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.