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.