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.