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.