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.