missionary and act the part of a
-colporteur in the neighbourhood of Lake Huron.
-He must further remark that the good people
-of these counties seemed to have studied the
-sacred volume presented to them from so high
-a source to good effect.  They appeared to
-have learnt the lesson of retributive justice,
-for although they accepted the gospel, they
-rejected the missionary."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is something in parliamentary life
-that appeals to the fighting instinct, and men
-in opposition feel more free to indulge in it.
-McGee did so with undisguised recklessness.
-In the opinion of sober-minded people he
-seemed over-ready to engage in the battles
-of debate.  One of the most controversial
-questions of the period was the choice of a site
-for the government.  Up to 1858 the capital
-had been shunted about almost in the manner
-of a freight car, remaining at the most only
-four years in any one city.  Such an arrangement
-was obviously not satisfactory.  Yet
-there was real difficulty in deciding which of the
-rival cities should be the permanent capital.
-Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto,
-Hamilton&mdash;all had their advocates who
-fought for their respective centres with the
-public enthusiasm of men whose parliamentary
-seats depended upon the extent to which
-they promoted local interests.  A decision in
-favour of any one city might spell the death
-of the ministry.  The Macdonald-Cartier
-government of 1858, unwilling to enter an
-early grave, hit upon an expedient which
-might remove responsibility from their heads.
-They passed a resolution requesting the
-Queen to choose among the rival cities.  The
-Queen or her ministers could have little
-knowledge of the respective merits of the
-various Canadian cities, and it is likely that
-she acted on advice from Canada.  In any
-case she decided in favour of a village,
-Bytown, in the backwoods of the Ottawa river.
-From a ragged settlement, in the country of
-lumbermen, the village has since grown into
-the beautiful Ottawa.  The Opposition was
-up in arms against the Queen's decision.
-McGee, who was frankly a champion of
-Montreal, flung himself into the debate,
-pleading the advantages of Lower Canada's
-largest city.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The final upshot was the resignation of
-the government, and the calling of Brown and
-Dorion to form a ministry.  Then occurred
-the famous incident in Canadian history
-known as the Double Shuffle.  The governor,
-Sir Edmund Head, refused Brown the privilege
-of a dissolution whereby the Reform
-leader might have obtained a more substantial
-majority.  To add to the latter's misfortunes,
-the Opposition without giving the Reform
-ministry a trial carried a vote of censure.  The
-new ministry, only a few hours old, was thus
-forced out of power, and Cartier and
-Macdonald were once more called upon.
-Constitutional precedent required that the ministers
-upon accepting office should seek re-election.
-But Macdonald feared that the ministers from
-Upper Canada would not be returned, if at
-this juncture they faced their constituents.
-Hence the ministers by shuffling their offices
-made use of a legal technicality to avoid
-re-election, and carried on the government as if
-nothing had occurred to disturb their former
-possession of power.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Bitter were the complaints of the Opposition
-against such juggling.  McGee's voice
-joined the chorus of denunciation.  He slashed
-the Cartier-Macdonald group for pushing
-difficulties in the path of the Brown
-government, and even accused the governor of an
-unseemly partiality for Macdonald.  His
-heavy-fisted criticisms aroused intense
-resentment in the government ranks, and every
-effort was made to discredit him.  The press
-was wheeled into the sordid task of
-endeavouring to damage his reputation and ruin his
-public life.  The Toronto <i>Leader</i> and the
-<i>Catholic Witness</i> of Montreal were truceless in
-their attacks.  Much was made out of the
-fact that he had been a fugitive rebel, and the
-hostile Catholic press endeavoured to prove
-that his orthodoxy was in question.  Even an
-effort was made to get the board of Catholic
-bishops to condemn him publicly.  Innuendoes
-were thrown out that he had some
-association with a revolutionary society
-which threatened the overthrow of Canadian
-institutions.  John A. Macdonald was led to
-describe him as a rebel in his own country,
-who had come to Canada to propagate rebellion.
-Indeed, the party of Macdonald and
-Cartier procured a complete file of McGee's
-New York <i>Nation</i>, in order that they might
-be able to taunt him with the revolutionary
-and anti-British sentiments which he had
-expressed between the years 1848 and 1850.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If he had been a man of ordinary ability
-and troubled with super-sensitiveness, McGee
-would not have survived this ordeal of his
-first parliamentary year.  But ten years of
-American journalism had hardened him
-sufficiently to go buoyantly and successfully
-through the disagreeable rough-and-tumble
-of Canadian politics.  His rebel antecedents
-did not encumber him.  He boldly defended
-his revolutionary career in Ireland on the
-ground that he had rebelled against conditions
-which did not exist in Canada, and against
-which any Canadian would have rebelled.
-As to his position in his new home, he was
-emphatic in his profession of faith: "I am as
-loyal to the institutions under which I live in
-Canada as any Tory of the old or new schools."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Throughout this period he was not always
-on the side of Brown and the Opposition
-stalwarts.  On the important question of the
-tariff he voted with the government.  In 1858
-Cayley had introduced a budget with additions
-to existing duties.  He was bending to
-the drift of opinion in favour of protection for
-the juvenile industries of Canada, and was
-also in search of increased revenue.  Galt,
-who became finance minister in 1858, was
-influenced by similar considerations.  He
-imposed duties of 20% and 25% on
-manufactured goods, with the aim of seeking more
-public revenue and incidentally providing
-protection to Canadian manufacturers.  To
-George Brown and his followers who had
-absorbed the free trade doctrines of British
-liberalism Galt's protective principles were
-heresy.  Brown's organ, the Toronto <i>Globe</i>,
-thundered against them as pernicious.  But
-McGee, a frank protectionist, championed
-them as necessary for the development of
-industrial as well as agrarian activity.
-"Where there were no producing cities as well
-as consuming cities, there had been no
-prosperity&mdash;the urban and the rural population
-must bear some adequate proportion to
-each other before security and safety could be
-established."  This creed was similar to that
-preached in the same period by Horace Greeley
-in the republic to the south.  It has continued
-since to have an influence on Canadian and
-American statesmen.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the four years that McGee sat on the
-opposition benches, the gravest question
-facing the United Canadas was the fate of the
-union.  Largely on the recommendation of
-Lord Durham and Lord Sydenham, the two
-provinces had been united in 1841.  But,
-contrary to Durham's intention, little attempt
-had been made to merge into one the two
-peoples, the French of the lower province
-and the British of the upper.  Complete
-fusion was perhaps impossible.  In any case
-it had been made difficult by the provision of
-the Union Act that equal representation
-should be conceded to each province.  The
-two sections of the country thus being
-recognized as distinct units, the members of the
-legislature, as representatives of one or the
-other unit, contended for sectional advantages.
-At the outset the population of Lower Canada
-had been larger by 150,000, but in the
-passage of a few years the situation was
-reversed.  The Upper Canadian members
-now became sensitive that their province was
-not receiving benefits commensurate with
-their numbers.  In George Brown they had
-an eloquent and fearless advocate.  In his
-opinion, the union was a complete failure
-because it did not succeed in creating a united
-people.  In addition he considered that it
-upheld an injustice, for it allowed one
-community to govern another more numerous.
-His case was stated emphatically in the <i>Globe</i>
-"It must be obvious to every intelligent man
-that to accomplish the great ends contemplated
-by the union, and to draw closer the bonds
-of sympathy uniting the people of Canada&mdash;it
-is imperatively necessary that legislation
-wherever practicable, shall be for the whole
-province and not sectional, and that the local
-institutions of Upper and Lower Canada shall
-be gradually assimilated.  With two
-languages&mdash;two law codes&mdash;two judicial
-systems&mdash;two systems of national instruction&mdash;two
-systems of municipal government&mdash;two systems
-of land tenure&mdash;two systems of title
-registration&mdash;two systems of mercantile partnership
-and right of kin&mdash;two systems of relief to
-solvents&mdash;two systems of raising money for
-local purposes&mdash;two systems in everything&mdash;how
-can we hope to create a united people?"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Brown's solution was the concession of
-representation by population.  Through the
-recognition of this principle the various
-differences between the two portions of the
-province would be sponged out by the action
-of the majority in the legislature.  In addition
-it would redress the injustice suffered by
-Upper Canada.  That province in Brown's
-estimate had an excess population over Lower
-Canada of 225,000, and this excess, according
-to the Reformers, was virtually unrepresented.
-In plain terms majority rule in the
-Canadas was impossible and majority interests
-suffered.  Brown raised the principle of
-representation by population into a slogan
-cry, and no Highland chief could have been
-more effective in stirring his impassioned
-followers.  The French were as relentless in
-their resistance.  They rightly feared that
-representation by population would bring a
-majority of English into the chamber, and
-their most cherished interests would be
-imperilled.  Yet Brown, like a representative of
-Fate, in season and out of season drove home
-his arguments, and made an ominous deadlock
-in the legislature.  In 1858, when McGee
-entered the chamber, the majority of French
-under Cartier, leagued with a minority of
-British from Upper Canada under Macdonald,
-were like a threatening army opposed to the
-followers of Brown, who constituted a
-majority of the Upper Canadians.  The feverish
-intensity of Canadian politics at the time was
-the consequence of this strained battle to
-decide whether the union was to fall under the
-weight of Brown's attack.  One side added
-as much bitterness to the struggle as the
-other.  On one occasion Cartier stirred up
-great irritation by expressing the opinion
-that the excess population of Upper Canada
-had no more right of representation than the
-numerous codfish in Gaspé Bay.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What was McGee's position?  He was in
-the ranks of the Opposition, but his views on
-the momentous question of the time did not
-entirely square with those of Brown and the
-Upper Canadian Reformers.  He admitted
-the justice of the claim that numbers should
-be the basis of representation.  "Property
-should have its weight, intelligence should
-have its weight, but any man who, on this
-continent and in this age of the world, did not
-believe that numbers should be the basis, was
-as little to be reasoned with as a man who
-believed in the philosopher's stone."  Yet he
-did not think that a change in the basis of
-representation would constitute a permanent
-solution of the difficulties of Canadian
-government.  In October, 1859, he, Dorion, and two
-other members of the Lower Canadian opposition,
-L. T. Drummond and L. A. Dessaulles,
-explored carefully the constitutional problem,
-and drew up an able report, which has
-considerable significance in the light of later
-events.  They examined in turn the various
-suggestions made to relieve the constitutional
-conflict: repeal of the union, representation by
-population, the double majority.  Repeal of
-the union was practically impossible.  The
-provinces had so many things in common as
-to make it imperative that they remain under
-the same roof.  Representation by population,
-they summarily rejected on the ground
-that it would still leave room for bitter
-conflict between the representatives of the
-respective provinces over the justice of
-particular legislation.  They similarly rejected the
-double majority, whereby no measure should
-be considered as carried until it had not merely
-a majority of the legislature as a whole, but
-also a majority of members from the section
-of the country which it affected.  They
-considered that the double majority would give
-rise to confusions, not least of which would be
-the difficulty of distinguishing between the
-cases where it should and should not apply.
-Moreover, the remedy would be worse than
-the disease, because it would leave in the
-chamber two majorities and two minorities.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The true statesmanlike solution in their
-estimation would be the substitution of a
-purely federal for the existing legislative
-union.  The federal government should have
-powers defined to such subjects as were
-common to the two provinces, leaving supreme
-jurisdiction in all other matters to the
-provincial legislatures.  The committee even went
-into some of the details of their suggested
-system, making it clear throughout that the
-pervading idea of the new constitution should
-be the delegation of powers from the province
-to the federal government.  Everything
-relating to local affairs, such as education,
-administration of justice, and militia should
-be under provincial jurisdiction.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This document is symptomatic of
-McGee's thought.  In the <i>New Era</i>, he had
-painted the vision of a united British North
-America, but he had not, while a journalist,
-come to close grips with a scheme of union.
-His year of parliamentary experiences had
-brought him nearer to constitutional needs,
-and his co-operation with Dorion in the
-projection of a definite plan was the result.
-Although he later departed from the details
-of this programme, to the principle of
-federation he remained faithful.  Such was not the
-case with Dorion.  It was the irony of his
-career that the confederation scheme of 1864,
-under which Canada grew into lusty young
-nationhood, found in him its severest critic.
-In the years following 1859 McGee continued
-as zealously as before to plead in parliament
-and on public platforms the cause of federal
-union.  He looked even far beyond the mere
-federation of the two Canadas.  With an
-extended foresight he advocated a union of all
-the colonies.  In 1860, in the debates on
-Brown's resolutions, favouring a federal union
-of the two provinces&mdash;to which Brown had
-now turned&mdash;McGee argued that much more
-desirable would be a union of all the North
-American provinces.  Common interests
-demanded it.  The existing arrangement with
-its tariff barriers between the colonies
-hampered trade and economic development.  Union
-would widen intercolonial markets and
-stimulate the entire material progress of the
-colonies, while without union they must lag
-far behind the United States in the working
-of their natural resources.  But federation
-was imperative for another reason.  It was a
-necessary means of attaining for the colonies
-a national existence.  McGee fervidly looked
-forward to a day, not distant, "when we should
-be known not as Upper or Lower Canadians,
-Nova Scotians, or New Brunswickers, but as
-members of a nation designated as the Six
-United Provinces."  The establishment of a
-federal state for the nurturing of a British
-North American nationality was the shining
-goal that he held before Canadians.  The
-wider union would not merely solve the
-political difficulties of the Canadas, but would
-insure the great destiny of all the colonies.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;I see it quartered into many
-communities&mdash;each disposing of its internal
-affairs&mdash;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&mdash;the winding Assiniboine,
-the five-fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the
-Ottawa, the Saguenay, the St. John, and the
-Basin of Mines&mdash;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&mdash;men capable of maintaining,
-in peace and in war, a constitution
-worthy of such a country."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-From the beginning of the war a very
-active newspaper campaign had been going
-on against Canada, led by the New York
-<i>Herald</i>, 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 the <i>Trent</i> affair of 1861, when
-two southern gentlemen were removed from
-the British steamer <i>Trent</i> by 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;patriotism rejects the prefix&mdash;that
-is, in my opinion, what we should look
-forward to,&mdash;that is what we ought to labour
-for, that is what we ought to be prepared to
-defend to the death."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Such was the compelling cause which
-McGee as a member of the Opposition championed
-in parliament and on public platforms.
-In the <i>New Era</i>, 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 entitled <i>Nova Britannia</i>, 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.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap04"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-CHAPTER IV
-<br><br>
-IN OFFICE AND OUT OF IT
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 the <i>Globe</i>, 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 the <i>Globe</i>,
-"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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-<i>L'Ordre</i>, 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;without a
-standard of right and wrong&mdash;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.
-The <i>Globe</i> lucidly 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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.  The <i>Globe</i>, 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 the
-<i>Globe</i> attributed 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.  Another <i>impasse</i> was reached.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 the <i>British American Magazine</i>
-for 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&mdash;British subjects&mdash;professing
-monarchists almost to a man&mdash;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&mdash;not lack of means
-or numbers&mdash;which heretofore has prevented
-us taking up in a practical shape the alternative
-of the fate before us&mdash;the establishment
-of our future, complete, and permanent
-constitution."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 the <i>Canadien</i>,
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;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 the <i>Citizen</i>.  In its place he substituted
-the <i>Freeman</i>, 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.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap05"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-CHAPTER V
-<br><br>
-CONFEDERATION AND FENIANISM
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;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".
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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, <i>Notes on Federal
-Governments Past and Present</i>, 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;never
-monotonous&mdash;of the lofty rhetoric with
-which they were adorned.  It was a noble
-speech, I thought&mdash;the product of an exalted
-being&mdash;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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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,&mdash;"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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;for the
-country's sake&mdash;a <i>cordon sanitaire</i> around
-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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The telegraph wires hurried his speech
-abroad, and in every quarter it created a
-sensation.  The complimentary remarks of
-<i>The Times</i>&mdash;a very conservative organ in its
-attitude towards Ireland&mdash;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&mdash;to the attention of all the discontented
-classes in Ireland&mdash;to the attention of all who
-believe that there is anything to be gained by
-plots and conspiracies against the British
-government."  The Dublin <i>Nation</i>, 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&mdash;and which indeed Mr. McGee
-has never affected to conceal&mdash;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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap06"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-CHAPTER VI
-<br><br>
-CLOSING YEARS
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;for the dear sake of our existence, not
-to say establishment, as a distinct free people,
-in North America&mdash;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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;each for all, and all for
-each&mdash;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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;and they were not all selfish&mdash;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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the succeeding months McGee's activity
-was as varied and ceaseless as ever.  He
-was still in very large demand as a lecturer,
-and with personal trouble and expense he
-went long distances to deliver lectures for the
-benefit of charities.  One of his most famous
-addresses was on <i>The Mental Outfit of the
-New Dominion</i>, delivered in Montreal on
-November 4, 1867, in which he pleaded for
-the development of mental self-reliance as an
-essential condition of political independence.
-A literature to shape and express the mind of
-the new nation was as imperative as
-self-governing institutions.  At the time Canada
-had no literature.  Journalism, it is true,
-flourished like a green bay tree.  In the four
-provinces there were about one hundred and
-thirty journals, thirty of which were published
-daily.  But this ephemeral literature was
-characterized by a narrowness of view, a local
-egotism, and a lamentable absence of anything
-approaching a catholic spirit.  In addition to
-elevating the tone of journalism, McGee
-believed that Canadians with national
-development at heart must encourage a literature
-"calculated to our own meridian, and hitting
-home our own society, either where it is
-sluggish or priggish, or wholly defective in its
-present style of culture".  Literary talent
-should be cherished as precious.  He hoped
-that "if a native book should lack the finish
-of a foreign one, as a novice may well be less
-expert than an old hand, yet if the book be
-honestly designed, and conscientiously worked
-up, the author shall be encouraged, not only
-for his own sake, but for the sake of the better
-things which we look forward to with
-hopefulness.  I make this plea on behalf of those
-who venture upon authorship among us
-because I believe the existence of a recognized
-literary class will by and by be felt as
-a state and social necessity."  The new
-northern nation, notwithstanding that it
-possessed all the benefits which Nature could
-possibly bestow, would still in his estimation
-be impoverished if it failed to develop a
-cultural life.  He endeavoured to direct the
-attention of Canadians to the fact that there
-should be built upon the political unity
-already attained a life of the mind on which the
-vitality of a nation finally depended.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The cause of union which had fired
-McGee's mind since his immigration to Canada
-was now attained.  What was to be his future?
-Political life had never failed to attract him,
-for he liked its intensities of struggle.  His
-future in Canadian politics was secure.  Few
-public men of the time were held in such
-esteem throughout the British provinces, and
-none had so quickly jumped into prominence.
-His career was not closed by his absence from
-the first cabinet of the Dominion.  Macdonald
-had confessed that his admission to a
-cabinet office could only be a matter of short
-delay.  Yet work other than that of public
-life attracted him.  He had never lost the
-ideal, born in his youth, of devoting himself
-to literature.  By temperament he was a man
-of letters.  His vivid imagination sought
-expression in the creation of what might be
-a permanent addition to literature:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  I dreamed a dream when the woods were green,<br>
-  And my April heart made an April scene,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the far, far distant land,<br>
-  That even I might something do<br>
-  That would keep my memory for the true,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And my name from the spoiler's hand!<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-From the summer of 1867, he looked forward
-to obtaining a commissionership under the
-government, which would maintain him and
-his family, while providing leisure for literary
-work.  These were the hopes shattered
-suddenly by his murder.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-During January and February, 1868,
-McGee was seriously ill in Montreal, but in
-March he was back in Ottawa for the opening
-of parliament.  The crucial issue of the period
-was the inclusion of Nova Scotia in the
-federation.  A delegation of Nova Scotians headed
-by the redoubtable Howe had gone to Britain
-to obtain the support of British statesmen in
-the endeavour to release their province from
-the federation.  To neutralize their influence
-by stating the counter case, the Canadian
-government in March sent over Tupper.  To
-the Nova Scotian anti-unionists&mdash;and they
-constituted a majority of the representatives
-of the province&mdash;the little energetic doctor
-was anathema.  With painstaking bitterness,
-they assailed his appointment.  On the
-evening of April 6, Dr. Parker, a Nova Scotian
-representative, made a personal attack on
-Tupper, demanding his recall.  He declared
-that he was "utterly disqualified for being a
-representative of the Dominion, and sending
-him only deepened the disaffection of the
-sister province of Nova Scotia".
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In reply to Parker, McGee declared that
-the motion to recall Tupper was delivering
-Confederation a stab in the dark.  "If he had
-been in earnest in wishing to give the new
-system a fair trial, he would have said: I do
-not think Mr. Tupper was the best choice,
-but since he has gone I wish him all success for
-the sake of the union."  In impassioned words
-which show how poignantly his own bitter
-struggle with Fenianism was on his mind, he
-argued that Tupper should not be judged by
-the transitory ill-esteem in which he was held
-by his countrymen.  "We should not make a
-mere local or temporary popularity the test of
-the qualification of a public servant.  He who
-built on popularity built on a shifting sand.
-The man who showed he was ready to suffer
-for his principles as well as triumph with his
-principles was far beyond comparison with
-the mere popularity hunter.  It would be a
-base spirit to sacrifice the man who had
-sacrificed himself for the sake of the union."  No
-attentive parliamentarian who heard these
-words could have foreseen that in little more
-than an hour McGee himself was to be
-sacrificed for his opinions.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-No less significant than his defence of
-Tupper was his plea that Nova Scotia should
-await the action of time for the consolidation
-of the provinces into a great nation, all parts
-of which would find justice.  "I have great
-reliance on the mellowing effects of time.  It
-is not the lime, and the sand, and the hair of
-the mortar, but the time which has taken to
-temper it.  And if time be so necessary an
-element in so rudimentary a process as the
-mixing of mortar, of how much greater
-importance must it be in the work of consolidating
-the confederation of these provinces.
-Time, sir, will heal all existing irritations;
-time will mellow and refine all points of
-contrast that seem so harsh to-day; time will
-come to the aid of the pervading principles
-of impartial justice, which happily permeate
-the whole land.  By and by time will show
-the constitution of this Dominion as much
-cherished in the hearts of the people of all
-its provinces, not excepting Nova Scotia, as is
-the British constitution itself."  Such was
-McGee's last confession of faith.  It lost none
-of its force in the grace and beauty of its
-language.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He spoke at midnight.  Shortly after one
-o'clock on the morning of the 7th, the debate
-closed.  The members, while putting on their
-coats, commented generally on McGee's
-speech; some thought that it was the most
-effective they had ever heard him deliver.  He
-lit his cigar, and in company with Macfarlane,
-a very intimate friend, went down the
-board walk towards his lodging.  It was an
-exhilarating night, with a bright full moon
-and the tonic air of early spring.  McGee was
-in elated spirits.  Perhaps part of his
-light-heartedness was caused by the reflection that
-on the morrow he would return to Montreal,
-where his wife and daughters were, within a
-few days to celebrate his forty-third birthday.
-Letters from home had informed him of the
-preparations.  At what is now one of Ottawa's
-busy corners, that of Sparks and Metcalfe
-Streets, he left his friend, and alone walked
-to his lodging on Sparks Street.  As he
-endeavoured to open his door with a latch key,
-a slight figure glided up and at close range
-fired a bullet into his head.  There was no cry,
-only the deadly crack of the pistol, and
-McGee pitched forward on his doorstep.  His
-work done, the assassin dashed away in the
-night, but left tell-tale steps in the snow,
-later to assist in his conviction.  Some
-inmates of the house, who had not retired,
-immediately discovered the body, and soon
-the dreary news was circulating through
-Ottawa and across the telegraph wires to all
-parts of the Dominion.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The following afternoon, Sir John Macdonald
-before a gloomy chamber gave expression
-to the public sorrow, and in token of
-it adjourned the House.  Meanwhile Ottawa
-was feverishly searched for the assassin.  The
-prison was soon filled with suspects.  The
-Dominion government offered $5,000 reward
-for information concerning the culprit or
-culprits, and the two provinces, Quebec and
-Ontario, each offered $2,500.  Incriminating
-evidence quickly accumulated against
-Patrick James Whelan, a comparatively young
-man, whose trial began on the 17th of the
-month.  From the outset the chain of
-circumstantial evidence against him was strong.
-He had long been implicated in the Fenian
-movement, having been discharged from the
-army in Quebec for Fenian sentiments.  He
-had but recently come to Ottawa, and on the
-night of the murder had been seen in the
-gallery of the house.  After his arrest there
-was found in his possession a revolver, one
-chamber of which had been recently
-discharged.  But the most conclusive of the
-many facts of evidence was submitted by a
-French Canadian, Lacroix, who declared that
-he saw Whelan commit the deed.  Notwithstanding
-the weighty case relentlessly built
-up by the prosecuting attorney the trial
-dragged wearily into the following year.
-Finally, on February 11, 1869, Whelan, pleading
-innocence to the end, met his death on the
-scaffold.  It has remained problematical how
-far he was the fatal instrument of the Fenian
-brotherhood or how far his action, like that
-of the man who shot Lincoln, was due merely
-to personal hate.  The evidence would seem to
-make it clear that Whelan did not receive
-instructions from a head centre outside the
-country, but that he performed the deed to
-satisfy the hatred of himself and a few Canadian
-Fenians whose identity is uncertain.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-McGee died a martyr for the young
-Dominion.  Such was the judgment of
-contemporaries, and history need not reject it.
-On the day following the murder, Sir John
-Macdonald described "how easy it would
-have been for him, had he chosen, to have
-sailed along the full tide of popularity with
-thousands and hundreds of thousands, without
-the loss of a single plaudit, but he has been
-slain, and I fear slain because he preferred the
-path of duty".  From the time that he
-resolved to fight Fenianism, his life was in
-danger.  Had he been more passive, and
-allowed the movement to wreck itself, he would
-not have incurred the enmity of Whelan and
-his associates.  But McGee never entered a
-cause half-heartedly.  He had the firm
-conviction that Fenianism was a menace, not
-merely to Canada, but to Ireland.  It
-represented an anarchical and revolutionary
-spirit which long ago he had come to dread.
-It endeavoured to overthrow the British
-Empire, which he considered a magnificent
-instrument in spreading civilization.  Hence
-he fought it with as much intensity as he had
-formerly struggled for Irish independence,
-and his guilt, to the minds of his opponents,
-was that of an apostate as well as of an enemy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As McGee's last speech was a plea for
-the conciliation of all members of the new
-Dominion, so his last letter of public
-significance was a passionate plea for reform in
-Ireland.  Just two days before his death he
-had dined with an old Ottawa friend, Alderman
-Goodwin, and after dinner had excused
-himself to pen a letter to Lord Mayo, then
-chief secretary for Ireland, which was described
-aptly by a contemporary as having "struck the
-heart of the British nation like a cry for
-justice from the grave".  In a parliamentary
-speech, Lord Mayo had referred to McGee's
-loyalty as that of a Canadian Irishman.
-McGee in his letter endeavoured to make
-clear why Irishmen like himself were loyal in
-Canada, and how the loyalty of those in
-Ireland might be won.  Canada did not have
-the abuses which in Ireland was the prime
-source of discontent.  There was no established
-church, no system of tenancy at will, no poor
-laws, nor any need of them.  Instead there
-was the recognition of complete religious
-equality, a general acquisition of property as
-the reward of well-directed industry, and the
-fullest local control of revenues and resources.
-Such was the head-spring of Irish loyalty in
-Canada, and "were it otherwise, we would be
-otherwise".  This letter is the best apology
-for the chequered career of the young Irish
-rebel of 1848, who died twenty years later the
-champion of a British American nationality,
-linked by bonds of sentiment to the Britain
-across the seas.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap07"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-CHAPTER VII
-<br><br>
-CONCLUSION
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-McGee's position among the few
-outstanding fathers of Confederation is
-secure.  His work was not that of a
-constitutional architect giving expression to
-political needs in the legal terms of a constitution.
-Nor was he a party leader, subtly pulling
-together the strings guiding political groups,
-and through the resulting combination
-carrying measures beneficial to the community.
-In both these fields Sir John Macdonald
-easily carries away most of the honours.
-McGee's task was that of inspiration.  His
-position was that of a prophet and a guide.
-Creative statesmen fall into two categories&mdash;those
-who inspire a people to establish new
-structures, and those who build in under their
-influence the bricks and mortar of the new
-creation.  McGee, in the most plastic period
-of Canadian history, belonged to the former
-class.  Throughout the brief span of his life
-in Canada, he had been the untiring advocate
-of union amongst the colonies.  He had
-championed it in the press and on public
-platforms from Lake Huron to the Atlantic.
-In the legislature, he had pushed it forward
-through the weary bickerings over much
-smaller issues.  He had made the colonists
-realize that to them there was no subject of
-equal magnitude.  This was the prime
-question of their destiny.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Coming to the Canadas as a stranger,
-his mind was not cramped by local patriotism
-nor handicapped by the shortness of vision
-characteristic of many colonial leaders.  He
-saw the common interests of all the colonies
-to a degree that was difficult with men who
-had matured within the confines of one, and
-who were content to worship only at its shrine.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had an additional advantage.  He had
-been reared in an old community with long
-traditions and in possession of that virile
-community-consciousness which we call
-nationality.  His mind had developed in contact
-with a group of young brilliant men who
-sought to revivify the life of their nation, and
-who went to its traditions for inspiration.
-McGee never lost the effect of such experiences
-and aspirations.  The vision of giving new
-vitality to a nation and setting it on the path
-of fresh development continued to stir his
-imagination.  When he came to Canada, he
-did not find an old community, as in Ireland,
-in need of inspiration for fresh accomplishments;
-he found all the elements necessary for
-the building of a new northern nation, and the
-prospect of assisting its creation was the spur
-of his Canadian career.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Union of the colonies was the first and
-most important step towards the attainment
-of a national existence.  It was the essential
-foundation for everything else.  But McGee
-did not overlook other and subsidiary policies
-necessary for the same end.  That on which he
-had laid most emphasis was the development
-of a broad-minded national spirit which would
-sponge out from politics the influence of
-sectarian and sectional interests.  Tolerance
-of the differences of race and creed must, he
-argued, be the corner stone of the Dominion.
-There was need of emphasizing this doctrine,
-for the parochialism of colonial government
-and the seclusion of colonial society tended to
-shut out the healthy air of large affairs, and
-develop a pettiness of mind and an intolerance
-of spirit.  The differences between the
-French and the English&mdash;differences of race
-and creed&mdash;seemed to be an insurmountable
-obstacle to the emergence of a national
-community embracing them all.  But McGee was
-not despondent over such differences.  He
-believed that the task of the new nationality
-was to reconcile them through toleration.  In
-1865, in St. John, he declared that "the
-bilingual line which divides us socially is one
-of the difficulties of the government of the
-country.  But though a difficulty it is by no
-means a serious danger, unless it were to be
-aggravated by a sense of injustice, inflicted
-either by the local French majority on the
-English minority, or by the English majority
-on the French minority.  So long as we
-respect in Canada the rights of minorities,
-told either by tongue or creed, we are safe, for
-so long it will be possible for us to be united;
-but when we cease to respect those rights, we
-will be in the full tide towards that madness
-which the ancients considered the gods sent
-to those whom they wished to destroy."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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&mdash;H. J. Morgan,
-Charles Mair, R. J. Haliburton, G. T. Denison,
-and W. A. Foster&mdash;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 <i>Canada First,
-or Our New Nationality</i>.  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:
-</p>
-
-<p class="quote">
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p>
-The memory and influence of McGee
-lived not merely in the counsels of the "Canada
-First" party, but in the efforts of Canadian
-statesmen in succeeding years to make Canada
-strong within herself.  Even when leaders
-appeared who may have forgotten his name
-and had not heard in the legislature or on the
-public platform his silver speech, their work
-for the completion of Canadian autonomy was
-but a fulfilment of what he had advocated.
-Canada as a self-governing nation, linked
-fraternally to Britain and other parts of the
-Empire, was McGee's goal for the Canadian
-people.  Since Confederation they have been
-steadily advancing towards it, and thus
-paying homage to the strength and vision of
-McGee's ideals.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-McGee has importance in Canadian
-history for other reasons than his statesmanship.
-He holds no mean place in Canadian
-literature.  Historical myth puts into the
-mouth of Wolfe the remark that he would
-sooner have written Gray's "Elegy" than take
-Quebec.  The poet may be greater than the
-soldier, and similarly the literary artist may
-be placed above the statesman; yet statecraft
-has drawn fervid minds from poetry to
-political action.  It drew McGee.  While, in
-temperament and aspiration, he was a man
-of letters, so resistless was the attraction of
-politics that in it he expended most of his
-energies.  But any account of his life which
-would leave out of consideration McGee as
-a <i>littérateur</i> would be incomplete.  Something
-has already been said about his oratory.  A
-native oratory was one of the most distinctive
-elements in his equipment as he started on the
-path to fame.  Yet from the outset he used
-his pen more frequently than his tongue.
-From his first arrival in America to his death,
-he wrote continuously prose and poetry.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Most of this literary output found
-expression in the journals with which he had
-been connected, but he left to his name a
-goodly number of volumes dealing with
-historical and biographical subjects.  Of these
-two have already been mentioned as
-contributing to the cause of Canadian Confederation,
-<i>Notes on Federal Government Past and
-Present</i> and <i>Speeches on British American
-Union</i>.  All the others deal with Irish history
-and biography, which next to living political
-causes engaged McGee's imagination.  The
-most noted of these books was his <i>Popular
-History of Ireland</i>, on which he had begun
-earnest labour in 1858, but which exacting
-political activities had prevented him from
-finishing till 1863.  On many an evening
-within these years, he would retire to his
-room from the battles of parliamentary debate
-and, forgetful for the time being of Canadian
-problems, would trace out the struggle of the
-Vikings for Ireland or some other dramatic
-phase of Irish history.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Within his life-time no complete
-collection of his poems was made.  They
-appeared chiefly in the various newspapers on
-both sides of the Atlantic to which he had
-contributed.  The year after his death they
-were collected and published by his friend
-Mrs. Sadlier.  One little volume he himself
-published in 1858, <i>Canadian Ballads and
-Occasional Verses</i>.  It was a worthy tribute
-to his interest in the history of his newly
-adopted country, and was addressed to those
-who looked forward to the development of
-the colonies into a great new northern nation.
-The subject matter of his verses is varied.
-Many deal with the affections; others are
-religious in sentiment; but the greater number
-are patriotic and historical.  They are
-concerned with the saints and heroes of Ireland's
-story, from St. Patrick to Smith O'Brien.
-They throb with the fervour of a patriot as
-they tell of Innisfail, the Ireland of ancient
-times, and of how
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Long, long ago, beyond the misty space<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of twice a thousand years,<br>
-  In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Taller than Roman spears;<br>
-  Like oaks and towers, they had a giant grace,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Were fleet as deers,<br>
-  With winds and wave they made their 'biding place,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;These Western shepherd-seers.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p>
-McGee's imagination revelled in the
-traditions and myths of the Celts.  He
-expressed that brooding melancholy over the
-past which has ever been the pervading
-sentiment of Irish poetry.  He believed that
-the Celtic race had a soul that was chastened
-by past misfortunes, and yet was not without
-hope in the present.  He invoked it in the
-lines:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Soul of my race!  Soul eternal!<br>
-  That liveth through evil and time&mdash;<br>
-  That twineth still laurels all vernal,<br>
-  As if laurels could once more be thine!<br>
-  Oh hear me, oh cheer me, be near me,<br>
-  Oh guide me or chide me alway,<br>
-  But do not fly from me or fear me&mdash;<br>
-  I'm all clay when thou, Soul, art away.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p>
-McGee's poetry was shaped largely by
-the group of Young Ireland who taught that
-verse might be used as a convenient means
-of drawing upon Irish traditions for the
-purpose of arousing a national consciousness.
-From its nature such poetry has limitations.
-It must fail to win the universal appeal of
-verse with no national end to serve.  McGee
-was not limited in his allegiance to Ireland.
-His <i>Canadian Ballads</i> were inspired by
-incidents in Canadian history, and were
-intended to show the fertility of Canadian
-annals in subjects adaptable to verse.  It was
-his belief that "of all the forms of patriotism,
-a wise, public-spirited patriotism in literature
-is not the least admirable.  It is, indeed,
-glorious to die in battle in defence of our
-homes or altars; but not less glorious is it to
-live to celebrate the virtues of our heroic
-countrymen, to adorn the history, or to
-preserve the traditions of our country".
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As might be expected in the work of a
-man enmeshed in the ceaseless activities
-of public life, to whom poetry was of
-necessity an embroidery to other activities,
-his compositions are uneven.  They are
-always spontaneous, but frequently show a
-roughness that a painstaking workmanship
-would have removed.  Yet there are bursts
-of genuine lyric quality that will receive the
-commendation of even the critical.  Of a
-simple beauty are the lines imitated from the
-Irish and named <i>A Contrast</i>:
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  I.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Bebinn is straight as a poplar,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Queenly and comely to see,<br>
-  But she seems so fit for a sceptre,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She never could give it to me.<br>
-  Aine is lithe as a willow,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And her eye, whether tearful or gay,<br>
-  So true to her thought, that in Aine<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I find a new charm every day.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  II.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Bebinn calmly and silently sails<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down life's stream like a snow-breasted swan;<br>
-  She's so lonesomely grand, that she seems<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To shrink from the presence of man.<br>
-  Aine basks in the glad summer sun,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like a young dove let loose in the air;<br>
-  Sings, dances, and laughs&mdash;but for me<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her joy does not make her less fair.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  III.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Oh! give me the nature that shows<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its emotions of mirth or of pain,<br>
-  As the water that glides, and the corn that grows,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Show shadow and sunlight again.<br>
-  Oh! give me the brow that can bend,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh! give me the eyes that can weep,<br>
-  And give me a heart like Lough Neagh,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As full of emotions and deep.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p>
-To Gavan Duffy, the warmest of his
-friends among the Young Ireland group, he
-wrote lines that expressed a yearning for an
-old companionship amid old scenes:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Oh! for one week amid the emerald fields,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where the Avoca sings the song of Moore;<br>
-  Oh! for the odor the brown heather yields,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To glad the pilgrim's heart on Glenmalur!<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Yet is there still what meeting could not give,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A joy most suited of all joys to last;<br>
-  For, ever in fair memory there must live<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The bright, unclouded picture of the past.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Old friend! the years wear on, and many cares<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And many sorrows both of us have known;<br>
-  Time for us both a quiet couch prepares&mdash;<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A couch like Jacob's, pillow'd with a stone.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  And oh! when thus we sleep may we behold<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The angelic ladder of the Patriarch's dream;<br>
-  And may my feet upon its rungs of gold<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yours follow, as of old, by hill and stream!<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p>
-Of his Canadian ballads one of the best
-known is <i>The Arctic Indian's Faith</i>:
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  I.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  We worship the spirit that walks unseen<br>
-  Through our land of ice and snow:<br>
-  We know not His face, we know not His place,<br>
-  But His presence and power we know.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  II.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Does the Buffalo need the Pale-face word<br>
-  To find his pathway far?<br>
-  What guide has he to the hidden ford,<br>
-  Or where the green pastures are?<br>
-  Who teacheth the Moose that the hunter's gun<br>
-  Is peering out of the shade&mdash;<br>
-  Who teacheth the doe and the fawn to run<br>
-  In the track the Moose has made?<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  III.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Him do we follow, Him do we fear&mdash;<br>
-  The spirit of earth and sky;&mdash;<br>
-  Who hears with the Wapiti's eager ear<br>
-  His poor red children's cry.<br>
-  Whose whisper we note in every breeze<br>
-  That stirs the birch canoe&mdash;<br>
-  Who hangs the reindeer moss on the trees<br>
-  For the food of the Caribou.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  IV.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  That Spirit we worship who walks unseen<br>
-  Through our land of ice and snow:<br>
-  We know not His face, we know not His place,<br>
-  But His presence and power we know.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p>
-McGee's power as an orator deserves
-special mention in this concluding chapter.
-There are few orators whose speeches have
-literary value.  Supreme eloquence is rare
-and generally transitory.  It is inspired by
-the gravity of great events or dramatic
-situations.  When the vivid circumstances
-have passed, the printed sentences divorced
-from the inspiring presence of the orator lose
-their former magic influence.  Thus, most
-great speeches come down in history as
-a feeble echo of what they had been when
-delivered.  Those of Edmund Burke are an
-exception that prove the rule.  McGee was
-an orator of great power, and his orations,
-delivered without the use of notes, live as
-literature.  Something of the beauty of his
-expressions may be gathered from the few
-quotations on preceding pages.  But these
-quotations do little to recall their thrilling
-effect when they were delivered by McGee.
-Leading contemporaries agreed in giving him
-the first position amongst the orators of
-Confederation, and the verdict of contemporaries
-on such a subject must be accepted.  Sir
-Charles Tupper, on hearing the news of
-McGee's death, remarked that "the grave has
-closed over the most eloquent man in Canada."  The
-<i>Globe</i>, in an editorial the day after his
-assassination, stated that "whether his hearers
-sympathized or not with what he said, it was
-impossible for anyone not to acknowledge
-that he was marvellously eloquent; that his
-words were fitly chosen, and gave every
-intimation of masterly power....  His wit&mdash;his
-power of sarcasm&mdash;-his readiness in reply&mdash;his
-aptness in quotation&mdash;his pathos which
-melted to tears, and his broad humour which
-convulsed with laughter&mdash;were all undoubtedly
-of a very high order.  Among the orators
-of Canada, either within or without the House,
-he has not, we believe, left his equal, and even
-his opponents will miss the speeches in which
-he developed his plans for promoting the
-greatness of Canada."  This judgment is all
-the more convincing in that the <i>Globe</i> had
-been for some years previous hostile to
-McGee.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Joseph Howe had won many laurels as
-an orator, yet the brilliant French-Canadian
-writer, Hector Fabre, considered him inferior
-to McGee.  "Mr. Howe is well adapted to
-the tribune; he pleases, he amuses, he charms;
-but a severer taste would say that his is far
-from the brilliant eloquence, the irreproachable
-diction, the constantly pure style, the
-breadth of views and the rectitude of ideas
-of Mr. McGee.  To my mind Mr. McGee is
-a nearly perfect orator, and one who in many
-senses has no superior."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Of McGee's domestic and private life,
-little need be said.  It was happy in the
-highest degree.  He was married in the period
-of his association with Young Ireland, and
-his wife shared the subsequent adventures of
-his chequered career, and survived his tragic
-death.  His home presented to all who entered
-it a charming circle.  McGee, with his family,
-was like a joyous boy.  He would often be
-found romping on the floor with his baby
-daughter.  Of his children only two daughters
-survived, one of whom took the veil.  A
-genial, convivial nature and an ever sparkling
-humour won him friends in every part of
-Canada.  One of the many tokens of esteem
-on the part of his townsfolk in Montreal was
-the present of a handsome furnished house
-in one of the best districts of the city.
-Although an Irishman and a very devout
-Catholic, he gained the warm homage of the
-Scotch Presbyterian population in Lower
-Canada, a homage deeper than that bestowed
-by the Scotch on any of their own countrymen.
-At the old Irish and Scottish festival of
-Hallowe'en he had been an ever welcome speaker
-in the St. Andrew's Society.  It is interesting
-to note that on the Hallowe'en after his death,
-thirty-seven of the forty-six poems competing
-for prizes contained some allusion to him, and
-one lamented his absence in Scotland's old
-dialect:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  Ah! wad that he were here the nicht,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whase tongue was like a faerie lute!<br>
-  But vain the wish: McGee! thy might<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lies low in death&mdash;thy voice is mute.<br>
-  He's gane, the noblest o' us a'&mdash;<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Aboon a' care o' worldly fame;<br>
-  An' wha sae proud as he to ca'<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our Canada his hame?<br>
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-  The gentle maple weeps an' waves<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Aboon our patriot-statesman's heed;<br>
-  But if we prize the licht he gave,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We'll bury feuds of race and creed.<br>
-  For this he wrocht, for this he died;<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;An' for the luve we bear his name,<br>
-  Let's live as brithers, side by side,<br>
-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In Canada, our hame.<br>
-</p>
-
-<p><br></p>
-
-<p>
-These simple Scotch verses strike the
-most memorable fact respecting McGee.  His
-name should live in Canadian History as a
-statesman, orator, and poet.  But he should
-be remembered for an additional reason.  The
-Dominion, for which he laboured, grew, as
-he prophesied that it would grow, from the
-Atlantic to the Pacific, and its scattered
-provinces, flattened out over a vast territory,
-are bound together by the steel lines of
-trans-continental railways.  Yet such material
-bases of union must fail to hold together the
-different sects and races inhabiting the
-Dominion, unless Canadians cherish what McGee
-passionately advanced, the spirit of toleration
-and goodwill as the best expression of
-Canadian nationality.
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap08"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-BIBLIOGRAPHY
-</h3>
-
-<p>
-No adequate biography of Thomas
-D'Arcy McGee has hitherto been written.
-Consequently the student of his life must
-depend upon sundry sources of information.
-Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's books, <i>Young
-Ireland </i>(New York, 1881), <i>Four Years of
-Irish History</i> (London, 1883), and <i>My Life
-in Two Hemispheres</i> (London, 1898) contain
-material on McGee's adventures as a Young
-Irelander.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For the study of his Canadian career, his
-own <i>Speeches and Addresses, chiefly on the
-Subject of British-American Union</i> (London,
-1865) is of prime interest.  This volume
-comprises his leading speeches on the subject
-of Confederation, but many more of his
-addresses must be sought for in the columns
-of Canadian newspapers, particularly in the
-<i>Montreal Gazette</i>.  The <i>Canadian Freeman</i>,
-published in Toronto from 1858 to 1869, was
-a Catholic paper which gave special place to
-McGee's views.  Of course, the <i>New Era</i> is
-also of interest.  In the <i>British American
-Magazine</i> for August and October, 1863,
-McGee wrote articles on British American
-nationality.  A few of his remarks in
-parliament on the same subject may be found in
-Thompson's <i>Mirror of Parliament</i> for 1860.
-Much interesting material will be found in the
-<i>Memoirs of Ralph Vansittart</i> (Toronto, 1924)
-by Edward Robert Cameron, a personal
-friend of McGee.  W. A. Foster, <i>Canada
-First</i> (Toronto, 1890; with intr. by Goldwin
-Smith) is worth consulting for a contemporary
-opinion on McGee's influence over the younger
-generation of Canadians.  George W. Ross,
-<i>Getting into Parliament and After</i> (Toronto,
-1913) has a good, if brief, description of
-McGee as an orator.  Joseph Pope, <i>The
-Memoirs of the Right Hon. Sir John
-A. Macdonald</i> (Ottawa, 1894) contains some
-information of interest.  The <i>Macdonald Papers</i>
-in the Dominion Archives, have a fund of
-material on the movement of Confederation,
-with which McGee was so intimately
-connected.  Sir Charles Tupper, <i>Recollections of
-Sixty Years</i> (London, 1914) has a few notes
-of interest.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The following brief sketches and studies
-may be mentioned: Fennings Taylor, <i>Thomas
-D'Arcy McGee: Sketch of His Life and Death</i>
-(Montreal, 1868).  Henry J. O'C. Clarke,
-<i>A Short Sketch of the Life of Thomas D'Arcy
-McGee</i> (Montreal, 1868).  N. F. Davin,
-<i>The Irishman in Canada</i> (Toronto, 1877),
-devotes a few pages to McGee.  Charles
-Dent, <i>Canadian Portrait Gallery</i>, (Toronto,
-1881), volume III, has a sketch of McGee's
-life.  Robert McGibbon, <i>Thomas D'Arcy
-McGee: An Address Before the St. Patrick's
-Society of Sherbrooke</i> (Montreal 1884).
-J. K. Foran, <i>Thomas D'Arcy McGee as an Empire
-Builder</i> (Ottawa, 1906), an address before
-the Empire Club of Toronto.  H. O. Hammond,
-<i>Confederation and Its Leaders</i> (Toronto,
-1917), contains a brief chapter on McGee.
-W. S. Wallace, <i>Growth of Canadian National
-Feeling</i> (Canadian Historical Review, June,
-1920), discusses McGee's part in the creation
-of a Canadian national sentiment.  D. C. Harvey,
-<i>Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the Prophet
-of Canadian Nationality</i> (University of
-Manitoba, 1923) describes McGee as a Canadian
-nationalist and quotes from his speeches.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-McGee's collected poems were edited and
-published by Mrs. Sadlier (New York, 1869).
-Mrs. Sadlier's introduction contains some
-valuable information concerning McGee's life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The following is a list of the more
-important of McGee's other books: <i>O'Connell
-and His Friends</i> (Boston, 1845); <i>Historical
-Sketches of Irish Settlers in America</i> (Boston,
-1855); <i>Catholic History of North America</i>
-(Boston, 1855); <i>Life of Bishop Maginn</i> (New
-York, 1857); <i>Canadian Ballads and Occasional
-Verses</i> (Toronto, 1858); <i>The Irish Writers of
-the 17th Century</i> (Dublin, 1863); <i>Popular
-History of Ireland</i> (New York, 1863); and
-<i>Notes on Federal Governments Past and Present</i>
-(Montreal, 1865).
-</p>
-
-<p><br><br><br><br></p>
-
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