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.
CHAPTER IV
IN OFFICE AND OUT OF IT
May 22, 1862, the Cartier-Macdonald government fell. Its career came to grief on a militia bill which provided for the maintenance of a force of 50,000 men, at all times available for active service, at a cost of about one million dollars. The danger to the provinces consequent upon the events of war in the United States had forced the government to stake its existence upon such a far-reaching scheme of defence. But the defection of some Lower Canadian supporters threw out the measure, and the government resigned. Foley, the Reform leader, was passed over, and the governor called upon Sandfield Macdonald to form an administration. In co-operation with Sicotte, the Reform leader in Lower Canada, he patched together a ministry which held office for approximately one year, and was known as the Macdonald-Sicotte government. It contained the leading figures of the Opposition: James Morris, A. A. Dorion, M. H. Foley, W. McDougall, W. P. Howland, and McGee. The presidency of the council was conferred on McGee.
The programme of the new administration had in it a dash of boldness. It included militia and bankruptcy bills, plans towards opening for settlement the great north-western territories, and the determination to set the building of the intercolonial railway on the move. Many of these measures McGee gladly welcomed as steps towards the establishment of that for which he laboured, the great new northern nation. But that stern reformer, George Brown, found one grave omission in this scheme of legislation. Sandfield Macdonald flatly refused to carry into effect the principle so sacred to the editor of the Globe, representation by population. He was personally doubtful of its value as a medicine for Canadian ills, and he felt that the line of least difficulty would be to leave it alone. In its place he adopted as the hinge principle of the government's action, the double majority, begging that it be given a fair trial. But Brown was not satisfied. In his mind the Reform party existed primarily to establish representation by population. A ministry that failed to accomplish this was no reform government. "Better a thousand times," thundered the Globe, "had it been that the Cartier-Macdonald government with all its wickedness should have been recalled than that so many leading men of the Liberal Opposition should have sacrificed their principles and destroyed the moral influence which they justly possessed with the electors of Upper Canada." Such hostility was unveiled, although Brown alleged that he was willing to give the government a chance. His lack of friendliness was ominous, and the fall of the ministry a year later was largely due to the fact that George Brown had failed to give it his blessing.
What was the attitude of McGee? He slipped into office with the determination to perform something for the cause which he had advanced by voice and pen, the development of a British-American nationality. Varied elements entered the task of nation-building. More was necessary than the territorial union of the colonies, although that was imperative. In a sparse community, flattened out over a new and vast country, an impelling need was the encouragement of immigration. The body of a nation was in its sturdy farmers and dauntless pioneers. Men were required to labour in field and mine. The Canadas from the eastern to the western frontier had thousands of acres of rich farming lands awaiting the plough. The wealth of the fisheries and mineral resources were no less great, and all these invited labour. This fact McGee keenly realized, and to the task of colonization he bent his attention. In his election speech at Montreal in June, 1862, he declared that in the ministry "all that he would ask to be judged by was this—what had he done for the settlement of the country? This was his great political principle, all others in his estimation being secondary." Canadian statesmanship, he believed, must be tested by the success with which it endeavoured to build a great community out of a small one. Careful settlement was the readiest means to this end. In the past three years McGee had done much to promote an interest in settlement. In each of the previous sessions he had obtained a committee to examine the problem of immigration. The committee of 1860 submitted a careful report with many recommendations. It drew attention to the fact that the advantages of Canada as a field of colonization had not been brought home to the popular mind of Europe. During the season of 1859 there arrived in the country by the St. Lawrence, not more than 6,000 English-speaking persons. In the same year New York received 45,000. There were many obvious reasons for this disparity. The development of industrial life in the United States gave the inducement of higher wages. Canada, being almost purely an agricultural country, could not offer the same wages, and incidentally the committee recommended that manufactures be encouraged to widen the appeal to prospective immigrants. But McGee and his committee emphasized in particular the need of spreading information concerning Canada's strongest attraction to the European emigrant, cheap or free cultivable land. They pressed the necessity of an intimate co-operation between the immigrant service and the Crown lands' department in order that immigrant authorities be kept cognizant with all the lands available. The lack of such co-operation in the past had seriously handicapped the settlement of the country.