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.